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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Six-Month Update on Yellowstone Regional Transit Co-Op

Today there was a six-month update Webinar by the Yellowstone Business Partnership (YBP) on the Greater Yellowstone Regional Transit Cooperative, Linx. The Linx Co-op seeks to link the services of existing transit providers in the region to provide riders with a complete and integrated service for trip planning. This system will allow users to plan trips at linx.coop and track their buses via WiFi on the buses at bus.linx.coop. This year is the pilot period for this project and the launch of the system is scheduled for October 2010.

Many transit providers have already committed and the Helena Area Transit Service (HATS) has opted to join the Co-op. Any providers that wish to be a part of the initial (October) launch of the Co-op should contact the YBP before August 24th.

The YBP has been the primary administrator of this project and has also been working with Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks to incorporate their facilities and services into the system.

In general, the main focus of the Co-op is in the Greater Yellowstone Region, however they are enthusiastic about working with providers in neighboring counties if there is an interest in those communities.

For more information see www.yellowstonebusiness.org/transportation.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Update on S.A.V.E.'s 1,000 New Gardens Montana Project

The mission of 1,000 New Gardens Montana is to revitalize neighborhood supported agriculture and a new Victory Garden Movement through acts of citizen volunteers who promote sustainable household vegetable gardening by sharing resources, techniques and information throughout communities.

In 2010, two cities competed to propel the most new gardeners. Missoula’s second Dig Day event was a huge success! So far we’ve turned 14 lawns into what will become productive household vegetable gardens. We mobilized 50 volunteers, comprised of Americorps volunteers, University of Montana students, and Missoula community members to help install gardens across Missoula. Planning for 15 gardens, our list of recipients dwindled to five only two days before the event. Many recipients were unavailable upon follow-up, or reconsidered. Despite the high volunteer:recipient ratio, the Dig Day still lasted five hours, with volunteers working non-stop. The gardens that we did install were each unique and time intensive, so what may have otherwise been a situation of “too many hands in the cookie jar” turned out to be a perfect situation.

In Bozeman, volunteers created 35 household vegetable gardens (our specialty) in backyards across Bozeman and Belgrade. We expanded our project to offer volunteer support to other neighborhood initiatives, including a new community garden (25 plots) downtown, and two 1,000 square-foot plots--one to be shared by 6 families at the Eagle Mount and another for clients of the Gallatin Valley Mental Health Center.

This summer we've begun adapting a Missoula-based program called Coffee to Compost. By July's end, we'll have completed a pilot of the program, which is expected to yield valuable estimates for the amount of coffee grounds we'll accumulate. The pilot should also help us troubleshoot any issues we might encounter with local bean shops before we expand the program to more shops during the school year--when most of Bozeman's coffee is consumed on exam eves!

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Tuesday, July 06, 2010

July Plastics Drive Featured on KXLH

KXLH, the Helena NBC affiliate, featured our July Recycling Drive on their weekend news. To check out the video, visit http://www.kxlh.com/news/save-foundation-sponsors-recycling-drive-in-helena/.