Resilience and Sustainability
The Town of Milton is committed to building our climate resilience and advancing the principles of sustainability throughout our community.
We are working towards reducing our community's emissions by 50% by 2030, making renewable energy more available and accessible to residents, cleaning our waste streams, and ensuring that our sustainability efforts prioritize environmental justice communities in Milton.
You can view our current climate and sustainability initiatives below, or contact Josh Eckart-Lee, Assistant Director of Planning and Community Development, or Jack Turner, Environmental Coordinator, to learn more.
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Josh Eckart-Lee
Assistant Director of Planning and Community DevelopmentPhone: 617-898-4969
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Jack Turner
Environmental CoordinatorPhone: 617-898-4968
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that climate change is unequivocally caused by human activities, primarily through greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change threatens human well-being and planetary health and there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. The Town of Milton is actively working to develop a climate action plan to mitigate the emissions that we produce and strengthen our capacity to adapt to the effects of climate change on our community. In January 2023, the Select Board approved the formation of the Climate Action Planning Committee. The Committee has been charged to review and evaluate Town bylaws, regulations, and policies and recommend strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, mitigate climate risks, and expand energy efficiency opportunities for the Town to develop our Climate Action Plan.
Milton Community Electricity Aggregation (CEA) is a program offered by the town of Milton to provide new electricity supply options and more renewable energy to Milton residents and businesses.
Visit the MiltonCEA Website to opt-in (or opt-out) or change your level of service from Milton Basic, to Milton Green, or Milton 100% Green.
Milton has been a Green Community since 2010. Our Consolidated Facilities Department is primarily responsible for Green Communities projects, implementation, and reporting. Milton is proud to be consistently working towards improved energy efficiency.
Milton's Planning & Community Development and Engineering Departments are studying the potential for a microgrid system that would help critical Milton infrastructure build its resilience to increasing climate and weather stressors on our energy supply. This "microgrid" would support Milton Town Hall, Milton Police Headquarters, and the Winter Valley senior affordable housing community, with the opportunity to expand to other locations.
Recycling in Milton is complimentary. You may recycle as much material as you would like that follows single stream recycling guidelines. Milton provides each household with one recycling cart at no cost, contact jturner@townofmilton.org if you do not have one.
The town of Milton does not provide complimentary compost services, but there are many ways to do so on your own! Milton's Department of Public Works offers at-home compost bins, called Earth Machines, at market price ($46). Visit DPW's webpage on composting for more information and a video on these Earth Machines. Black Earth Compost provides curbside pickups for a wide variety of food scrap, including meat. Milton is partnering with Black Earth to give residents a 30% discount when 300 subscribers join, as of August 2023 we have 276 accounts! Weekly pickups will be $14.99 per month, and $80 per six months. Milton is also partnered with Bootstrap Compost to provide a flat discount for curbside pickup. Visit their website for more information.
The state organizes environmental justice communities by census-designated block groups. In Milton, there are 24 block groups, 8 of which are identified as EJ block groups due to meeting either the income threshold, the minority population threshold, or both, which represents about 29% of Miltonians. In Massachusetts, an environmental justice (EJ) population is a neighborhood where one or more of the following criteria are true:
- the annual median household income is 65 percent or less of the statewide annual median household income
- minorities make up 40 percent or more of the population
- 25 percent or more of households identify as speaking English less than "very well"
- minorities make up 25 percent or more of the population and the annual median household income of the municipality in which the neighborhood is located does not exceed 150 percent of the statewide annual median household income.
Driven by the desire to assess its vulnerabilities, build community resilience, and expand its potential to address hazards caused by climate change, the Town of Milton chose to pursue certification from the Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program. In the fall of 2019, the Town received funds to start a town-wide conversation about climate change and its effects on the community. The MVP program provides funding for cities and towns in Massachusetts to plan for climate change resilience and implement priority projects. The state provides communities with funding to complete vulnerability assessments, develop action-oriented resilience plans, as well as other projects. Communities that complete the MVP Planning Grant program become certified as an MVP community and are eligible for MVP Action Grant funding for priority project implementation.
Sustainable Milton, a 501(C)3 non-profit educational and all-volunteer organization, was founded in 2006. It is a member of Milton Changemakers and the Blue Hills Climate Action Coalition. In 2010, Sustainable Milton led the effort to quantify and qualify the town as a MA Green Community through the Department of Energy Resources (DOER). As a result, Milton has received thousands of grant dollars to undertake numerous environmental projects in its municipal facilities.
Since its earliest days, documentary movie nights, panel discussions, Green Home Fairs, book lectures, and "Sustainably Speaking" articles in the Milton Times have enriched our general public. For the past five years, Sustainable Milton has awarded the Green Student Leadership Award, comprising a monetary stipend and book, to deserving Milton High School seniors. It supported the single-use plastic bag ban at Town Meeting (Fall 2018) and collected Mercury-containing button batteries around town for many years. On May Day 2021, it collaborated with Milton's Environmental Coordinator to resurrect an annual Spring Greenup Day.
Its mission to create a healthy, fossil fuel-free, and environmentally equitable planet remains incomplete, and You have a role to play.
Learn More or visit the Sustainable Milton homepage.
Milton has made a pledge to plant 150 street trees per year!
Street trees are essential to building climate resiliency and sustainability, helping reduce the severity of heat islands and remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
We need your help to plant street trees! Request a street tree at your house by using the link below. If the location is suitable, the DPW will plant a tree.
Milton Shade Tree Request Form
Looking to plant trees on your own? Check out Milton's list of recommended trees for Milton. It can help choose the right tree for the right location, allowing for a healthy and prolonged life span.