Good environmental stewardship has been one of the foundations of the Boy Scouts of America since its inception.  Teaching our Scouts about the environment and how to protect it has always been a part of our program. 

Since Scouting began, young people have been connecting with the outdoors, learning from nature and taking positive action for their local and global environment.

There are many more environmental challenges today than when Scouting started, making it even more important to keep the environment central to Scouting, to build on the momentum already established and to make Scouting a positive force for change.

Recently, the Central New Jersey Council decided that the best way to teach this to our Scouts is by setting a good example for them.  While "being green" is an ever expanding and changing process, our Council has taken some good initial steps. 

Conserving Energy / Energy Savings

Your Council has also begun exploring ways to conserve our energy consumption for the office and our camps by:

• Turning off lights, computers, and appliances when not in use
• Purchasing power strips and instead of letting computers and other electronics power down into sleep mode, we are instituting a mandatory shut off of all computers and electronic devices every night after work.
• Disabling screensavers on computers and allowing idle computers to power down into sleep mode when away from our desks for an extended period of time during work hours.
• Through an energy buying consortium, CNJC is working to drastically reduce its energy costs.  It is our hope to reduce these costs so that we will re-invest in program areas throughout the Council.

Council Green Policy

Our Council is committed to the environment and has adopted a new Green Policy.

Reduction in Printing

With the introduction this year of the Council's new web site, we will be taking our first green step by greatly reducing the amount of printed materials we use.  Calendars, newsletters, brochures, and dozens of other pieces will either not be printed at all or in greatly reduced numbers.  By allowing our members access to these things on-line, and urging that they only print them when necessary, we can literally save tens of thousands of sheets of paper a year.  This "green" step, however, involves more than just saving a few sheets of paper.  Think of all the energy saved and pollution that is reduced from the harvesting, processing, delivery, etc of the paper.  Cutting down on mailings also adds to these savings.  It may only sound like a few sheets of paper, but it can make a big impact.

CNJC is working with Doubleknot, Inc. to significantly cut down on paper event registrations.  We have done a few event registrations on-line, but we are looking into setting up camp registrations too so that by 2010 all camp registrations can be completed on-line.

We hope you are excited about these initiatives and support us in our efforts.  Change isn't always easy.  Some of you may have been used to receiving reams of papers from the Council office and will now have to get used to going on-line for the information.  However, we need to set the example for our youth and being good citizens of our planet is just one part of it.

Some other ways that CNJC can additionally cut down on the amount of paper used that will not affect you are:

• Printing on both sides
• Using paper that is only printed on one side for scratch paper
• Proofreading and making edits on our computers before printing
• Re-using file folders by placing new labels over the old ones