EThekwini Municipality is calling on all residents of the City to vote for Durban in an international competition celebrating the most sustainable cities in the world.
The We Love Cities Challenge is an initiative by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), which is open to all cities that are finalists in the WWF Earth Hour Cities Challenge. Durban is one of those finalist cities, together with 32 other cities from 14 countries.
Each finalist city has been selected by an international panel of experts that scrutinised all the Climate Change Mitigation activities of the Cities. The main theme for this year’s challenge is renewable energy.
Durban has numerous award winning and noteworthy projects, one of which is the Landfill Gas to Electricity Project. Two landfills in the City have a combined installed generation capacity of 7.5 MW. The electricity that is generated from the methane at the landfills is then fed back into the electrical grid. Other programmes that have contributed to Durban’s energy saving efforts include the wonder bag programme, solar mapping and Solar Water Heating projects.
Durban, having hosted the COP17 conference, is well known internationally for development and sustainability of the environment. The Energy Office at eThekwini Municipality manages numerous Climate Change Mitigation initiatives that aim to reduce the amount of energy that is consumed within the City and consequently the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Other Units, such as the Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Unit, implement numerous climate change adaptation and mitigation projects.
During the We Love Cities campaign the City hopes to make the public more aware of the various initiatives that are implemented by the City and to promote and encourage citizens to transition to environmentally friendly lifestyles.
How to vote
Winners of the We Love Cities campaign will be chosen based on the number of interactions that citizens have with the official website (www.welovecities.org/durban).
There are a number of ways in which residents can participate; the first is for people to vote for Durban on the We Love Cities website, which is www.welovecities.org/durban. Secondly, on the website citizens can also submit suggestions to improve the city with sustainability in mind. Lastly, residents can upload pictures on Instagram. The City with the most interactions with their We Love Cities Web page will ultimately win the campaign. However, it is imperative for people to upload pictures or comments of their city with the hashtag #WeLoveDurban via Instagram and Twitter.
The eThekwini Municipality will announce in the upcoming weeks what activities have been planned to encourage people to vote for Durban and load pictures onto the social media platforms. The winning city of the We Love Cities Campaign will be announced at the end of March 2014.
