Company to create clearinghouse for environmental efforts

A new type of environmental company looks to help facilitate and aggregate green initiatives across the U.S., tapping best practices and sharing them under its Fairfield-based Live Green CT banner.

The idea is rooted as much in urban alleys as pristine forests, promising to promote what works sustainably through connectivity. Regional business and municipal leaders who have signed on see Live Green as a potential economic boost.

Daphne Dixon, principal of the Live Green CT Smart Town Network in Fairfield.

Principal Daphne Dixon said her upcoming Live Green CT Smart Town Network, with its website in the final phase of development, “is creating something really, really new.”

“There is no shortage of information. But there is a void that can be seen in the lack of a holistic approach,” Dixon said. “The information is in silos and there are not enough experts who can bridge the gaps between the silos. This network will help solve that need. The goal is to build a world-class knowledge base managed by a digital curator.”

The system will be “cloud-based and device-independent,” according to Dixon.

Paul Timpanelli, president and CEO of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council, supports the Smart Town Network. He said Bridgeport is “clearly at the forefront nationally as a forward-looking city that takes its responsibility for a cleaner/greener environment very seriously.”

“Uniquely, we in the business community see this as a great opportunity to build jobs, the green economy and reduce the city”™s carbon footprint,” Timpanelli said.

With dates still to be determined, Smart Town Network plans three conventions in 2016: Bridgeport; Sacramento, California and Detroit.

Dixon sees the for-profit Smart Town Network as a “gateway.”

Currently, information including case studies, technology, legislation, news and resources exists in what Dixon terms “a chaotic ecosystem/landscape.”

Carbon footprints are on the Smart Town agenda, but so, too, are improperly discarded refrigerators, mattresses and tires plaguing municipalities of all sizes. Bridgeport”™s Park City Green, Dixon said ”” covered in the June 8 FCBJ ”” is recycling mattress component materials now.

To date, the Smart Town Network effort consists of Dixon and five fellow advisers, unnamed so far.

The parent company, Live Green CT, with offices in the FAME Business Incubator at Fairfield University, is well known, hosting its sixth annual Live Green CT Festival Sept. 19 and 20 at Taylor Farm Park, 45 Calf Pasture Beach Road, Norwalk. Dixon expects about 5,000 attendees at the festival, the same figure it has drawn for the past several years.

The success of the festival could bode well for Dixon”™s new holistic environmental effort. It has become a Norwalk fixture and features powerhouse sponsors Xerox, Pepsi/FritoLay and Stop & Shop.

Admission is free.

This year, among other attractions, the festival features a replica of the plane allegedly flown several times above eastern Fairfield County by Gustave Whitehead, beginning two years before the Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk. Event co-chairpersons are Irene Dixon and Yvonne Hickey.

Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling also weighed in on the Smart Towns effort, praising the sustainability efforts of Norwalk businesses Aitoro Appliances, ShopRite and Stop & Shop and the efforts of his city”™s Energy and Environment Task Force. He also will cut the festival kickoff ribbon and called the festival “a great family event that encourages businesses as well as community members to save money, become more energy efficient and practice conservation.”

“The Smart Town Network is very much needed,” Mike Tetreau, first selectman for the town of Fairfield, said. “Sustainability is a concept whose time has come. It is economically viable. The town of Fairfield is saving $2.5 million every year on the use of renewable fuels. We all need to share best practices to continue to save money and save the environment.”