Words by Sophie Vaughan
In Summit County, one organization is leading the way in advancing sustainability in specific focus areas through partnerships across nonprofit, public, and private sectors. With the Summit of Sustainability Alliance (SoSA), partners from these different sectors work together to inform policy, improve practices, and support innovation in building a thriving, sustainable Summit County Region.
SoSA Chair Ross Widenor leads the Core Team, which acts as the steering group of the entire collective. Widenor runs the Core Team meetings, which help guide the decisions about what SoSA’s pilot programs will be. Widenor also works on the “rotating road show” of General Membership meetings held by SoSA to build an understanding of the current sustainability landscape in Summit County and highlight member organizations’ programs and accomplishments. Widenor says these General Membership meetings “keep the conversation going, keep up the engagement, and keep it lively so people want to show up and participate.”
According to SoSA’s website, the ideal vision for the future of local sustainability would include “a Summit County region that is a successful model of a sustainable community. Partners work together across sectors to create and enhance a thriving community surrounded by a healthy natural environment.”
The website goes on to explain, “SoSA supports this vision by creating a sustainability forum in the Summit County region to unite nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, governmental entities, and for‐profit businesses as they work together to inform policy, improve practices, and support innovation.”
“I think the more layman’s way to say it is that we see partnership as key to advancing sustainability,” says Widenor. SoSA is trying to move beyond the standard, with individual organizations merely assessing internal sustainability standards and processes. Instead, Widenor says that SoSA wants to see where these organizations can “move the needle by working together…as a whole network when we have similar issues or similar priorities or…similar pain points.”
“We can achieve more by doing that together and working across sectors, especially,” says Widenor. “So, it’s not just the business community, it’s not just the municipalities, it’s not just the universities or the non-profit sector, but crossing all of those boundaries and seeing what we can do to create solutions that make sense from wherever we are.”
Currently, SoSA is gaining momentum towards that ideal state. Many individual partnerships exist between organizations with similar interests who have recognized the need to work with other key players toward common goals, but SoSA saw a need for a coordinated sustainability discussion that spanned the Summit County region.
“There wasn’t anywhere for everyone to come together and really lay it all on the table and see what’s missing or what’s really great that should be replicated,” says Widenor. “We’re trying to find a home for the sustainability conversation in the region.”
SoSA is in the process of collecting information about existing partnerships to gain a better understanding of the network that already exists.
To keep the momentum going, SoSA holds monthly member meetings, and membership continues to grow as more organizations become aware of SoSA and what they are doing. Widenor says that the next step is legitimizing the organization from a structural standpoint.
“SoSA today doesn’t exist in a legal sense — there’s no established entity; we’re not a 501c3; we don’t have a fiscal agent,” says Widenor. “We’re a collective, but that’s something we identify as a real need — to legitimize ourselves and have some staying power — is to put some formal organization behind the collective itself.”
SoSA is also in the process of developing a stable funding structure. Currently, SoSA takes donations and manages funds to back up some of the projects that they want to do themselves. In-kind contributions from their member organizations have allowed some good progress, but the Core Team is looking at options to establish an official funding structure as a necessary next step.
SoSA currently focuses action on two main projects that need funding, which is what sets SoSA apart from some other sustainability collectives.
“We’ve had other instances where people will come together and talk about sustainability at some regular cadence, but then they’re kind of missing that execution/action piece,” Widenor says. “So we don’t want to just have a feel-good meeting once a month; we want to have these teams that are doing things, actually collaborating and creating some kind of deliverable.”
SoSA began by looking at members’ common priorities and activities and then began to frame those activities around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Two SDGs in particular seemed to have a lot of overlap with SoSA priorities and activities. Life on Land aims to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.” Responsible Consumption and Production aims to “ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.” Specifically, SoSA will focus on promoting biodiversity toward the Life on Land SDG and zero waste toward the Responsible Consumption SDG. Zero waste efforts will begin with advancing the state of composting in the region.
Biodiversity refers to the variety of living organisms on Earth, including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi. This variety is essential to support life on Earth, as the ecosystems that provide the air we breathe and the food we eat depend upon a wide range of life. Widenor says that the biodiversity pilot program has made a lot of good headway with leadership from the Big Love Network, as well as with participation from the City of Akron, the Akron Zoo, and a number of other players.
One player, Community Life Collaborative, secured $100K in grant funding to administer from an estate foundation, which they used to purchase native plants for a giveaway. The plant giveaways were focused on areas where they would have the greatest impact, for instance in Southeast Akron, where the tree canopy is weaker and native plants can improve the area in a measurable way. The iTree tool can be used in this scenario to measure this impact and show data such as CO2 sequestered and stormwater impacts. With one round of the giveaway complete, the Community Life Collaborative has secured funding for another round, which will take place in 2024.
Composting is the natural process of recycling organic matter into a soil amendment. The SoSA composting pilot program is presently in data collection mode, as SoSA gains an understanding of the entire network in its current state: who is segregating the compostable stream of material, where it is going, who is converting it, what the offtake is for that material, and how the process is working now overall.
“There are a lot of organizations that would like to compost, but they don’t know how, or they don’t have a cost-effective way to take action on that,” says Widenor. “So, I think if we can get a view of the whole system and how it’s working, we can figure out how to better optimize it.”
As part of the data collection process, SoSA is asking organizations to distribute a survey to their members. This survey will ask for basic organization information, details regarding existing compost systems, factors that make it difficult to compost, current supported zero-waste initiatives, and more. Organizations and businesses can fill out the survey here. Any questions about the survey can be directed to Rachel Madigan, at rmadigan@summitoh.net.
SoSA is also considering launching a third project in the Sustainable Cities and Communities SDG category, which aims to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”
“With the network we have, we feel that we can do something meaningful on CO2 reduction in the region,” says Widenor.
This network includes Summit County representation and Cuyahoga Falls membership, and Widenor says that the City of Akron Mayor-Elect Shammas Malik is very interested in what SoSA is doing, even sending a representative from his team to attend their meetings. SoSA also continues to reach out to other municipalities to connect with their sustainability teams.
“I think we’re bringing the right team together to have in the same room, with the corporates and the non-profits, so that we can really make an impact where it’s most urgently needed to combat climate change,” says Widenor. “We definitely have an eye on the future on getting more intentional about that space.”
SoSA Core Team member Gina Burk believes the bigger picture is going to be related to collaborations on achieving goals, and will include the Zoo, the parks, biodiversity, and zero emissions.
“It is going to be, ultimately, because it is in the best interest of all the entities involved, to position the region as a leader in sustainability that would attract people to want to live here,” says Burk.
Burk says that the most strategic position has been to get the City of Akron to have a Director of Sustainability. “To me, that is the key piece to establishing a seriousness that this region is going to be moving in the same direction,” Burk says.
“We have an extremely unique story in Northeast Ohio because of the Cuyahoga River being so significant to our environmental laws, with the EPA and the Clean Water Act,” Burk says. “And we have the national park connecting the watershed communities. We have to think about the future, we have to think about where we’re going to be because the world is going to know about us…Freshwater is the key component. Not only is it going to draw people here for recreation, but it’s our story. It’s inherent, it’s in our DNA.”
General SoSA membership meets from 1:30pm – 2:30pm on the 4th Wednesday of every month. Project teams are self-directed and meet as needed, reporting progress up to the Core Team members. There is no fee for membership, to eliminate the cost barrier to participation. Organizations that become members send representation to the monthly meetings and give in-kind contributions of time, attention, and collaboration.
Individual project teams determine what other resources are needed and where to source them. Member organizations have the opportunity to collaborate as part of the project teams, and there are also currently a couple seats open on the Core Team. To join, visit the SoSA membership application page.
