"T'Green Olam," says Mark Niederman at the Temple Beth Rishon synagogue. It's a play on words of the Hebrew phrase "tikkun olam," which refers to the notion that you should leave a place better than you found it.

"You don't want to diminish it any way. You want to improve it," Niederman said.

It's also Temple Beth Rishon's Environmental Committee's environmental mantra: improve the world.

And that's just what Beth Rishon is doing, and they're imploring the community to follow suit. With a certificate pending from Greenfaith, an environmental interfaith advocacy and education group, the temple is doing all it can to lessen its impact on the environment.

And they're not hoisting solar panels on the roof, either. They have a decidedly low-risk, high-reward approach. It's one they'd like to see members of their congregation and others replicate.

"I felt like I needed to prove to the congregation that we could save money without capital expenditures," Niederman, co-chair of the temple's environmental committee, said of the initial process.

Savings, outreach

By all accounts, he was right. As of March, the temple had saved more than $17,000 in energy costs over the past 12 months. By lowering the heat in rooms that weren't occupied, turning unused appliances off, and using different cleaning products and taking different approaches to landscaping, the temple has been able to reduce electricity usage by 30 percent; natural gas usage by 16.8 percent; and have avoided 64.2 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, which is equivalent to taking 11 cars off the road for an entire year.

"People refer to the initial steps as reaching for the low-hanging fruit," Niederman said. "Often there are simple measures you can easily achieve that yield some substantial benefits."

The most significant of the low-hanging fruit, according to the Environmental Committee, was in setting back the thermostats throughout the year. Niederman and others at the temple lowered setback temperatures on thermostats in areas that weren't being used, relocated small meetings that were being held in large rooms to smaller ones, kept doors closed to maximize the efficiency of heating systems and also moved mid-winter services out of the sanctuary into the neighboring small ballroom.

 "Some complained a bit early on," said Harriet Shugarman, co-chair of the environmental committee, who runs an environmental advocacy site (climatemama.com) after years as a policy analyst and economist with the UN and International Monetary Fund.

"'They asked, 'Why are we wearing sweaters indoors?' But when folks see the actual work and the savings, they're generally a lot happier. Some think it's wonderful, some aren't interested but we think it's been hugely successful, and we're very proud of all the work we've done."

The temple's no-frills approach can easily be replicated at home with some effort. "You just have to be very vigilant," Shugarman said.

The committee recommends residents set back thermostats at night and during the day if a home is unoccupied; close the vents and doors to rooms that are unoccupied for long stretches; check to see whether weather stripping around doors is in good condition; unplug extra appliances in storage until needed; and replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.

"In our workings with GreenFaith, one of the things that became really apparent is that we weren't doing as good a job as we can do with informing our membership and leveraging things we accomplished into their homes," Niederman said.

"Whatever we save here, we have roughly 450 members; if those people took our cue and did the same things at home or were inspired in some other way to save energy at home, that's where we could really leverage what we've done."

The temple recently held a compact fluorescent light fundraiser, which raised money for the temple but also represented a savings for the purchaser, as they were sold below retail prices. "It was a win-win," said Niederman.

To publicize the savings the temple has accrued in energy consumption, they also recently held a contest called "Watt$ Green Worth," which informed the community of their goals, missions and ideas. The contest, held for temple members 17 and younger, awarded winners with a radio with solar PV panel, wind crank and AC adapter, and also the Discovery Series "Planet Earth" DVD set. It was a great way of reaching the youth, the co-chairs say.

"The 'Planet Earth' series is something that really cuts across demographics," and attracts the attention of youths, Niederman said. "We can't just get them all in a room and talk to them. It's not going to work."

Temple leaders see a great opportunity to educate youngsters on sustainability. Children, Shugarman said, are often more attuned than adults to environmental concerns. "They see these things taking place at school and wonder why they're not being done at home," she said. 

'Clearinghouse for information'

The temple's efforts to lower its environmental footprint are being recognized by Greenfaith, which should certify their efforts by next spring.

As part of the application, houses of worship are required to conduct services on ecological themes, advance environmental education and promote environmental advocacy and justice initiatives.

Stacey Kennealy, the director of certification at Greenfaith, said, "We believe that things need to change within the institution but more importantly the community needs to be affected by these actions, and they need to leverage their own power politically to make changes in legislation."

Greenfaith was founded in 1992 in New Jersey by those "who felt a need to galvanize the religious community around environmental instruction."

They're one of the very few organizations that exist to bind religion with environmental advocacy and education. Kennealy said, "We really created this program to try and make it as holistic as possible. We wanted the institutions to address what they were doing in their own building and in their own community but then also to do outreach and advocacy, particularly in environmental justice issues and how environmental degradation can impact communities."

Because the certification program is still in relative infancy, results of course vary, usually due to a series of factors ranging from how much energy or resources the particular organization is using and the green team's ability to carry out certain actions.

Temple Beth Rishon Temple didn't see many hiccups—it was able to move full speed ahead and achieve a considerable amount of savings quickly, said Kennealy. Part of the reason is attributed to Niederman, who was able to lend considerable expertise to the initiative.

He said, "Greenfaith has been a great clearinghouse for information for a lot of different environmental efforts. Some of those are focused on energy, some are focused on other issues Greenfaith packages. They deal with a host of different issues that speak to me, and they have a lot of resources that we draw upon on their website."

According to Kennealy, those resources have been key to those Greenfaith serves.  All of the houses of worship thus far have either saved money or stayed within budget. 

Although Temple Beth Rishon has been affected by the economic slowdown—as so many organizations have—the certification program has been key in helping them keep their finances in order. Though the temple has frozen salaries due to the rough economy, no one has been laid off, partially because they're able to keep energy costs down.

"Organizations are making big, incremental changes. They're getting cleaner, they're eliminating pesticides, they're saving a lot of energy, they're using sustainable food and they're also doing worship services on the environment and doing advocacy education. They're really addressing the whole issue comprehensively," Kennealy said.

For Temple Beth Rishon, GreenFaith and others, their work is hardly done. T'Green Olam, indeed.

Editor's note: The Neighborhood Files series is being sponsored by the Pepsi Refresh Project, www.refresheverything.com. Pepsi did not write this article or have any say in its reporting, editing, or production. The topic was chosen, and the content was produced by our editorial staff.