Text excerpt from City Nature Challenge Website: What is the City Nature Challenge? The City Nature Challenge is an effort to explore urban nature and document biodiversity in cities around the world. Over 60 cities in 14 countries worldwide are planning to participate. It’s time to show how much biodiversity is in our backyards in Fairfax County! Join the …

Clean Fairfax is committed to the 5 R’s of sustainability — refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot. Each method has its own purpose and place in the sustainability toolkit. Together, they comprise a way of living that is increasingly being referred to as “zero waste.”  Ideally, zero waste means not creating any waste at all, but more practically, …

On a crisp Wednesday morning, Clean Fairfax schlepped into the District of Columbia to learn more about sustainable food production systems at the 2018 Food Tank Summit. Food Tank, a think tank that focuses on all things food, hosts several conferences around the country each year and welcomes leading thinkers on food systems issues to …

Do you like fresh vegetables? Do you like to support local farmers? Sign up for a local CSA program! Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs are simple: members pay a set weekly or monthly fee in advance for shares of a local farm’s produce, which is delivered to your door or a nearby pick-up location. It’s …

There’s no getting around it: shopping for food in an ethical and sustainable manner is difficult. The information needed to do so can be hard to find, and is in many cases unknowable to a non-expert. Transparency is not a main prerogative for most products offered in groceries or restaurants. Far from it — products …

The kids are running around the neighborhood playing Pokémon Go with their phones again. It’s great that they’re out of the house getting exercise, but you wish that they could funnel their enthusiasm into something a bit more… constructive. Well, we’ve got a creative solution to your concerns! iNaturalist is a phone app that essentially …

Clean Fairfax Council would like to welcome its newest team member, Sam Raasch! Sam is a northern Virginian, born and raised, and a graduate of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State University. He is passionate about science communication and engaging the public in conservation efforts. Before landing at Clean Fairfax, Sam worked in various …

While much of our attention has been on the environmental toll of single-use plastics, glass recycling is also an important part of the solid waste management picture. As the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services points out, glass is produced by sand, the most consumed natural resource after air and water. Recycling …

We’ve all been there: We get home from work and see cardboard boxes amassed in front of our door, often with the familiar “smiling” arrow pointing from the A to the Z in “Amazon.” Some are enormous and others more brick-sized. We vaguely recall the late night shopping binge a few days back. Or we …

Despite this year’s extension of summer weather into mid-October, we all know that we will soon be closing up our windows and sealing our homes from the cold. Unfortunately, we will also be sealing IN the toxins from our chemical cleaners. Keeping our drains running freely, our furniture clear of dust, and our ovens, bathrooms, …