• Colorado Environmental Film Festival - www.ceff.net - An annual film festival held in Golden, Colorado, with a vast variety of environmental films.  In this past year, our 20th, we had over 200 submissions from more than 30 different countries around the world.  Aspire helps out with the festival, helping to find exhibitors, donating to the silent auction and, of course, judging the films.  

 

• Sustainable Golden - Julie and two other passionate Golden citizens founded a new environmental organization in Golden, Sustainable Golden, on January 1, 2025.  The organization is a non-profit that is dedicated to advancing sustainability in Golden, and to helping the City of Golden meet its sustainability goals, which include zero energy, reduced water and zero waste.  Julie is currently a board member, and is actively supporting work groups, contributing to the monthly newsletter, planning zero-waste events, finding speakers, writing fact sheets and analyzing Golden's energy and water usage.  She is also advocating for sustainable environmental policy in the state of Colorado, on behalf of Sustainable Golden and on behalf of herself and her husband.

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• Wildlife Protection - A huge reason why I started Aspire was to provide toxin-free products that are better for us and better for the environment.  When Aspire products are used and eventually find their way down the drain and to the sewer system, they will not pass through the wastewater treatment plant and poison downstream receiving waters that wildlife requires for survival. Toxic personal care products are part of the many ways we are killing our wildlife at unprecedented rates.  Another way we kill is with pesticides, half of which are applied to residential lawns and gardens in this country.  Finally, by replacing native vegetation with non-natives in yards and gardens, we are causing native insects and the birds and other wildlife that require them for food to die off, making wildlife decimation even worse.  Aspire's little piece of heaven, the surrounding yard and garden, is a certified Audubon and Homegrown National Park landscape, with nearly all native plants, thanks to our son, Skyler, and is bustling with happy insects, birds and other small critters all summer long.  Aspire also donates to these organizations to support their very important missions of inspiring humanity to help our wildlife by not poisoning them.

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• Advocating for Democracy - Julie and Aspire stand for democracy and rule of law, and we stand in solidarity with states that have been invaded by ICE.  Our current hostile fascist president and his administration are against environmental sustainability, and we won't stand for it.  Julie sends letters and makes phone calls to legislators, boycotts businesses that support fascism and protests against fascism and corruption on the streets of Golden.

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• Activism in Packaging - Aspire avoids unnecessary plastic and bubble wrap in our shipping, and we ask our suppliers to do the same.  If we receive a shipment full of bubble wrap, we always tell the supplier in no uncertain terms that we don't want this in our packages.  Sometimes we can change suppliers, and sometimes it happens again, but we always apply that pressure.  It's important.  It's our planet.

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• Zero Energy - Aspire is a solar powered facility, so all our electricity is solar, and only electricity is used in making our products.  We have gone all-electric and use an EV charged from our solar panels for deliveries.

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• Zero Waste - We have been a zero waste facility since we formed.  This means avoiding items that can't be recycled or reused when making purchasing decisions.  We have some collection boxes to help our neighbors recycle hard to recycle materials, and Julie is always available to answer questions about materials that are hard to recycle.  We also pick up trash to keep it out of the storm drains that run to Clear Creek.  Every bit helps!

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• Julie also does a lot of activism that aligns with her environmental blogging and writing.  She has recently completed a book on how each and every one of us can make changes in our daily consumption to collectively save our planet.  It's up to us, particularly with an environmentally hostile federal administration.  The book is titled "2050 - What's it Gonna Be?", and is free to view as a pdf, so that as many readers as possible can learn what they can do to save our planet.   To see more, visit www.whatwouldjuliedo.blog