Leading the Way Toward Sustainability
Greener Grove's bold leadership and deft growth strategy is a model for creative change
They say you can’t fight City Hall, but one Downers Grove organization has worked hard to persuade local leaders to dramatically step up the village’s environmental sustainability efforts.
It’s called Greener Grove, and it provides a textbook example of how to build a meaningful community organization with significant reach and impact in a very short time. From the start, Greener Grove has demonstrated an impressive ability to connect with not just the Downers Grove Village Council but also with other environmental groups and residents of all ages.
Following the group’s founding in late 2022, a core group of seven members submitted a petition asking the Village Council to exercise environmental leadership in the community, said Louise Kelly, a founding member who now serves as the group’s secretary and co-director of communications.
Not one commissioner responded. Nor did Kelly receive a response to her letter asking the council to reinstate the Environmental Concerns Commission (ECC), which had been mothballed for nearly four years.
However, one Village Council member offered her a tip. “If you can show that people care about this, you’re going to get somewhere,” she was told.
The founders decided to email the signers of the aforementioned petition to see if they would be interested in meeting. “It was a shot in the dark,” Kelly said. But by January 2023, Greener Grove (originally called Environmentally Friendly DG) was off and running. A polished and well-organized website and informative emails soon followed.
More importantly, the group’s political partnerships committee became a constant presence at Village Council meetings. Members were charged with making “an argument to the Village Council in a way that’s understandable and logical” while remaining scrupulously polite, Kelly said.
In June 2023, 15 Greener Grove members offered public comments at the council’s strategic planning meeting. One of them was the group’s intern, who “spoke eloquently from the perspective of a young resident hoping for a better world,” according to a recap of the meeting. Together, the members urged the council to adopt a sustainability plan for the village, sign on to the Metropolitan Mayors’ Caucus Greenest Region Compact, reinstate and empower the ECC, and hire a staff person to oversee the village’s sustainability efforts.
While sustainability was already on the minds of at least some commissioners, Greener Grove was in the right place at the right time. Months later, the council agreed to each request, including the addition of an Environmental Sustainability Coordinator, who began work in December 2023. As further indication of its growing stature, Greener Grove also was invited to participate in the development of the village’s Guiding DG environmental sustainability plan.
Meanwhile, the group was gaining dozens of new members through a wide range of initiatives and programs designed to make participation in local sustainability efforts easy, not onerous. This was essential, because adopting those practices can often feel overwhelming, even anxiety-inducing, said Michelle Weed, who serves as Greener Grove’s media and communications chair and heads its youth engagement subcommittee. “Instead of coming from a place of ‘shame on you’ or creating unobtainable goals, we want to say, let’s partner together.”
Greener Grove believes its “more inspirational” approach lands especially well with new families in the area—“Gen Z and younger generations who have expectations about cleaner transportation, green spaces to hang out in, and more bike lanes,” Weed said. “We want to encompass all of that.”
The Downtown Downers Grove Market, which is open every Saturday morning from May through October, has been a major conduit for connecting with people who share the group’s values. Non-profit organizations (Greener Grove is a 501(c)3) are allowed to man a booth three times per season at no cost.
Carol Richart, who recently completed her term as the group’s director of outreach, made the most of the opportunity to attract passersby by offering information about Greener Grove, QR codes for quick access to its website, and a signup sheet through which people can receive emails with simple action items for promoting sustainability. These may include requests to email the Village Council (templates provided), opportunities for greater involvement, and reasons for holding off on spring mowing. And there is always a display as well as a craft table to keep the kids busy while their parents learn more about Greener Grove.
Monthly meetings feature a wide range of topics ranging from “Begin Birding,” featuring a local birding expert and a side trip to Lyman Woods, “Going Electric,” a presentation on the benefits of switching to electric heat, and “All About Oaks,” a discussion about the evolution of the majestic species led by a Morton Arboretum scientist and author.
The outreach efforts have paid off: Today, the group has an email list of 400 and attracts about 60 people to each meeting, Kelly said.
A brainstorming effort at the end of 2024 identified new opportunities. “One thing that rose to the top was youth engagement,” Weed said. “Change is generational. Kids are the ones who are going to inherit the Earth and we want to give them a voice.”
Since the beginning of the year, Greener Grove has offered monthly meetups for kids in sixth grade through high school. And they aren’t just talking to the kids, they’re encouraging their participation in initiatives they find meaningful. Weed and Kelly recently visited the sixth grade classroom of Weed’s son and were pleasantly surprised to see how engaged the students were. Styrofoam and microplastics rated high among their concerns, and “they asked so many questions about composting,” Weed said.
Speaking of composting, the group has looked for ways to make that task less daunting, from providing a display at the Downtown Market to training compost coaches who will help homeowners who are willing but uncertain how to begin the process. "They idea is, you’ve taught me, now I can teach someone else,” Weed said.
Other events on the 2025 schedule include a June 24 Sustainable Food panel discussion about making sustainable food choices and limiting waste, a July 22 conservation-at-home program from the Conservation Foundation, and an October 4 recycling extravaganza at the Belmont train station that will be sponsored by Greener Grove, SCARCE and the Village of Downers Grove. Greener Grove is committed to providing 50 volunteers and $1,000 for the effort. A recent open mic kids concert raised $500.
While Greener Grove has grown by leaps and bounds in the past 2-1/2 years, it’s impossible to write about the group without acknowledging the work of Pierce Downer’s Heritage Alliance, the local organization that literally blazed a trail in preserving natural and historic resources in Downers Grove, including Lyman Woods and the Belmont Prairie in Gelwicks Park. The Alliance was well known for its nature walks in both parks, its Wonder Woods (formerly Little Sprouts) field trips for first through third graders at Lyman Woods and for its quarterly cleanups of the Lyman Woods area.
Incorporated as a nonprofit in 1996, Pierce Downer’s Heritage Alliance was dissolved earlier this year as long-time members of the group relocated or retired. But before it closed the book on nearly 30 years of service to the community, the Alliance handed off the baton, and a generous donation, to Greener Grove and two other environmental groups.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in,” according to a Greek proverb.
Or as Weed put it, “how do we want our town to look in 20 years when our children inherit it?”
Thanks to Greener Grove, we are growing in the right direction.
GG has had a huge effect relatively quickly and I think have gained the respect and trust of leaders and residents alike. So grateful they are doing this work in DG! Well done. Thanks for highlighting them Elaine!