As climate change presents new challenges to community sustainability and resilience, local environmental policies offer an opportunity to shift the responsibility for pro-environmental behavior away from individuals. To help optimize the City of East Lansing’s environmental policy implementation, CLC Fellow Natalie Overton “translated” 15 of the city’s policies and city plans into simpler terms and composed department-specific one-pagers from the key takeaways. These one-pagers will be distributed to each department within East Lansing’s government and serve as an accessible informational resource on complex issues. Although this project has been created specifically for East Lansing, the templates for the one-pagers, as well as a guide on the collaborative creation process of the one-pagers, will be available as a resource for other cities interested in optimizing environmental policy implementation.

• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Project Team: Natalie Overton (Fellow, Michigan State University), Cliff Walls (Mentor, East Lansing Environmental Sustainability & Resiliency Manager), Matt Davenport (Technical Advisor, University of Michigan)
• Project Presentation: Slides (PDF), Video (YouTube)
• Project Deliverables:
  • Blank template to create your own factsheet (PDF) - Email [email protected] for an editable Canva link
  • Eco-Friendly FYI: Sustainability Terms, Defined (PDF)
  • East Lansing policy translations:
    • ZIP file of all policy translations (ZIP)
    • Boards and Commissions (PDF)
    • City Clerk’s Office (PDF)
    • City Manager’s Office (PDF)
    • Finance Department (PDF)
    • Fleet and Staff Management (PDF)
    • Information Technology (PDF)
    • Parking Downtown (PDF)
    • Parks and Recreation: Operations (PDF)
    • Planning, Building, & Development (PDF)
    • Water Resource Recovery Facility (PDF)