Saving the Planet
One Household at a Time

ByJohn L. Turner

As a society we confront an array of local, national and global problems – challenges such as hunger and poverty, adequate health care, and affordable college education. High on this list of challenges sits the continuing deterioration in the quality of the global environment. These problems can only be solved by a broad, concerted effort by government and private sector institutions. So too for reversing the deterioration in the quality of our collective environment - meaningful progress in reversing the negative trends can’t happen without government, foundations, and not-for-profit organizations working at many levels.

But there is a unique aspect to most environmental problems that distinguishes them from others – on an individual basis we each have the ability to be part of the solution by being proactive and making more environmentally benign lifestyle choices. Why is it possible to achieve environmental progress through individual action? Because the countless choices we make as consumers – such as the foods we eat, the cars we drive, and whether we recycle - have a direct, but little realized impact on the quality of the natural environment.

Strategies to live “more lightly on the earth” can be conveniently broken into three broad categories: reduce the amount of waste you generate, decrease the amount of energy you use and make consumer choices that don’t hurt wildlife. In reality these areas overlap so you can get a double bang by a lifestyle choice. For example, by recycling aluminum (cans and foil) you not only contribute toward reducing landfill space and the need for mining bauxite, you help to save energy. It takes 95% less energy to make an aluminum can from recycled material than it does from bauxite. Similarly, it takes 40% less energy to make newspaper from recycled materials than from tree pulp.

While recycling is the most significant step you can take in reducing that portion of your waste stream that ends up being landfilled, reducing the amount of waste you generate to begin with is even better for the environment. Buying in bulk is another way to reduce your consumption – it takes more plastic to make two 32 ounce bottles than one 64 ounce bottle. And buying products made from recycled materials (such as copy paper) serves to close the economic loop for recycled materials by creating markets for the recycled materials.

A convenient and increasingly recognized measuring stick for assessing the environmental impact of the energy you use is through your “carbon footprint” – the amount of carbon dioxide, the primary gas of concern in global climate change, you generate. Which activities are responsible for making up your footprint? Those which burn fossil fuels (oil, gasoline, natural gas) such as driving your car, mowing your lawn, and cooling and heating your home, to name but a few. With limited exception all of the electricity used by Long Islanders is generated through the burning of fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide and several types of pollutants are given off during the combustion process.

Many strategies to reduce energy use are absolutely painless. For example, setting your computer monitor so it goes into “sleep mode” after a minute or two, rather than remaining on indefinitely, can save the energy equivalent of eight gallons of gas a year (thereby avoiding the release of 142 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere). Much greater savings can be made by replacing incandescent light bulbs with widely available compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). CFLs use about 1/3 to 1/4 the amount of energy than an incandescent bulb and last five to ten times longer. According to the EPA if every home replaced just one incandescent bulb with a CFL, it would provide enough energy to power an additional three million homes (and avoid the release of carbon dioxide equivalent to the emissions from 800,000 cars.) The bulbs come in a variety of color tones and wattages and dimmable bulbs have recently come on the market.

There are a variety of lifestyle choices that can help wildlife, most especially in relation to the foods that we eat. Buying organic produce not only protects your health it can help wildlife avoid pesticide poisonings, a significant ongoing problem. Buying organic, shade grown coffee can help songbirds like northern orioles and scarlet tanagers because tropical shade grown coffee farms are much friendlier places for native wildlife than coffee grown in sun plantations. Also, many marine species are harvested for food in an unsustainable way, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of unintended animals, such as sea turtles, seabirds and juvenile fish. There are better choices to be made and organizations like the Long Island based Blue Ocean Institute has information on its website regarding environmentally sound seafood choices.
Collectively, we’ve made a lot of progress to protect the environment through the passage of important laws in Washington, Albany and Hauppauge. What is becoming increasingly clear, though, is that we don’t have to rely solely on the political system to achieve environmental success – as a consumer each of us has the ability to help protect the health of the planet – it’s just an informed lifestyle choice away.

John Turner is director of the Division of Environmental Protection for the Town of Brookhaven. He is a co-founder of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society and served on its board for 26 years. He has served previously on the boards of the Environmental Planning Lobby, Open Space Council and the LI chapter of The Nature Conservancy. He is the author of "Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Nature Guide to Long Island" and serves as an adjunct professor of Ornithology at SUNYStony Brook/Southampton.