Our Vision

Our Sustainability Vision

sustanability

The three spheres of Sustainability

This graphic illustrates the different aspects of sustainability.

  • Environmental sustainability - Preservation and protection of the environment is essential to maintaining community sustainability.   Everything we need for survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly on our natural environment.  
  • Economic sustainability - Economic growth is critical for healthy communities and sustainable economies include efforts that preserve natural resources, reduce waste, promote buying local, and work together to support both urban and rural needs.   
  • Social sustainability - Ensuring that our residents are healthy and productive is a basic premise of a sustainable community.  Sustainability principles need to be incorporated into formal and informal educational programs to create an environment of learning.  

We aim to integrate our goals and activities within the areas of overlap, as that is where more than one aspect of sustainability is being achieved and balanced. Our ultimate goal is to get into the inner overlap area, where we balance all aspects of sustainability so that all of them are being fulfilled.

Our Plan

Door county will be utilizing an Environmental Management System, or EMS, to help us achieve our sustainability goals. An EMS is a tool that helps us understand our environmental impacts and systematically operate efficiently by reducing energy usage, which minimizes waste and reduces pollution. This is achieved by utilizing a "Plan, Do, Check, Act" cycle, which allows our EMS to continually adapt and improve as we manage our environmental impact. The cycle is completed as follows: 

  • Plan: we start by formulating our policies, intentions and overall missions. Then we will set specific goals to meet these intentions, and detail how we will take action to meet these goals.
  • Do: this is where we actually implement the EMS and do the actions required.
  • Check: we then assess the environmental impacts, check whether we achieved our goals, and assess how we monitor and measure our progress and record any past issues related to the goals and how we addressed them.
  • Act: this is where we evaluate how effective the EMS is at achieving our goals, and then identify new goals and adjust the EMS to better fit them.

When forming our goals and objectives, we make sure that they will align with one or more of our main areas of focus, and supports all 3 Spheres of Sustainability

Our Environmental Management System is outlined using an action plan here: [IN PROGRESS]