| What this Setion Covers: |
| Wind Energy |
| Solar Energy |
| Biomass |
| Geothermal |
| Conserve Energy |
| Air Quality |
| Rain Gardens |
| Rain Barrels |
| Pervious vs. Impervious Pavement |
| Recycling |
| Compost |
| Green Roofs |
| Urban Heat Solutions |
| Urban Forestry |
| Native Plants |
| Pruning |
| Mulch |
| Natural Lawn Care |
| Organic vs. Inorganic Fertilizer |
| LEED Certification |
| Local Business |
| Local Food |
| Infrastructure Developing Communities |
| Sustainable Development Methods |
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| Cost-Benefit Evaluation |
This section is intended to offer specific costinformation to aid in understanding the actual costs of ‘alternative’ options vs. traditional options. In some cases, the alternatives will prove themselves to be the best choice purely based on cost. These costs include both initial startup costs and maintenance costs. In order to analyze the total benefit or cost of the project, the costs arecompared with the overall benefits which includemoney saved, often times through energy or water savings, and tax credits. The costs and benefitsof some of the topics can be expressed solely in dollars. In other cases though, some of the topics include factors such as time and environmental costs that are harder to quantify in dollars and will need to be weighed in addition to monetary cost. A few of the topics are also very difficult to quantifyaltogether and have been addressed in more of an advantage and disadvantage format.
Overall though, this section should give you a better idea about the feasibility for some of the suggestions that were made in the other sections of this toolkit. It will also give you a better idea about the feasibility of personally implementing some of these ideas in your own home or community and will provide you with additional resources if you determine that these projects would beneficial. |
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