I've been meaning to review Santa Monica's Sustainable City Plan for the last couple of months and I finally did so this past weekend. While I can not know how well the Santa Monica community has responded to the plan, the program itself is terrific.

Kevin McKeown, Santa Monica City Council member, reports that "residential recycling spiked by 11 percent when we instituted easy-to-use commingled recycling in our neighborhoods," so there is some encouraging news at this early stage, but Santa Monica officials will not be able to assess the effects of this comprehensive plan for some time.

Because they can be pursued via city ordinaces, the transportation and land use objectives will be more easily achieved. Economic measures, resource conservation, and "human dignity" considerations, on the other hand, are all addressed at length in the document, but aiming for "an annual increase over baseline" in the "percent[age] of Santa Monica residents who report that vegetable-based protein is the primary protein source for at least half their meals," for example, is not a matter for government regulation. (Can you imagine the furor resulting from proposed restrictions on per capita meat consumption?)

I will definitely be keeping my eye on Santa Monica. I expect to use their Sustainable City Plan as something of a template, wherever I may land. If you are at all interested in encouraging sustainable lifestyles in your own community, I recommend a read. (Find the .pdf here.)