Ready to go green? Here’s how to get started in Johnson County
If eco-friendly living has been on your mind, but you don’t know where to start, nine of Johnson County’s cities have joined together to offer some guidance.
The Go Green 2025 Environmental Fair on Saturday, Oct. 18, will have plenty of advice and resources, but you can get started now on steps toward sustainable living. A few of the fair’s exhibitors have some tips that you can start thinking about before you go.
Repair and share
At Re.Use.Full, they’re encouraging you to repair your household items instead of replacing them. That could mean anything from stitching a ripped seam to fixing a lamp cord.
The organization offers repair café events all over the area, where residents can come with a few broken items and get free simple fixes. They’ll be having one at the fair, too.
Sticking closer to home, Re.Use.Full founder Leslie Scott recommends getting together with friends or neighbors to organize a clothing swap to refresh your wardrobe, instead of buying and discarding clothing each year.
“You don’t have to become zero waste to live sustainably,” Scott said. “Small steps make a big difference.”
How to reduce food waste
Heading to the kitchen, one of the bigger things you can do is reduce your food waste. There are multiple methods you can try to see what works best for you and your family.
“Meal planning, making that sure you’re buying things that you have a plan for. If you have leftovers or things that about to expire, putting those at front of refrigerator, so you eat those things first. Those are ways to make less food waste to start with,” said Karen Ramsey, director of public programs and events at KC Can Compost.
For the rest of your food waste, Ramsey also recommends either signing up with a business that will collect your compostable scraps or starting your own compost pile at home.
“If you’re talking about food, specifically, to compost, it’s really just figuring out a container and making sure that if you’re putting your food waste in there, you’re also balancing that out with what we call browns, which are things like dried leaves, dried grass, woodchips, so that you have a balance of moister food waste with the drier carbon-based items, so then that kicks in those natural processes, and that’ll help everything break down,” Ramsey said.
She said some people have a backyard pile, while others have bins or tumblers.
“There’s lots of opportunities to make it as simple or as robust as you choose to. The food waste doesn’t necessarily care if it’s in a pile or a tumbler. It’ll work its magic anyway,” Ramsey said.
Buying local can make a difference
If composting isn’t an option for you, another way to live in a more sustainable way is to buy locally grown foods.
“Farmers are doing a lot of the heavy lifting for building the ecosystem, for being resilient to climate change, so urban and peri-urban farmers are keeping the air quality better, the water quality better,” said Lydia Nebel, farm director at the KC Farm School.
Having agricultural land close by eases pressure on stormwater drainage during heavy rains and having more plants around helps cool the atmosphere, Nebel said.
It also simply reduces the amount of fuel necessary to get a tomato to your table when you buy one grown 30 miles away versus 3,000 miles away.
Nebel recommends really getting to know the farmers at one of the many local farmers markets.
In your own backyard, she advises adding some native plants as a simple first step to help local pollinators.
The Go Green 2025 Environmental Fair will be from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Oct. 18, at the Powell Community Center, 6200 Martway St. in Mission. The cities of Fairway, Merriam, Mission, Mission Hills, Mission Woods, Prairie Village, Roeland Park, Westwood and Westwood Hills are all supporting this the event.
This story was originally published October 8, 2025 at 6:00 AM.