Susan Gietka
Member
Green Committee
Hammonton

Rachel Carson’s prophetic Silent Spring rings true today. Nearly 50 years ago she wrote, “We stand now where two roads diverge. One road is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other offers our last chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of our earth. The choice, after all is ours to make.”
Have you seen the headlines? The price of food and world hunger is increasing. We are addicted to gas and oil which is skyrocketing; the honeybee population is declining; species are going extinct; our fresh water supply is polluted; more than a third of the world’s forests have disappeared in the last 50 years, and trash is literally being dumped into the ocean.
The world is in trouble and the warning signs are everywhere. Isn’t it time that we choose the other road?
With so many problems confronting our environment, how can one person make a difference? Most people don’t realize that as a society we have the power to change. What we do today affects the reality of tomorrow.
We make choices, hundreds of them daily that alter the health of the environment and ourselves.
Nurturing mother earth back to health is doable. It is a massive undertaking requiring the help and creativity of local, state and federal governments.
However, we as individuals need to do our part too. Individuals need to choose the other road. Americans must realize that what we buy, how we live and maintain our lifestyles shouts louder than who we vote for. The choices that we make show our government which road we are on.
Throughout a typical day we can take steps down the road to a more sustainable future. These steps at first may seem like baby steps, but they will soon add up. From morning til night, the choices to keep you on the other road are all around you.
Listed below are small changes that can be made that have a huge impact on the health of the environment (and yourself). Let’s see how they add up.
Coming clean: Turn off the water while you brush your teeth, save 8.8 gallons of fresh water. Take 5 minute showers instead of the average 8 minute 30 second shower and save nine gallons of water.
Use natural alternative soaps and shampoos, every ounce you rinse off goes down the drain and into our water systems.
Wastewater treatment plants do not remove these chemicals from our water supply and cause reproductive problems in fish and kill beneficial microbes in water.
Bringing home the bacon: Should you buy local or organic? The answer is they both have advantages. In the US, the average grocery store produce travels 1500 miles before it reaches your table.
A lot of fossil fuel is used in transport and big trucks spew sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and particulate matter contributing to acid rain and air pollution. These transported foods are often treated with preservatives and are grown with heavy doses of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Small local farmers live nearby the land that they work and try to maintain a natural balance.
Local farmers also spend their money locally (when buying equipment, seed, etc..). Not to mention that local produce is fresher and has a higher nutrient content than food that has spent days on a truck. When buying organic food, you are protecting the environment and yourself from harmful pesticides.
Cut the plastic!: More than 500 billion plastic bags are produced worldwide each year. Less than 1 percent of these get recycled because it costs more to recycle them than to make new ones.
Many of these bags end up in the ocean where they photodegrade and break down into small pieces. Recent studies have shown that petro-polymers are being found in the tissues of the fish that we eat. Giving up plastic bags will reduce our dependency on foreign countries for oil. Plastic bags are made from oil. The average family uses 10 plastic bags per week, 40 bags per month and 520 bags per year! China has banned plastic bags and they will save 37 million barrels of oil per year. That’s a lot of oil.
Instead use a reusable shopping bag. You can get them for around a dollar at most supermarkets. Just remember to hang them on your back door when they are empty so you don’t forget to bring them to the store.
Bottle weaning: Ahhh, there’s nothing like an ice cold bottle of water; it’s so easy; it’s good for you and cheap, right? Well not really. Americans purchase 28 billion single serving water bottles per year. Only 23 percent of them are recycled. Bottled water is regulated by the FDA and testing is not strictly mandated.
Tap water is regulated by the EPA, and the EPA requires frequent sometimes daily testing for hazardous, chemicals, pesticides and bacteria. Recent studies have shown that dangerous substances called phthalates leach out of the plastic and into your bottled water. If you are still worried about the health risks or taste of tap water, then purchase a filter.
Carbon filters are affordable and have been shown to remove a wide array of contaminants, including some pharmaceuticals (which are also found in bottled water).
Also, oil is used to produce plastic bottles. According to Earth Policy Institute, a Washington D.C. think-tank, it takes 1.5 million barrels of oil per year to keep up with Americans’ demand for bottled water. We go to war for oil, right?
Unplug: Leaving things like cell phone chargers, computers, TVs and stereo equipment plugged in uses what is called phantom power. Phantom power accounts for 10 percent of your electric bill. Instead, use a power strip and turn it off when you go to bed or leave the house for the day.
Unplug from the grid by signing up for renewable energy sources to power your home.
Go to www.njcleanenergy.com and click on the Clean Power Choice for more information. The NJ Board of Public Utilities claims each household that signs up will prevent 10,000 lbs of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere per year.
They also say that the more people that sign up, the more renewable sources will be added to the mix. Now that’s putting your money where your mouth is.
The choices to be made are many and I don’t mean to oversimplify them.
By making these five changes in our daily lives, we can keep our water supply clean and refreshed, fish and the food chain protected from contaminants, improve our local economy, preserve the soil, decrease the earth’s temperature, save energy, and save money and millions of barrels of oil.
That is some difference. We are not powerless. We still have the freedom to chose and speak up so that others may listen.