By Megan Bame
For The Salisbury Post
You don’t have to be a tree-hugging, granola eating, new-age hippie to care about the environment. In fact, many depression-era senior citizens have practiced reduce, reuse and recycle all their lives without even considering the environmental movement. That’s because what is good for the environment is often good for your wallet, too.But many will argue, what’s wrong with a little tree-hugging? Aldo Leopold, a turn-of the-century wildlife ecologist may have said it best: “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
One way to lighten our ecological footprint is to be aware of wasteful uses of not only non-renewable, but also renewable resources. One of the most effective ways to do this is called source reduction, or waste prevention. It simply means consuming and throwing away less.
We need to remember the “Rs” of the environmental trifecta: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. You can take big steps or small steps that will help lighten your ecological footprint one step at a time.