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Red Deer second ‘green grouch’

While Red Deer wasn’t named the greenest grouch in Canada, it was a close second to Grande Prairie for logging its environmental action.

While Red Deer wasn’t named the greenest grouch in Canada, it was a close second to Grande Prairie for logging its environmental action.

The Green Grouch competition invited urbanites to log their green or environmental actions on www.thegreengrouch.com.

Green deeds like shopping with re-usable bags, turning off unused lights, washing laundry in cold water or checking tire pressure earned the cities green points.

The contest ended on April 22, 2012 with Grand Prairie beating out Red Deer by 1,817 points following a friendly rivalry between the two city mayors.

Grande Prairie had a total of 84,007 points where as Red Deer logged a total of 82,190 points. Calgary was the third top ranked city with only 6,080 points. Forty-seven other Canadian cities barely made it on the Green Grouch board.

“Grande Prairie beat us marginally but what was interesting to me is Grande Prairie and Red Deer were the only cities that did anything in the whole campaign,” Mayor Morris Flewwelling said Wednesday.

Flewwelling said he is thrilled about the work people did during the competition.

“This is totally in line with what we do at the city,” he said. “We are very much wanting to be a part of any environmental initiative, anything to help make our footprint lighter on the earth.”

Flewwelling said the prize, along with bragging rights, for the city that won the competition was that Green Grouch would name a character after the mayor in an upcoming children’s book.

“But they agreed, because we did such an outstanding job, there would be character named after the Red Deer mayor too,” Flewwelling said, referring to himself.

Participants of the contest were encouraged to visit the website and complete a weekly points checklist of simple steps.

Flewwelling said Red Deer will take part in a new challenge Green Grouch has yet to announce.

jjones@www.reddeeradvocate.com