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Promoting Sustainable Communities

The Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) is a small organization with a remarkable track record for breaking new ground in promoting sustainable communities. In 1978 RAIN magazine described ILSR as an organization that "puts hard numbers on soft dreams".

Every year since its founding ILSR has researched the feasibility of communities generating a significant amount of wealth from local resources and has worked with the increasing numbers of communities interested in moving in that direction. In our initial years we focused on our surrounding Washington, D.C. neighbourhood, Adams Morgan. Our urban townhouse became a working model of our ideas, with rooftop hydroponic gardens and solar collectors and a commercial basement sprout operation and composting toilet. We researched the income flows and ownership patterns of the neighbourhood and helped to build cooperative businesses.

Later we widened our lens to examine cities, and then regions. We became a national organization and worked with state and national governments. Yet our work continued to be informed by our projects in communities and our connections to grassroots organizations, small businesses, farmers and local governments.

In 1974 our conceptual framework was novel. ILSR was the first to systematically apply the concept of local self-reliance to urban areas. A 1975 PlowBoy interview in Mother Earth News with ILSR's founders presented this concept to readers who had been exposed only to the notion of rural self-sufficiency. ILSR offered a vision of sustainable, self-reliant cities that extract the maximum value from their local human, capital and natural resources. That vision cut across traditional environmental, economic development and community development lines.

In 1978 and 1980 two ILSR studies made concrete and accessible the relatively new concept of economic "leakages". ILSR was the first organization to painstakingly track the flow of energy related dollars through an urban economy. "Planning for Energy Self-Reliance: The Case of the District of Columbia" concluded that 85 cents of every energy dollar leaves the community, a far higher leakage than from any other household expenditure. Our conclusion was that energy conservation should play a key role in urban economic development strategies.

In 1980 ILSR was the first to investigate the energy conservation and solar energy potential for a major city (Baltimore) and was one of the first groups to formally testify before a utility regulatory commission in favour of investing in energy conservation as a cheaper alternative to new energy supplies.

ILSR also tracked the dollar flows of a neighbourhood franchise--MacDonald's--in study that remains a classic. We found that of the $750,000 spent there almost two-thirds left not only the neighbourhood but the metropolitan area. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we insisted that every time a fast food restaurant opened the number of jobs in the local economy actually declined.

ILSR has always believed that with the proper public policies, communities could become far more productive places. Our energy and solid waste work reflects this orientation. Indeed, ILSR defines waste not only as materials we throw away (e.g. garbage) but as available resources we do not harness (e.g. wind and sunlight).

With regard to solid waste, ILSR has always argued that these are valuable resources that, if recovered, could strengthen local and regional economies. In the late 1970s and early 1980s ILSR was the primary national group providing assistance to grassroots organizations fighting garbage incinerators. By the mid-1980's ILSR's citizen training efforts helped communities defeat or cancel over 150 large-scale waste incinerators. We helped to stop more than 30 proposed incinerators with the dual argument that incinerators were expensive and polluting and that they foreclosed the more valuable option of recycling.

To prove to policymakers that communities would recycle in 1986 we published the first case studies on the subject, "Beyond 25 Percent". In 1988, "Beyond 40 Percent" became a bestseller among activists and policymakers. For the first time it offered concrete evidence that recycling and composting could become the primary waste handling strategy rather than playing only supplementary roles.

ILSR combines research and action. With respect to solid waste, we began working with a handful of cities that embraced our strategic framework to fashion an economic development strategy. Since 1990, our efforts have helped to establish 15 largely locally-owned businesses with more than 250 employees and attracted more than $20 million in new investment to low-income and working-class communities.