Success Stories

Greenprint Akron: A sustainability plan for the City of Akron

In 2005, the City of Akron's Mayor, Don Plusquellic, was president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The Conference participants unanimously endorsed a Climate Protection Agreement that committed them to reduce their cities' greenhouse gas emissions by a specific percentage by 2012. The mayors reaffirmed their commitment at their 2007 conference. Akron stakeholders, lead by the organization Keep Akron Beautiful, began working together to achieve these goals under the umbrella of the Greenprint for Akron program.

However, the initiative got off to a slow start, and by 2007, Akron officials and stakeholders realized their efforts were unfocused. They called on Affinity Consultants to contribute analysis and decision-making expertise to help the City develop and implement a workable and measureable plan to meet the objectives.

Affinity helped the City begin tracking its greenhouse gas emissions by introducing it to Cities for Climate Protection software endorsed by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. Affinity's team met with the stakeholders to interpret the data gathered and benchmark it against results for other cities.

Based on that data, Akron was able to commit to greenhouse gas reductions goals of 5% by 2013, 10% by 2018 and 20% by 2025 (based on 2005 baseline data).

After further consultation, in January 2009, the Affinity team helped train administrators on a customized web-based system to capture plan implementation information and allow City officials to determine which policies are working and which need to be changed.

For more details, download the Greenprint Akron whitepaper.