CHERRY HILL — This town, with its vast housing developments and miles of shopping centers lining every thoroughfare, was not designed to go easy on the Earth, but that isn't stopping local officials from going green.
 
Cherry Hill, once a desolate farmland and now a bustling Philadelphia suburb of 70,000, is one of the latest examples of a nationwide movement of local governments committing to make environmental issues a priority.
 
The township is switching to lower-energy traffic lights, offering residents incentives to recycle and even looking into putting solar panels on a municipal building.
 
"For far too long we have waited for other government agencies to act on these issues," Mayor Bernie Platt told the township council before it adopted a plan last month to reduce carbon emissions and waste. "This elected body will act to provide leadership, guidance and immediate action."
 
Many local governments across New Jersey and the nation are also taking formal steps to "go green."
 
Some examples: Westwood is converting its fleet of police cars to gas-saving hybrids. Austin, Texas, is planning to power all city-owned buildings with renewable energy by 2020 and require new single-family homes to do the same within a decade. Warwick, R.I., has is using more efficient LED lights in all its traffic signals.
 
Cynthia McCollum, president of the National League of Cities and a member of the city council in Madison, Ala., says the jurisdiction of cities gives them good reason to be thinking green.
 
"We control the building codes," she said. And in most places, local government controls the roads and planning regulations, she noted.
 
McCollum's group is lobbying Congress to allocate $2 billion a year to help local governments with environmental initiatives.
 
"I think it's a good thing in that towns are at least talking about going green," said Peter Kasabach, executive director of New Jersey Future, which promotes sustainable land-use planning. "The concept of going green has gone mainstream."
 
Cherry Hill isn't exactly a granola-crunching town that you might expect to strive for greenness.
 
Mayor Platt, a funeral director long involved in local politics, looked at recycling as a way to save money. The cost of taking trash to a landfill was rising relentlessly.
 
Township officials calculated that by using RecycleBank, a program that gives residents gift certificates in exchange for recycling, it could save $2 million in landfill fees over the next five years.
 
Lori Braunstein, chairwoman of the advocacy group Sustainable Cherry Hill, said Platt turned out to be an easy sell on the goal of reducing and even mitigating carbon emissions, which scientists say lead to global warming.
 
The 10-point plan the township developed calls for modest measures like annual tree-planting, and ambitious ones such as exploring offering builders incentives to do earth-friendly construction.
 
"It's sort of ironic to green one of the biggest examples of suburban sprawl in the country," said Jeff Tittel, executive director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey. "If you can do it in Cherry Hill, you can do it everywhere."