Gentoo EcoTeams project shortlisted for award

Gentoo staff and residents during the Big Green Launch event

Gentoo Group, a people and property organisation based in Sunderland, has been shortlisted in the Community Engagement category in the Sustainable Housing Awards 2011.

Sustainable living

Gentoo’s EcoTeams project is a community based initiative that was designed to reduce household carbon footprints through practical and measurable steps.

Gentoo has been working with its own residents who have formed their EcoTeams for around 18 months and are currently actively involved with over 100 residents across the city of Sunderland.

Gentoo’s EcoTeams meet monthly to discuss growing food, saving energy and water, waste and recycling, as well as cooking with the food they have grown themselves. Members record the weight of their household waste and recycled waste as well as their household energy usage.

Huge savings

EcoTeams are reaping the benefits of their own activities. One Gentoo EcoTeam is now on average recycling 57% of their household waste, another has reduced their electricity consumption by 58%.

Since its inauguration, Gentoo’s EcoTeam initiative has been widened to include general members of the public. The initiative brings community groups of all ages together to discuss how they can collectively reduce their impact on the environment.

Bringing the community together

Events such as their ‘Big Green Lunch’ – an event which has involved around 140 people participating in an annual competition to grow the largest sunflower, have helped facilitate the coming together of people from different communities and all generations.

One EcoTeams project currently being supported by Gentoo is a community garden at St Andrew’s Church in Sunderland. One Gentoo resident has dedicated their time and effort to create a communal garden complete with a commercial greenhouse and raised beds for residents to grow their own fruit, vegetables and plants. With the help of Gentoo, the community garden has been made DDA compliant and is open to anyone living in the surrounding area.

Gentoo is also working with one of its Young Person Supported Housing Schemes to help them further develop their EcoTeam, which has developed its own vegetable patch. The food grown will be used by residents to prepare meals and supplement their food shopping, while the EcoTeam will use the patch to encourage sustainable and healthy living.

Gentoo continues to support the many EcoTeams it has helped set up across the city of Sunderland.