CITRUS: Community Initiative to Restore Urban Sustainability
Welcome to Citrus House~
Located just off the campus of Santa Clara University, CITRUS is a community project that aims to be a model of sustainable living in a suburban setting. Each year, a group students from nearby Santa Clara University commit to being stewards of the project, adopting a more eco-conscious lifestyle, maintaining the garden, and planning community events with an environmental focus. Though the goal of living entirely sustainably is certainly challenging to attain, it is our intent to broaden our collective knowledge about how this can be accomplished and incorporate our values into each aspect of daily life.
Why CITRUS?
Throughout the years, generations of students have lived at Citrus House and experienced both the fun and the practicality of living in a more sustainable way. Literally living in the project, we find that the Citrus experience challenges us to think about how sustainability must be integrated into each action of our daily lives.
The ultimate goal of the CITRUS project is that by each person taking something away from the project - whether it is an idea about food production, a gardening technique that saves water, or a product without toxins - and spread this knowledge throughout the neighborhood, throughout a diverse array of people's lives, and throughout generations of residents. The lessons learned here are simple, but they are not easy to forget.
Our Mission
To provide a living experience for college students that allows them both to teach and learn about environmental responsibility, to make an impact and take it along with them into their adult lives.
We do this by caring for the resources we have and striving to learn more about how we can live sustainably. We hope that our example can influence and inspire students and community members around us.
Sustainability at Citrus House
The word sustainability is used quite often these days in reference to our ever-more-apparent need to redesign the way our world works in order to preserve the environment. Many definitions of the word have arisen, as well as many different meanings of the word as people strive to apply it to their particular circumstances.
To those at Citrus, sustainability means learning to become a steward of our local surroundings, recognizing and preserving the abundant natural resources that surround us, finding the most efficient way to have the least negative impact on the environment, and then exchanging ideas with others about what works best.
Some ways we incorporate sustainability into are daily lives are by considering more efficient ways to handle the following:
* food production, storage, and consumption
* efficient energy use
* conservation of natural resources
* conscious purchasing
* waste management
* ecologically and economically effective transportation
