My Actions to Reduce Waste

Most of my daily activities and how I perform them consider reducing waste by reusing, repurposing, and recycling to cut my carbon footprint. This personal commitment not only benefits the planet, but also works best for my physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.

My biggest contribution to cutting my personal carbon footprint is riding my e-bike from here in Seabrook to Newburyport on the rail trail. I go to Newburyport (my hometown) for many reasons, the most frequent (at least in summer) being to deliver my food waste to the Black Earth compost bins in the South End. I do this at least twice a week, weather permitting, which also helps reduce my methane footprint. With the melting permafrost and methane on fire in the Arctic, and methane gas being many times more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, impacts from methane emissions seem to be almost as much of a crisis as impacts from CO2 emissions.

I have always been conscious of how much electricity and oil I use both for cost and for carbon footprint. I save a lot of fuel, especially at night, using low thermostat settings.  However, I have continued to put more effort, creativity and money into trying to reduce my carbon footprint even more in this regard.

Thanks to UNITIL’s monthly reports that use bar charts to compare neighbors with similar size homes, plus the current year's usage compared to last year’s usage, I am glad to see that I have been in the “Good’ category for at least the last couple of years since I moved here mid-2018. I attribute the wintertime improvement partially to having had the attic and basement re-insulated. Since the room with the thermostat is not well insulated, I compensate by setting it between 55 and 60 to ensure that the other rooms maintain 65-68 during the day, then set the thermostat to 50 at night. In summertime I create a microclimate where ceiling fans pull the cold air from the upstairs AC to the downstairs. I use dehumidifiers when ambient temperatures are in thkkje 60's and 70's.

My use of a battery powered mower (the same one for almost 15 years) has further reduced my personal carbon footprint.

Miscellaneous examples of reuse include:

·      buying used clothes

·      refilling containers every week when I buy the toxic-free personal care and cleaning products from the Green House in Newburyport

·      reusing plastic cups from the Senior Center at Eastman Corners in Kingston

·      collecting sticks, pinecones and pine needles to use for outdoor grilling in place of buying charcoal

·      collecting rainwater

·      printing on blank side of used paper I collect, mostly from mail

Thanks to the excellent marketing skills of the Newburyport Recycling Center, they accept the microplastics that I collect at the Joppa and Cashman launches. Since I dread shopping, I buy more selectively and carefully than most, usually dictated by health concerns. For example, I avoid aluminum, a neurotoxin, which unfortunately is ubiquitous in its use for cooking.

My main source of inspiration comes from the first climate sustainability talk show PATTRN on Weather Underground. (I have the Weather Channel on most days to follow storm development, given my atmospheric and air quality studies in the 80’s, followed by 12 years of employment at NJDEP in the Bureau of Air Quality Evaluation). The talk show hosts (also forecasters) interview spokespeople from many environmental nonprofits that I otherwise would never get to hear about, that have invented individual and collective solutions, even for plastic reuse and repurposing!  Efforts are underway to replace black asphalt pavement, possibly with light hemp, to help reduce urban heat island effects.

You can read more about more innovative examples here: About Incredible Eats - Edible Cutlery and Spoon

So don’t despair. There is much being done to help save our environment…and much that each one of us can do.

Gay contributes her musical talents in the area as well as passionately acting as a steward to include  CSO sampling in the Merrimack for the MRWC. She may be contacted at: gaypearson@aol.com

ACES and its Youth Corps invite you to stay updated on environmental matters by subscribing to our monthly newsletter via the “Join Our List” link on this page. Please consider joining our community of stewards who commit to Make Every Day Earth Day by contacting us at acesnewburyport@gmail.com. We can make a big difference together.

This educational column first appeared in The Daily News of Newburyport on July 19, 2024.

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