The Ypsilanti Courier
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Americans can no longer afford to be apathetic
PUBLISHED: April 24, 2008
So, how was your Earth Day 2008?
Advertisement
Did you fire up your 16-cylinder Bugatti Veyron and barrel down the highway for hours, yelling, "Hooray for our planet!" all along the way? Did you turn on every light and appliance in the house and marvel at the wonders of electricity? Did you celebrate living in our land of plenty by purchasing dozens of unneeded items made thousands of miles away and merchandised in unnecessarily large packaging? Did you crank up the thermostat and throw all the windows open? And did you use the occasion to "spring clean" your home, throwing away countless still-usable objects and loads of reusable materials?
Hopefully you did none of those things. Hopefully you followed some very simple guidelines to living a bit more gently on the planet. Some folks seem apathetic about Earth Day, while others feel any contributions they could make to reduce, reuse, and recycle would hardly be a drop in the bucket. But there really are easy strategies for treating Mother Earth a little more kindly.
Among the easiest: install compact florescent bulbs, which use oodles less energy than those old incandescents. Want to really be on the cutting edge? Just hitting the consumer market, LED light bulbs show great promise. One manufacturer's demonstration shows for the equivalent of 60 watts of incandescent bulb light, you'll spend $15 more for 30 thousand hours of LED illumination, but $174 less in electricity over that same time period.
Say, is your home insulated as best as it can be? Whatever you spend bundling up your domicile not only comes back to you in lower heating and cooling costs, Mother Nature will thank you for treading more lightly in her garden.
And, for pity's sake, let's hope we can dampen our passion in the Great American Love Affair with the automobile. With minimal planning ahead, we can minimize trips in the car. And, dare I say it; we could even use the bus. I know, I know; that kind of talk is heresy in this land of one person, one car on the road.
Hate to break it to the retail industry, but shopping is not a sport; people are realizing the benefits of purchasing only what they really need. They'll also be savvier regarding the "carbon footprint" of what they buy.
That Japanese Kobe beef takes a boatload of energy to raise and ship to table. But one can't assume distance equals more energy use; your French Bordeaux likely used fewer resources to bottle and ship by boat than did that crisp California Chardonnay trucked over the Rockies.
On the local scene, some mighty fine going green is going on. Over at the just-turned-33-and-never-been-kissed Ypsi Food Co-op, a fifth solar panel is now installed and reverently joins its four south-facing brethren in gleaning electricity from the sun. Our recent sunny Easter Sunday saw the Co-op export kilowatt-hour to DTE for the first time. And the Co-op continues to coordinate presentations to organizations interested in learning more about solar power.
Meanwhile, the Ypsilanti City Hall solar project is moving forward. You'll recall the plan to place 12 photovoltaic panels on the building's back wall. The required structural engineering analysis of said project was expected to cost up to $3,800; however, a structural engineer both licensed and willing to do the work pro bono has stepped forward.
Project backers further report Ypsilanti citizens have so far donated more than $1,000 toward making our City Hall the first in the state - maybe the country - to draw juice from the sun (and send their heartfelt thanks to those generous souls).
These same backers have applied to the State of Michigan for money to do the job at City Hall and to expand the Co-op's solar installation.
With so many fine environmental efforts going on in our town, I hope more folks get inspired to go a little greener. See what you can do around your home, then see how you might change how and how much you consume.
You might even drop a contribution on City Hall's brilliant aspirations (make checks to "City of Ypsilanti" and send to City Hall at One South Huron Street, Ypsilanti, 48197; write "Ypsilanti solar project" in the memo line).
I'd bet a solar installation like that would tell the world a lot about why we are, in fact, a "cool city." More of us working to make Earth Day an everyday local occurrence would say it even louder.
Pat Grimes is a longtime Ypsilanti resident and freelance writer for The Courier. He can be reached at pshermang@yahoo.com
Not all stories are guaranteed to appear
online. The Web edition contains a reasonable
sampling of the print edition stories.
For the most complete news coverage, we invite you to
subscribe
to the print edition of the paper.
TOP JOBS
