Our Commitment to a Sustainable Future

The Town of Pittsford has is a nationally recognized eco-conscious town with a long history of enacting sustainability initiatives. Every effort made towards environmental sustainability helps preserve the natural beauty of our unique region while ensuring the safety of generations to come.

See below some of the highlights of our sustainability initiatives and follow the related links for further information.  For an overview of our sustainability practices over the years, see our Town of Pittsford Sustainability Initiatives Timeline.

Pittsford is a Climate Smart Community
The Town earned State certification in 2022 as a Climate Smart Community.  This award recognized Pittsford’s success in completing a series of specific environmentally friendly actions and improvements that materially reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Pittsford is a Clean Energy Community
In 2017 the Town succeeded in winning State recognition as a Clean Energy Community.  We earned it by adopting practices and accomplishing specific goals identified by the State as making a high impact on improving the environment.  As an early adopter of the Clean Energy Community program, Pittsford won $50,000 in State grants that funded the electric vehicle charging station at the Community Center and roof-mounted solar panels that power the lodges at King’s Bend Park – further reducing energy use and carbon emissions.  

Composting Lawn Debris and Leaves into Mulch
More than half of what’s dumped into landfills consists of organic materials such as yard debris, lawn cuttings and discarded food. That’s among the reasons why for years we’ve run such an ambitious program of gathering yard debris including branches, grass clippings and leaves. We’ve been composting leaves since 1980 and recycling yard debris since 1991 – keeping these items out of the landfill and turning them into free mulch for our residents.  

Pittsford is the only town in Monroe County to have such an extensive yard debris and leaf collection program, with weekly collection. Altogether, a service to residents and to the environment as well.

Food Scraps Recycling pilot program with Monroe County
We’ve partnered with Monroe County to offer a residential Food Scraps Recycling pilot program for Pittsford households that began September 18, 2023. The food scraps collected will produce biomethane gas, a naturally occurring and renewable source of energy, to generate electricity that the program can either use or sell to the grid.  Recycling discarded food to make electricity marks another step toward a sustainable future using renewable sources of energy.  

Given the background of Pittsford’s leadership in this area, it’s no surprise that when the County sought out just one town as a partner in this program, it chose Pittsford.  You can find further details and sign up for the Food Scraps Recycling program at www.townofpittsford.org/food-scraps-recycling.  

Composting Food Scraps at the Spiegel Community Center 
in 2019 the Town started recycling food scraps from our Spiegel Pittsford Community Center, in partnership with Impact Earth.  With at least three Senior Center lunches every week, this practice has produced rich compost for the Town’s Community Gardens ever since. Instead of throwing away food scraps from the Senior lunch programs, the Town now collects them. Impact Earth picks up the material and composts it, using worm composting and other natural methods. That turns it into nutrient rich soil for use in agriculture. Some of the compost gets returned to Pittsford, for use in our Community Garden at Thornell Farm Park.

The program has multiple benefits: it not only allows us to reduce waste, it also improves our environment and encourages sustainable practices – a win for everyone involved.

Planting More Trees
For years it’s been Town policy to plant one new tree for every tree we must cut down, whether due to disease, public safety or to make way for sidewalks and other public improvements.  We’ve long since outpaced that, planting more than one new tree for every tree taken down. Since 2015 we’ve undertaken a native species tree planting and reforestation initiative in Town parks as well. 

Promoting Native Plantings 
We regularly plant native species in our parks and green spaces, including a pollinator garden at the Spiegel Pittsford Community Center. With the help of community volunteers from Color Pittsford Green, in the fall of 2022 we created a "Bird Harbor" at Great Embankment Park.  Planting a native shrub and perennial garden at the site provides food and shelter to migrating birds and to species that make their home at the park. During that same time, with the Town’s support yet another volunteer group cleared a section of the Deblase Open Space, off of Thornell Road, of invasive Autumn Olive bushes and in their place planted all-native species. 

Erie Canal Nature Preserve 
A previous plan had 20 acres of Town-owned land along the Canal slated for development. The Town pursued and won a state grant to create from this land a nature preserve, changing it only to provide public access to the interior of the property, remove invasive species and assure a healthy habitat for the wildlife at the site, including the frog ponds.  Eagle Scouts built benches for people to rest while enjoying the natural beauty.  The result is our Erie Canal Park and Nature Preserve, which opened in the spring of 2021.  Our Pollinator Garden at our Erie Canal Nature Preserve features an array of native flowers, grasses, trees and shrubs meant to provide food and shelter to pollinators and other wildlife each season.

Pittsford Pollinator Pathway Program
In recent years the Town has been planting “pollinator gardens” at various Town properties.  The purpose is to create corridors of food sources and healthy habitat critical to butterflies, moths, bees and other pollinating insects and wildlife. Now, starting September 2023, we’re taking this a step further:  encouraging residents to plant their own pollinator gardens, through our Pollinator Pathway Challenge, in partnership with Color Pittsford Green.  The Town provides habitat tips and a list of trees, shrubs and perennial plants that can help you establish a pollinator garden in your own yard, adding to the pollinator pathway through the Town.  Plant any 10 of the species on the list and you’ll receive a sign to post at your garden or in front of your house showing that you’ve met the pollinator pathway challenge! Find information and a submission form here.

Toxic Free Lawn Challenge
For decades, in maintaining its property the Town’s policy has been to use as little in the way of pesticides and synthetic chemicals as possible.  To use them only when strictly necessary for public safety or to treat severe and otherwise incurable problems.  We’ve worked toward continual reduction.  By 2019, we realized that on the entire 3,100 acres of land the Town maintains, we had it down to the point where we used a smaller amount of chemical herbicides and pesticides each year than just two – two – residences with half-acre yards that use a lawn service. Since then we’ve reduced it still further.  

The 2019 data showed that it’s residential lawn maintenance that brings into Pittsford the highest volume of synthetics.  So in spring of that year we launched our Toxic-free Lawn Challenge, encouraging residents to forego use of chemical lawn treatments.  Committing to a toxic-free lawn is where the most change can be made, and our residents are stepping up to the task. Find details and take the challenge yourself at www.townofpittsford.org/toxicfree. 

Energy Benchmarking and Energy-Efficient Town Buildings
Making our municipal buildings more energy efficient has been ongoing.  Beginning with audits of energy use and energy efficiency, the Town proceeded to obtain grant funding that, among other improvements, allowed us to replace inefficient lights and appliances in Town facilities.

For energy auditing we worked with the NYS Pollution Prevention Institute, headquartered at RIT.  Pittsford was the first municipality to work with the Pollution Prevention Institute to audit energy efficiency of its buildings. Find our 2022 Energy Benchmarking Report here. It tracks municipal buildings’ energy performance to provide insights into energy use, including potential cost savings.

LED Streetlight Conversion Program
Consistent with Pittsford's long-term commitment to sustainability, efficiency and economy, the Town in 2019 worked with RG&E to replace the Town’s existing street lamps with high efficiency LED bulbs – changing out 95% of the Town’s streetlights.  The change provided the Town savings on both electrical supply and delivery costs from RG&E.  The existing street lamps were designated by RGE for replacement under the utility-sponsored Smart Street Lamps Program. 

Solar Panels for Sustainable Energy at King’s Bend Park
The rooftop solar array at Kings Bend Park was installed in December of 2020 and continues daily to generate energy. The panels produce 15.7 kw of electricity, roughly the amount of energy used at the park. That means sustainable energy use at King’s Bend Park! The panels will save energy and cut the Town's electrical costs – a savings passed on to our residents and a benefit for our environment. The project was funded by a grant we received as a Clean Energy Community.

Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations
We installed our first EV charging station in the municipal parking lot behind the Pittsford Community Library, in 2017. Our second EV charging station was installed in 2019 at the Spiegel Pittsford Community Center – and paid for via a grant we received as a Clean Energy Community.

Encouraging Energy-Efficiency Residential Housing
In June 2022 we kicked off Pittsford’s HeatSmart community outreach and education campaign, in collaboration with HeatSmart Finger Lakes.  It promotes clean residential heating and cooling technologies by offering free energy audits to householders and recommending energy-saving home improvements.

Greenprint for the Future
In 2021 we celebrated the 25th anniversary of Pittsford’s pathbreaking Greenprint for the Future.  Hailed nationally as a model for community open space and farmland preservation, the Town’s Greenprint, enacted in 1996, protected two-thirds of Pittsford’s open countryside at the time.  More than 2,000 acres.  The Town permanently protected this farmland and the ecological resources it contains by purchasing development rights from the landowners.  Farmers can keep farming the land, which can never be sold for development.   

Too many communities around the country only wake up to protecting open land when their last square foot is about to be paved over.  More than 25 years ago, Pittsford got it right.  We now live in that future that our “Greenprint for the Future” contemplated, in a community renowned among its other qualities for the beauty of its open countryside.  In a community whose carbon footprint is substantially lower, and has been for a quarter-century, because it protected so much land from development.  Without the Greenprint, the Town would have lost its bucolic charm to overdevelopment. Preserving the land saved countless ecosystems, contributed to flood control, protected water sources, and maintained air quality.

Keeping Pittsford Green initiative
In 2008 the Town formed a "Pittsford - Keeping It Green" Committee, tasked with helping to make the Town more environmentally friendly.  See the key environmentally-friendly actions recommended by the committee – most are still relevant today!