Community Members Help Local Businesses Take Climate Action

Alyssa Friesen, Rebecca Bischoff, and Katrina Viegas show off their brochure

Community members are helping spread the word about the Duluth Citizens’ Climate Action Plan! As a project for Leadership Duluth, a program of the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce, Alyssa Friesen, Rebecca Bischoff, and Katrina Viegas created a brochure for businesses based on actions in the Plan. 

Katrina shared that in being part of the process of pulling the actions for businesses into a brochure she has broadened her perspective on what businesses like hers can do. She says: “I’ve been a little too shortsighted in how I’ve been thinking about all this. We don’t own our building, we are just one of many tenants in a building that is 9 or 10 floors high. We don’t pay for our energy directly—we are billed for our usage—so there is little incentive, at least from my original perspective, to really manage that in a meaningful way. But through this process I’ve really come to consider what if I team up with some of the other businesses that have 10-year leases like our business does, and we kind of tag team our landlady to say ‘Hey, if we’re going to do these 5 things, what are you going to do?’ Because the reality is if we all do incentivize our businesses and employees to take any of these actions it could actually impact our finances.” 

Katrina, Rebecca, and Alyssa will now help share the brochure with businesses across the community. Check out the brochure here and help spread the word by sharing it with any businesses you frequent!

You can also hear them share more about what they learned in this video (at minute 13:05).

A big thanks to Alyssa, Rebecca, and Katrina for their work! And thanks to ProPrint, Beaumier Trogdon Orman Hurd & Viegas Attorneys at Law, American Engineering Testing, Inc. and Aimclear for their donations to help with the cost of printing.

The Duluth Citizens’ Climate Action Plan is a citizen-led effort, coordinated by Ecolibrium3, to inspire community-wide action to reduce Duluth’s greenhouse gas emissions and envision a future for Duluth that is sustainable and equitable. Learn more about the plan here. And, check out what other local businesses are doing to take climate action in this recorded webinar.