10 Things You Can Do to Help the Chesapeake

1. Save Electricity - Use CFL Bulbs and Energy Star rated appliances

Coal and oil burning electric power plants, both local and as far away as the Great Lakes contribute to local air pollution including nitrogen oxides, sulfur, mercury, and other contaminants. Not only impacting our air quality, these contaminants also deposit into our waters. Of course they also produce CO2 greenhouse gases.

Cutting your electricity usage will not only help the environment but save money too. Replace your old incandescent bulbs with new CFL bulbs. When you get new appliances, make sure they are Energy Star rated. You can even get rebates from BGE when you buy these power saving devices. Also hunt down and unplug unneeded Power Vampires. Turn up the thermostat in the summer and clean your air filters to reduce how hard your A/C works. Read here for more energy conservation ideas.

2. Save Gas - Combine Trips, Telecommute, Get a High MPG Car

With gas at $4 a gallon, you may not need more incentive to reduce gas usage, but doing so also helps the environment. Like coal fired power plants, cars are a major source of air pollution and C02 emissions. Climate change associated with CO2 is also serious threat to the Chesapeake ecosystem.

Plan your car trips to combine errands. Keep your tires properly inflated. Slow down. Bike or walk when you can. See http://www.wikihow.com/Save-Gas for more tips. When you do buy a new car, get one with better gas mileage.

Talk to your boss about telecommuting. Most government agencies and many companies have policies for letting employees work from home rather than drive into the office. See the Telework Resource Center for tips. Imagine how much gas, money, time, and pollution you would save if you just telecommuted one day a week.

3. Reuse and Recycle

By 2006, Maryland was recycling or composting over 3 million tons of materials. Many counties have now implemented mixed stream recycling to simplify the process. Even with this success, millions of tons of reusable materials still end up in the trash filling up landfills. When a landfill is full, new land needs to be acquired to open a new land fill or else garbage needs to be trucked to distant landfills creating even more environmental degradation.

Avoid buying items with extra packaging. Try to reuse items before throwing them away. Recycle all paper, glass, and (#1 and #2) plastic containers. Get reusable cloth grocery bags or at least take your old plastic bags back to the store for recycling. Drop off your old electronics for e-cycling.

4. Install a Rain Barrel

A 1000 square foot roof sheds 150 gallons of water in a quarter inch rainfall. That water gushes off your property and into a storm drain. Combined with all the storm runoff from every other house, this causes soil erosion and sediment buildup in the rivers and bay which in turn chokes underwater grasses destroying habitats for crabs and fish.

Installing a rainbarrel at your downspouts captures much of this water both preventing the excess runoff and providing a ready source for watering your garden and lawn. It will even save you on your water bill. For more info on where to get a barrel or build your own, see
http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/Content/DEP/Rainscapes/barrels.htm. Note: do take care with the design and placement of the downspout diverter and overflow port to handle those heavy downpours.

5. Replace your Lawn with a Native Plant Garden

Lawns require a tremendous amount of maintenance. Studies indicate that grass is the single-largest irrigated crop in the country. Seeking the perfect lawn, homeowners pile on fertilizer, and the excess ends up being washed into the river and bay causing algae blooms and dead zones. Americans use 70 million pounds of pesticides every year on their lawns. A gas powered push mower emits as much pollutants per hour as 11 cars; a riding mower as much as 34 cars. On top of all that, a lawn provides almost no useful habitat for birds and other wildlife.

Replacing part or all of your lawn with native plants, flowers, groundcover, and shrubs is much healthier for the environment. It absorbs more rain and reduces storm runoff. Its more drought resistant and saves water. Native plants also provide habitat and food for wildlife. Overall such a garden saves homeowners time and money.

For more information, see
Audobon Society: Reducing the Lawn
Chesapeake Bay Program: Better Backyard

6. Take Your Kids to the Park

Research from the Nature Conservancy shows that kids are spending less time outside than ever before. The concern is that kids will grow up with less appreciation for the beauty and importance of our natural world and how it directly affects their lives.

Take your kids to the park. Canoe at Jug Bay. Hike at along the Blue Ridge. Bike the C&O Canal. Go fishing on the Bay. Visit a nature center. See how many birds you can identify. Share a sunset. Have fun.

7. Support your Local Farmers Market

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation calculates that over 140,000 acres of natural lands are lost to development every year in the Bay watershed. Much of this is farmland converted to suburban subdivisions. Farmers are struggling with high costs and often far-flung competition. It is too often more profitable to sell the land than to farm.

You can help farmers by buying locally grown produce. Visit farmers' markets held throughout the region . See http://www.localharvest.org/ for more information.

8. Help Conservation Groups Protect the Environment

"Many hands make light work". Conservation is a community effort and conservation groups need your support to succeed. Become a member of your favorite groups. Participate in events and activities. Volunteer - groups have need for a wide variety of work from stuffing envelopes to computer programming to outdoor field work. Lend a hand.

Find a directory of environmental groups at the NWF.

9. Consume Less, Share More, Live Simply

More is not necessarily better. We tend to judge our lives by how much stuff we collect rather than the quality of stuff we do. Consider whether you really need something before you buy it. Re-use stuff you already have. Join a Freecycle group to give your old stuff a second life. Donate used goods to charity. Spend more time with your friends and loved ones. Enjoy life.

10. Learn more about Environment Issues and Solutions

The issues facing our world and great and intertwined. The solutions are many and varied. Become informed. Learn where your elected officials stand. Understand the options.

Some starting points:
Yahoo! Green
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
1000 Friends of Maryland
State of Maryland - Bay Stat
Maryland League of Conservation Voters
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