There has been a great deal of clucking in Delaware lately about the keeping of backyard chickens within city limits, clucking that has thrown a spotlight on a fledgling environmental group, Sustainable Delaware.

“It’s ironic that our group has become known for chickens when that wasn’t even a priority for us a month ago,” said SD member Tom Wolber. “The issue is just one of many that we’re interested in and have been involved with.”

Sustainable Delaware was founded in early 2010 by Sheila Fox and Tuesday Trippier.

“I had been driving down to the Simply Living meetings in Clintonville and Tuesday and I were brainstorming about what we could do closer to home,” Fox said. “We were familiar with the Sustainable groups in Westerville and Worthington and thought it would be a good time to launch one in Delaware.”

“And people came to the meeting, which was a thrill,” Fox said.

Asked about the much shorter drive to Sustainable Delaware get-togethers, she said, “I feel a lot better about my carbon footprint.”

Sustainable Delaware defines itself as “a group of citizens focused on promoting environmental, social and economic sustainability for the Delaware community through awareness, advocacy and action.”

A glance at SD’s website (http://sustainabledelawareohio.org/) reveals the group is about more than just chickens, urban or otherwise. Topics of interest include water conservation, organic foods, recycling, community gardens and public transportation. Group members have given green talks in local schools and volunteered at the weekly farmers market.

“We would like to connect all of our parks by bike path,” Wolber said. “And we’d like to make Delaware a more walkable and bikeable community.”

SD board member Roxanne Amidon said the group decided early on “not to be a political organization. Our model is built on awareness and education. We respect the opinions of others.”

Fox concurred: “We want our information to be coming from one neighbor to another, not from some lefty liberals. We’re the folks next door you know and like.”

Amidon said SD has grown organically. Membership at its Google discussion group is 141 and about 20 people attend its meetings held on the second Saturday of every month. A recent SD field trip to Delaware’s waste water treatment plant attracted more than 40 participants.

During the summer, the group shows green-related movies and documentaries outdoors behind Beehive Books in Downtown Delaware.

“We are led by the passions of our individual members,” Wolber said. “If one member has a special interest in bicycling, then we’ll pursue bike paths. If another has an interest in community gardens, we’ll get involved with community gardens.”

Green living and sustainability have been popular issues for decades on the West and to a lesser extent the East coasts and in Europe. Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel “Ecotopia” imagined a world in which Northern California, Oregon and Washington secede from the U.S. to form an entirely sustainable, green nation.

Delaware has a way to go when it comes to attitudes about the environment, according to group members.

“When it comes to green awareness in Delaware, I think there’s a bell curve,” Amidon said. “At one end of the spectrum, you have very passionate people for whom sustainable living is a life’s passion. At the other end, you have consumers who think, ‘Me, me, me, me.’ And in between you have a huge swath of people who have an idea they’d like to do something green but don’t know where to begin.

“Those are the people we’re trying to reach.”

After its first meeting, Sustainable Delaware formed a partnership with Ohio Wesleyan University and the city of Delaware. It has reached out to churches and civic groups, to schools and private organizations.

“The city has been wonderful working with us,” Fox said. “Not just (councilman) Andrew (Brush) but also (planning director) David Efland and (city manager) Tom Homan. And to have the resources of Ohio Wesleyan and to have several professors in our group has been great.”

Though Sustainable Delaware aspires to a civil and reasoned outlook, Wolber said the stakes are high: “We’re in a battle for the future, a battle for the American soul. Will we surrender completely to technology, urbanity, modernity? Or will we take into account other factors such as clean air, clean water and clean soil?”

Fox has a more personal view: “I’m a grandmother myself and it’s not about how much money we can leave to our children and our grandchildren but what sort of planet they will inherit from us.”