How one neighborhood is going green

By Amy Farnsworth, Globe correspondent

In Somerville's Davis Square, restaurants have started discarding waste in compost and recycling bins and screwing in compact fluorescent light bulbs. They tidy up with green cleaning products and recycle cooking grease. Customers at two cafes sip beverages from biodegradable cups, and one restaurant encourages customers to ride their bicycles to dinner by providing a bike valet service.

It’s all part of a growing grass-roots movement called GoGreen Davis Square, an initiative for an environmentally sustainable square, and one this community hopes will jump-start the greening of other neighborhoods in the city.

The citizens and businesses of Somerville’s Davis Square neighborhood are adopting a low-carbon ‘‘diet’’ to reduce their carbon footprint, the greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere that contribute to global warming, by conserving energy and reducing waste in their homes and workplaces.

It started in 2007, when members of independent businesses and three nonprofit groups — Groundwork Somerville, Somerville Climate Action, and DARBI — began discussing ways to lessen Somerville’s carbon impact.

‘‘The idea was to make Davis Square carbon-neutral and do it as a business district,’’ said Vanessa Rule, cofounder of GoGreen Davis and chairwoman of the nonprofit organization Somerville Climate Action.

(Catch the rest of this story Sunday in the Boston Globe's City Weekly section or at boston.com/cityweekly.)