Our Vision:

Green Mountain Sustainability Center

The popularity of the "green" movement is proof that we have come to realize that our planet cannot sustain our current way of life forever. If we want to ensure that future generations will enjoy the quality of life that we enjoy, changes need to be made. These changes include our daily habits, as well as the systems we depend on for food, transportation, electricity and shelter. But even though people are realizing the impact of our current habits, most people still have little idea about how to live in harmony with our planet. 

The Green Mountain Sustainability Center at Mountain Creek River Resort was established to spread this knowledge so that people can change their daily lives and so that future generations can improve upon the technologies and infrastructures we have in place today. You can see the changes that the resort has made in an effort to operate in harmony with our planet at mountaincreekcanoes.com/Eco-FriendlyLodging.html. The Green Mountain Sustainability Center has put up signs highlighting these changes that anyone can easily do in their own lives. 

Biodiesel Processing

We have partnered with a local company of Lebanon, MO called Green Bus, LLC to build a biodiesel manufacturing facility at the Sustainability Center.  Both companies run their shuttle busses on biodiesel made on sight.  Mountain Creek also purifies the glycerin by-product to make soap to clean their facilities.  By doing so, we decrease our dependence on oil, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reuse an otherwise harmful waste product, and employ local people.  Tours of our biodiesel manufacturing facility and biodiesel classes can be booked by calling 1-888-603-6749 or by attending our annual events!

Reuse & Recycle

Our waste management program has been one of the easiest projects to get people involved with. Even those who don't recycle at home utilize the recycling bins and compost tumbler on the property. When they are immersed in such a beautiful example of our planet's natural resources, people suddenly want to do their part to preserve it!  We don't just recycle, either. We reuse as much of our waste as we can, turning it into art projects, rags, fertilizer, rain barrels, planting pots... the possibilities are endless!  We even built a store using about 60% salvaged materials, and we are in the process of building a play castle addition to the playground with about 70% salvaged/recycled materials.  If you would like to participate in a green building workshop, please call the Sustainability Center at 1-888-603-6749.

Community Garden

The Center also hosts a flourishing Community Garden that has served two main purposes. It has served as a teaching model for members of the surrounding community who want to learn how to grow their own food organically. Community Gardeners share the work, cost, knowledge and harvest! It also teaches visitors that we can each drastically reduce our carbon footprint by growing our own food or buying locally grown food. Currently, our food travels an average of 1500 miles from farm to plate. Cutting out those miles will conserve our depleting oil supply, reduce greenhouse gasses and reduce factory farming techniques that use harmful pesticides, fertilizers and genetically modified seeds. 

Reaching Out

We have been busy organizing a touring group of professionals who are interested in educating and entertaining people all over the country!  Our list is getting long, and we're ready to hit the road and spread the word 'sustainability' everywhere.  In fact, we've arranged our first outside events.  We will be attending Mulberry Mountain Harvest Fest's Nomadic Dreams Village October 14-16 and Riverstomp's Gypsy Village in Oklahoma the weekend after.  We will be bringing with us an entertaining, educational variety of professionals offering green workshops, yoga, hoop dancing, tye-dyeing, digderidoo healing, fire-spinning and clowning around!
  

Our consulting department works with local and international companies, offering advice on how to green their businesses. We have succeeded in getting compostable containers into coffeeshops, expanding recycling programs, setting up video meeting centers (reduces business travel), and helping with greenhouse gas emissions inventories that enable companies to see where they can make the biggest improvements. 

Green Mountain Sustainability Center has been hosting sustainability events, working with the Well-Fed Neighbor Alliance of Springfield and GRID Alternatives of Oakland, CA and hosting an annual Earth Day Celebration for four years. The Green Mountain Eco Festival is a fun way to spread the wealth of ever-changing knowledge about sustainable living. Proceeds will fund the Green Mountain Sustainability Center's projects and future goals.

We are working towards having a completely sustainable, carbon-neutral example of a business and residence that visitors can walk through and learn from. To utilize the current best technologies, we will need to convert the current electrical system to a renewable energy system, build a greywater reuse system, and build more examples of sustainable housing. Then we hope to help the rest of the world do the same!!

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  - Margaret Mead