Sustainable Montclair·Montclair, New Jersey

The Environment Is Decided One Local Vote at a Time.

Sustainable Montclair is an independent environmental advocacy group. We research the public record, testify at public meetings, and press for the ordinances and decisions that will determine what Montclair's canopy, air, and land look like in twenty years.

As environmental advocates, we work to ensure that our elected leaders apply principles of sustainability and climate resiliency in all aspects of local governance. We put environmental and public health first and expect no less of our State, County and Municipal governments.

Start here Plant a tree About 90% of Montclair is private property. The canopy of 2050 gets planted in yards, by residents, now. Plant it, log it, dedicate it. Or Keep the one you have alive Most of what kills a young street tree in its first years is preventable by a neighbor. Water, mulch, salt, and who to call. Or Show up Ecocide happens one small local decision at a time. Those decisions get made at meetings, out loud, by whoever came.

The Record·2020–2025

Montclair is losing its trees

We obtained six years of the Township's own tree records under OPRA and counted them, permit by permit. Every year was a net loss. No ward gained canopy.

4,786 trees removed, 2020–2025 Public and private combined — and a floor, since unpermitted removals go untracked.

−2,133 net canopy deficit over six years Removals minus genuine canopy replacements. Privacy screens don't count.

$0 spent on planting in 2025 From a $500,000 municipal budget. Every tree planted that year came from a one-time federal grant.

38% the canopy figure still cited today It dates to 2016. It has never been re-measured.

Montclair sets a 10% canopy-increase goal against a baseline it has never confirmed. The full analysis — ward by ward, year by year, with every source named — is The Vanishing Canopy.

Read the report

The Canopy

Four ways in

Shade Tree Ordinance 2026

Montclair's tree ordinance is obsolete. We ranked it against ten verified New Jersey towns, published the removal data behind the case, and laid out the amendments we are asking the Council to adopt.

The report & the asks

Tomorrow's Canopy

Drag the handle on any photograph to see the same Montclair street with and without its trees. Thirteen locations, photographed this summer. The difference is not abstract.

See the streets

Plant a Tree

Species that will exceed thirty feet, free ways to plant if you can't buy a tree, and a public log where residents record what they planted — and who they planted it for.

Plant & log it

Street Trees

There's a new tree on your block. Watering schedule, how mulch kills trees when it's done wrong, road salt, what you may and may not do to a Township tree, and how to identify what's standing there.

Keep it alive

The Issues

Artificial turf

Plastic grass replaces living soil with petrochemical fiber laid over a drainage base. What is lost is not cosmetic: the stormwater infiltration, the carbon storage, the evaporative cooling, and the soil life that a grass field provides. What is gained is a surface that runs measurably hotter than natural turf on a summer afternoon, sheds microplastics into the watershed, and has a finite lifespan — after which it becomes waste.

Twenty-one healthy mature oaks came down at Woodman Field to make room for one. Sustainable Montclair advocates for reducing and eliminating artificial turf in Montclair, and has called for a moratorium while the town takes stock.

Our page on artificial turf

Also: our op-ed on a moratorium in the Montclair Local, and what pediatric environmental health researchers at Mount Sinai have published about this product.

What Changed

Local pressure works

Everything on this page rests on one assumption: that residents who show up, ask for the record, and keep asking can move a municipal government. Here is the evidence for it.

2023

Gas-powered leaf blowers ended in Montclair.

The Township Council put a stop to their use — cleaner air, less noise, and a real step toward sustainable landscaping. How it happened, and what the rules are now →

2026

Six years of tree records, made public.

Data the Township had never compiled — and never analyzed — is now on the record, in front of the Council, and in the newspaper.

Get Involved

Ten reasons to start attending town meetings

An incomplete list.

You can't sleep at night knowing the budget has an “Other Expenses” line that jumped 21% in one year. Nobody will explain what that is unless you ask. At a meeting. Into a microphone.

You understand that ecocide and environmental injustice happen one small local decision at a time. And those trees can't get themselves to Town Council. So you go.

You want to meet neighbors who care. Who really care.

You get to externalize all your feelings about affordability and gentrification onto local government, where they belong.

Nobody is coming to save this town. That's not pessimism — it's an invitation. You are not nobody.

Reasons 8, 7, 6, 5 and 4 involve a plow truck from 1988, a $400 set of tires, and 100 residents who got sidewalk violations they didn't earn.

The full list, and how to speak at a meeting

Sustainable Montclair · sustainablemontclair@gmail.com · Montclair, New Jersey
An independent, volunteer environmental advocacy organization. Not affiliated with the Township of Montclair. Figures on this page are drawn from Township records obtained under the Open Public Records Act; sources are named in full on the linked pages.