A Minnesota town goes 'green' for rural independence and to save residents money; 'It was never about climate.'

When economic vision was paired with resource conservation in Morris, Minn., the small town accidentally went "green." Its success serves as a model for other rural places.

Seen from a distance, the Morris landscape is dotted with wind turbines, which create "cheap electricity. . .providing energy to make carbon-neutral fertilizer. Cows graze next to solar panels that provide them with shade," reports Edward Humes of The Wall Street Journal. "A county-wide compost operation disposes of food and agricultural waste, electric buses take kids to school, the public library relies on geothermal heating and even a city-owned liquor store has rooftop solar panels."

The small Stevens County town boasts 5,206 citizens and skews Republican. In establishing their green mecca, Morris residents focused on "rural self-sufficiency. . . saving tax dollars and eliminating costly inefficiency and waste," Humes adds. "When Troy Goodnough, the director of sustainability at the local campus of the University of Minnesota, arrived more than 15 years ago and asked how he could help address those economic concerns, a partnership emerged that has made Morris one of the most sustainable farm towns in America — even though that was never the town’s goal."

Blaine Hill, the recently retired city manager, told Humes, "We never made it about climate. We just did it because it makes sense. And the more we did, the more we wanted to do.” Humes reports, "The result has been dubbed 'the Morris Model' by its participants: the town, the school district, Stevens County and the campus of 1,500 students. They are making their data and blueprints available to other communities interested in trying something similar."

The town's model had the humblest of beginnings -- garbage. "For generations, farm and food waste had gone to the dump. In 2012, a group of students at the university launched a for-profit compost operation so successful that it soon expanded beyond the campus to accept drop-offs county-wide," Humes explains. "Eventually the students donated the whole operation to a grateful Stevens County. From the farmers’ perspective, those 'kids next door' helped them turn trash into cash."

With an independent spirit as their guide, the town's practical efforts transformed waste into savings and produced a domino effect of residential participation. "By 2018, the Morris Model had 100 projects underway," Humes reports. "It set out to end the landfilling of waste by 2025 and to produce 80% of the county’s energy and reduce energy consumption by 30% by 2030. . . . The common thread in these projects is that they have been promoted as a way to cut waste and costs and to create local independence — which has helped them win support in states both red and blue."