By Shawn Dell Joyce

     Flowers are big business. The U.S. floral market is a $20 billion-a-year industry, yet the vast majority of the 4 billion flower stems sold here every year come from Latin America. Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have been exporting flowers to us duty-free since the 1980s. As part of the “War on Drugs,” import taxes on South American flowers were eliminated to give farmers a profitable crop to replace cocaine.

           All the flowers in corporate chains and box stores are imported. The cheap abundance of imported flowers not only has an impact on Mom-and-Pop-owned florists and supermarkets, but also makes it very hard for American growers to compete. One grower complained: “We can’t allow other countries to come in and impact our bottom line in the name of free trade. How can you compare foreign labor costs of $3 an hour compared with our labor costs of $12 an hour?”

           “We can’t compete with imports,” a nursery owner said. “Those flowers are loaded with pesticides that local growers can’t even think about using.” A survey on Columbian flower plantations found that workers were exposed to 127 different pesticides. One-fifth of the chemicals used in flower production in South America are restricted or banned in the United States and Europe (such as DDT). Since there are very few environmental laws in South America, these chemicals wind up in drinking water, causing species decline as well as damaging human health.

          Workers are often denied proper protection and become sick after applying herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Two-thirds of Colombian flower laborers (mostly women) suffer from impaired vision, respiratory and neurological problems, disproportionately high still-birth rates, and babies born with congenital malformations. When workers try to organize unions to defend their interests, they are often fired, ridiculed, or harassed.

          In response to the horrendous social and environmental costs of cut flowers, green entrepreneurs have stepped up to the plate. Organic florist Lynn Mehl of Good Old Days Florist in New Windsor, N.Y., had an epiphany recently when she discovered the thorny underside of the floral industry. “I did a little research on my (previous) products and found that roses alone, according to recent studies, can contain up to 50 times the amount of pesticides that are legally allowed on our food. I shop organic, I support fair wages, I cannot consciously continue with a business practice that is against all that I have supported for years!”

       Mehl got proactive about it and located a U.S. import distributor who sells exclusively certified organic, eco-friendly, and soon-to-be fair trade flowers in bulk resale.  She also found some smaller suppliers of locally grown organic flowers in season.  All varieties are not yet available, but will be in the growing season. These include the heavy-demand varieties like roses, lilies, sunflowers, tulips, baby’s breath, assorted greens and ferns. “Ironically,” notes Mehl, “these flowers are more fragrant, last longer, and have very little cost difference. They are healthier for those who enjoy them, help protect the environment, and support sustainable farming.”

       “And would you believe,” adds Mehl, “I am the only professional florist buying these flowers on the East Coast for resale?” 

Want to celebrate both Mom and Mother Earth this year?

—– Ask your local Mom and Pop florist for organic flowers
—– Buy flowers from a local farm like Twin Ponds in Montgomery.
—– Give Mom a live plant from a farm like Manza’s in Montgomery.
—– Give Mom an edible bouquet of salad greens and flowers from a local farm
—– Buy Mom a flat of flowers from Hoeffner’s farm and plant them in flower beds for her

 Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce   

Americans eat almost as much fossil fuels as we burn in automobiles.  American agriculture directly accounts for 17 percent of our energy use, or the equivalent of 400 gallons of oil consumed by every man, woman and child per year according to 1994 statistics.
    

We have seen a major leap in farm productivity in the last 50 years with food production doubling and even tripling in the case of cereal grains. This amazing leap did not come from new farms or farmlands since we have lost more than half our small farms in that same period. Farmlands are also in decline and being gobbled up by urban sprawl.
    

 These massive gains in food production are due to the use of synthetic fertilizer and, to a smaller extent, better plant hybrids. “Two out of every five humans on this earth would not be alive today” without the widespread use of chemical fertilizer, says Vaclav Smil, Canadian professor, author, and energy expert.
    

We are eating fossil fuels in the form of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.  These marvelous inventions can be traced directly to Jewish chemist Fritz Haber. He won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1918 for “improving agriculture” through his invention of nitrate fertilizer. Unfortunately, Haber’s invention was also used by the Nazis to create Zyklon B, the gas used in the infamous death camps.
    

Today, a formulation based on Haber’s  Zyklon B is spread “in quantities of over 50 million metric  tons per year” on American farms as insecticides according to author and energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins.  This is 20 times more pesticide used than when Rachel Carson wrote her compelling book “Silent Spring,” warning of environmental catastrophe occurring from pesticide overuse.
    

 The unpalatable truth about our oil-based food system is that “ it takes 10 calories of fossil fuels to make 1 calorie of food energy” according to a study by David Pimentel, and Mario Giampietro published by the Carrying Capacity Institute. This scary statistic only takes into account the production of the food itself. If you factor in the processing, packaging, transportation, refrigeration and all of the other petroleum-intensive processes that statistic can inflate to 87 calories of fuel per calorie of food.
    

Why so much? Most of our food travels an average of 1500 “food miles” to get from the farm to our fork. Once these “fossil foods” get to our house we spend even more energy on refrigerating and cooking until each bite we eat is literally marinated in fossil fuels.
      We must start the transition now from the “S.U.V. diet” to a “low carbon diet.”  But how can all earth’s people be fed without fossil fuel based fertilizers and pesticides degrading the environment?
    

 What sustainable agriculture advocates call “organic farming practices” was simply the right way to do it for many centuries. This “new” model could double yields in highly populated countries without significant expense or resources. It is based on ecosystems’ regenerative capacity as a result of different plant associations; some of you gardeners may call it companion and rotational planting. In the Sahel (Africa), yields could be doubled by combining millet cultivation with acacia planting,” illustrates Marc Dufumier of the National Agronomic Institute.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, NY. Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Our Mother Earth has about 22 billion acres of usable land. This is contains about 3.3 billion acres of farm land, 8.4 billion acres of pasture land, and 10.1 billion acres of forest land. Not all of the land is fertile, which will affect its ability to produce food. We also must share this land with other species already dependent upon that land for survival.

According to Dr. Sidney Liebes’ book “A Walk Through Time,” if the earth were the scale of a ball that you could hold in your hand, the amount of usable farmland would look like a tiny speck of dust by comparison. Additionally, all the drinkable water would look like a tiny water droplet, while the breathable atmosphere would be a thin coating of shellac.

Our current ecological footprint which measures how much land it takes to feed, clothe and shelter a typical American, is about 9.6 global hectares, compared to the available 1.8 global hectares of usable land. If everyone used resources and land the way we Americans do, we would need three more planet earths to sustain our population.

Some scientists say that not only are we living beyond earth’s carrying capacity, but we are also eating up future generations’ ability to live within earth’s means. We are literally emptying the earth’s bank account rather than living off the interest as our ancestors have done, and leaving a “balance due” for future generations.

British geographer, Ernst George Ravenstein is credited with first estimating the carrying capacity of the earth to around 6 billion. Presently, at 6.5 billion, at least a billion of our population does not receive enough food energy to carry out a day’s work. Even through Ravenstein was operating on statistics from last century, he hit fairly close to home.

The World Hunger Program at Brown University estimated based on 1992 levels of food production and an equal distribution of food, “the world could sustain either 5.5 billion vegetarians, 3.7 billion people who get 15 percent of their calories from animal products (as in much of South America), or 2.8 billion people who derive 25 percent of their calories from animal products (as in the wealthiest countries).”

We have already passed all sustainable estimates and are now entering the “borrowed time” area of the population chart.  In order to provide the projected 9 billion people in 2050 with 2100 calories per day (what food aid agencies declare as the minimum caloric intake) we would have to double our global agricultural
production. Humans have already plowed over most of the usable farm land on the planet, and there is a limit to any field’s fertility.

In Orange County, we have seen our population increase by about 40,000 people per year, and are currently at a density of 418 people per square mile, and just over 816 square miles. This year, Celebrate Earth day by reducing your ecological footprint on our mother.
—– Encourage local farms by buying locally grown
—– Walk, bike, or share a ride instead of driving
—– Eat less meat
—– Invest in a greener home instead of a bigger home
—– Have smaller families and support zero population growth

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, N.Y.

Shawn@zzestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

“May there only be peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life.”  — United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, 1971

       April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day, came on the heels of the Vietnam peace movement. This was a volatile era of monumental social change fueled by sit-ins and teach-ins, demonstrations, rallies, and a changing political consciousness. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson modeled the first U.S. Earth Day as an environmental “teach-in.” Over two thousand colleges and universities, roughly 10,000 primary and secondary schools and hundreds of communities across the United States participated.
  

  It was also the first time we saw the famous picture of the Earth from the moon taken by the Apollo astronauts. It was then that many of us first saw the earth in its entirety, and likened it as Secretary General U Thant did to a spaceship.  Or even more eloquently by astronomer Carl Sagan who remarked:
“… every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived (here)  —  on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
   

“Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level,”  Nelson said. “That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself. Earth Day has become the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated in 175 countries by more than 5 million people.

      Earth Day is a day for envisioning how we humans want to interact with our mother planet. Imagine what our world would look like if all of us 5 million people put our minds together; we could afford to live and work in the same community, our groceries would be local farm products, our buildings would be ultra-energy efficient and even generate their own power, cars would be traded in for bicycles as local economies thrive, Asthma would be a disease from the past as air quality improves.

     Want to celebrate Earth Day locally? Grab some gloves and join “Operation Clean Sweep” sponsored by the Walden Rotary on April 24. Meet at 8 a.m. at the Firefighter’s Museum, Maybrook Village Hall, Walden Village Hall, or Town Hall on Bracken Road to get road assignments and orange litter bags. Bring your children and teach them that we are all stewards of the land. If Montgomery is out of the way, stop along any roadside and pitch in and keep our spaceship clean.

 Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce
It is very difficult to avoid eating genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) in our country, because they are so pervasive in the food system and unlabeled in the grocery stores. Part of the reason for this is biotech giants fought to keep GMO foods unlabeled.

Some 200 million acres of the world’s farms grew biotech crops last year, with over 90 percent of the genetically engineered (GE) seeds coming from US-based Monsanto. Scientists have taken genetic materials from one organism (like a soil bacterium), along with an antibiotic resistant marker gene, and spliced both into a food crop (like corn) to create a genetically modified crop that resists specific diseases and pests.

There has been no long term independent testing on the impacts of these “franken-foods” on the ecosystem or human health.  Instead, there is a long litany of concealed truths, strong arm tactics and even outright bribery by the world’s biotech giants. Most recently, the growth hormones from GE organisms known as rBGH, which is given to cows to make them produce more milk, were banned in Europe and Canada after the authorities found out about the health risks resulting from drinking milk from cows treated with rBGH hormones.  Some American milk producers started labeling their milk “rBGH and rBST free.” Monsanto, which sells bovine growth hormones under the brand name Posilac, began suing dairy producers to force them to stop labeling their milk.

In addition to most milk products, GMO’s can be found in most commercially-farmed meats, and processed foods on store shelves. In our country, 89 percent of all soy, 61 percent of all corn, and 75 percent of all canola are genetically-altered. Other foods like commercially-grown papaya, zucchini, tomatoes, several fish species, and food additives like enzymes, flavorings, and processing agents, including the sweetener aspartame (NutraSweet®) and rennet used to make hard cheeses, also contain GMO’s.

To complicate matters, GMO’s move around in the ecosystem through pollen, wind, and natural cross-fertilization.  The Union of Concerned Scientists conducted two separate independent laboratory tests on non-GM seeds “representing a substantial proportion of the traditional seed supply” for corn, soy and oilseed rape. The test found that half the corn and soy, and 83 percent of the oilseed rape were contaminated with GM genes, eight years after the GM varieties were first grown on a large scale in the US.

The reports states that “Heedlessly allowing the contamination of traditional plant varieties with genetically engineered sequences amounts to a huge wager on our ability to understand a complicated technology that manipulates life at the most elemental level.” There could be “serious risks to health” if drugs and industrial chemicals from the next generation of GM crops were consumed in food.
What can you do to avoid GMO’s?

• Know how your food is grown by buying directly from local farmers.
• Support organic agriculture, and food producers who label their ingredients, particularly dairy farmers.
• Eat pastured meat raised on organic feed-the only way to ensure this is to buy from someone you know.
• Support farmers who are a sued by biotech giants. Monsanto has set aside an annual budget of $10 million and a staff of 75 devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting more than 150 farmers for a total of more than $15 million.
• Demand labeling on all GMO-containing products so that we at least have a choice!

Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

At some point today, you will be offered a disposable cup. Before you take it, consider how disposable that cup really is. If we were to look at how much energy it takes to produce cups made from paper, polystyrene and ceramic, most people would automatically think the ceramic cup is the greenest choice.

You’d have to use the ceramic cup 640 times before it would equal a polystyrene cup and 294 times to equal a paper/cardboard one in terms of the energy it takes to produce the cups, according to Treehugger.com. In terms of air pollution, polystyrene produces the least amount of emissions to manufacture one cup. It also takes more water to manufacture a ceramic cup than the entire life cycle water consumption of the other two.

Before you toss out all your ceramic cups and replace them with Styrofoam, Treehugger went on to find the ceramic vessel much more functional and durable with up to 3,000 uses compared to single-use paper, plastic or polystyrene foam. 

“But for a reusable cup to be reused, it has to be washed,” says Martin B. Hocking, a professor of Chemistry at the University of Victoria, in Canada. Hocking authored a life cycle assessment of reusable cups made from glass, ceramic and plastic to disposable cups made of paper and polystyrene.

Hocking factors in the cost of energy to wash the cups which is almost equal to the energy expended to produce a single polystyrene cup. According to Hocking’s study; you would have to use a reusable plastic cup 450 times, a glass cup 393, and a ceramic cup more than 1000 times for it to approach the energy efficiency of polystyrene. You would only have to reuse a plastic, glass or ceramic cup about 20 times (on average) to equal the energy expenditure of a disposable paper cup. 

If you go by just the energy expenditures, Styrofoam cups seem like the way to go. However, there is much more to a cup than its function. What happens to these five cups after their useful life is over?

Glass takes over a million years to decompose, but it is recyclable, and when recycled it reduces pollution by 20 percent according to California’s Project New Leaf. Paper can be recycled, but most paper cups are coated with plastic or wax and cannot be recycled. Even coated paper will biodegrade in five years, while uncoated and unbleached paper will be gone in a few days according to Worldwise.com  Styrofoam and plastic do not biodegrade, instead they photodegrade breaking down into smaller and smaller particles that will eventually wind up in our bodies.

Scientists are just now learning the effects of photodegrading plastics and polystyrene on the environment. These substances have only been around about 50 years, and are just now breaking down into microscopic sizes. As plastics get smaller, they are eaten by smaller creatures. As these creatures are eaten by larger creatures up the food chain, these plastics (and toxins) get concentrated inside living bodies, even in our bodies.

“Except for a small amount that has been incinerated,” says Tony Andrady, a senior research scientist at North Carolina’s Research Triangle, “every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last 50 years or so still remains. It’s somewhere in the environment.”  

Nothing is really disposable. Many of the things we consider disposable, will probably outlive humanity as a species.  The greenest choice is to cup your hands and drink out of them as our ancestors have for millennia.  That may not go over to well in the school cafeteria, so get in the habit of bringing your own cup.

Here are a few alternatives to paper and polystyrene:

— Replace paper and polystyrene with biodegradable, compostable clear drinking cups made from cornstarch, pack of 50 for $8 from www.ecowise.com

— Offer a discount to customers who bring their own beverage container if you own a fast- food restaurant or take-out place.

— Commit your whole office to zero waste and have each employee bring in his own cup, plates, and utensils.

— Don’t host large events with “disposables;” include in the budget the cost of renting or buying real dishes and the staff to wash them.

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning, nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist and director of the Wallkill River School in Orange County. Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell  Joyce
“Fallow Fields” is a pastel of Benedict Farm painted during the winter. The painting incorporates dramatic winter skies and dark rich purples and yellows.

By Shawn Dell Joyce

We may not be able to do much about taxes or the economy, but one thing we can do is lower our cost of living thanks to a program started and run by Montgomery resident Alice Dickinson.

Orange County Rural Development Advisory Corporation, RDAC, is a non-profit housing counseling and development agency that helps people keep their homes by avoiding foreclosure, as well as lower their cost of living through weatherization and energy efficiency.
In January, RDAC received state funding to provide free energy efficiency retrofits for homeowners and tenants in eastern Orange County.  This area includes the towns of Newburgh, Montgomery, Crawford, New Windsor, Hamptonburgh, Cornwall, Blooming Grove, Highlands, Tuxedo, Woodbury and Warwick and all the villages within these towns. RDAC can assist homeowners, landlords or tenants to reduce utility costs, conserve energy, increase home comfort, and improve health and safety. The funds are free to qualifying household in the moderate income range.

What this all means is that a family of four would qualify for free service if their income is $46,836 or less.  That same family may spend over $9,000 on heat and utilities yearly. RDAC’s trained professionals will come to their home and seal all the cracks and holes in the house, insulate attics and walls, repair or replace heating systems, and provide efficient lighting and refrigeration.

Dickinson notes, “Households who earn less income tend to spend a disproportionate amount of income—upwards of 20% of their annual income—on energy, compared with approximately 5% for higher income households. If we can reduce a home’s energy consumption with energy efficiency, it  puts in place measures that continue to save money every year.”

RDAC has been at the forefront in bringing green jobs to our area, and has worked with the state to implement Green Jobs-Green NY legislation. RDAC is also working to bring the new PACE program to our area which would reduce the cost of renewable energy to homeowners by tying it to the property taxes.

RDAC is proving that retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency will stimulate public and private investment in green small businesses, as well as manufacturing of more energy-efficient materials including insulation, caulking, doors and windows, heating and cooling systems, and home appliances.

“It just makes sense, said Dickinson.  Even someone who is not particularly committed to reducing carbon would like to save money and air sealing and insulating your home can save up to 40 percent on your utility costs.  Who wouldn’t like that?”

If you would like to take advantage of this new program, there is an application to determine program eligibility, then an energy audit of the home is conducted to identify needs. Both homeowners and renters are eligible, subject to federal low-income guidelines.  If a household contains a member who receives Supplemental Security Income, Public Assistance, Food Stamps, or Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP) benefits, the household is considered automatically eligible for weatherization services.  All services are provided without cost to the occupant of the home.  However, owners of rental buildings must invest funds toward the cost of weatherization services performed on their property.

Please find more details on RDAC’s energy services, as well as WAP application available for download, at www.ocrdac.org or call (845)524-HOME (4663)

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning, nationally-syndicated columnist and director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, NY. Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Recent flooding rains wash it into our lawns, collect it in the gutters by the roads, and consolidate it on storm drains. With no leaves as camouflage, we see the plastic bags caught on bare branches.  Beer bottles, tin cans and Styrofoam cups nestle like Easter eggs under shrubs and bushes. Litter is a man-made blight on the local landscape.

But litter doesn’t end in the Wallkill Valley. In his eye-opening book; “The World Without Us,” Alan Weisman describes a small continent of litter floating in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. His words: “It was not unlike an Arctic vessel pushing through chunks of brash ice, except what was bobbing around them was a fright of cups, bottle caps, tangles of fish netting and monofilament line, bits of polystyrene packaging, six-pack rings, spent balloons, filmy scraps of sandwich wrap, and limp plastic bags that defied counting.”

 What is the source of all this flotsam and jetsam? Captain Charles Moore of Long Beach, Calif., is quoted in the book as concluding that “80 percent of the mid-ocean flotsam had been originally discarded on land. It blew off garbage trucks, out of landfills, spilled from railroad shipping containers, washed down storm drains, sailed down rivers, wafted on the wind, and found its way to the widening gyre.”

 According to Keep America Beautiful campaign, “People tend to litter because they feel no sense of personal ownership. In addition, even though areas such as parks and beaches are public property, people often believe that someone else like a park maintenance or highway worker will take responsibility to pick up litter that has accumulated over time.”

 A walk through Winding Hills Park, Benedict Park, or any of the Rail Trails and you will see that otherwise normal people are thoughtlessly dropping trash. These folks are our friends, neighbors, and (gulp) even ourselves. So how can those of us who do really give a hoot stop this blight?

 Keep America Beautiful engages people in cleaning up their community and engendering the feeling that they have a vested interest in their environment.  The organization points out that litter can also happen accidentally. As in overflowing garbage cans waiting for curb-side collection. Or from trucks at construction sites that are not properly covered.  Even from municipalities that don’t offer litter cans and proper receptacles in public places.

 Every year, Keep America Beautiful hosts the Great American Cleanup from March 1-May 31. This is the nation’s largest annual community improvement program, with 30,000 events in 15,000 communities. Last year, volunteers collected 200 million pounds of litter and debris; planted 4.6 million trees, flowers and bulbs; cleaned 178,000 miles or roads, streets and highways; and diverted more than 70.6 million plastic (PET) bottles and more than 2.2 million scrap tires from the waste stream.

What you can do to help?
• Want to organize a cleanup in your community? Go to www.kab.org to volunteer.
• Grab the kids and some empty buckets and walk the banks of the nearest stream picking up litter. Be sure to separate recyclables from trash.
• At home: Keep a litter bag in the car, bungee cord your curbside garbage can closed, and carry a pocket ashtray if you smoke. Teach your children to be stewards of the earth.
• At work: Ask your boss to “adopt a road” and take responsibility for keeping it litter-free, conduct a recycling drive at work to collect paper, usable clothes, tires and other goods that can be donated.
• In your community: Identify eyesores and organize civic groups to eliminate the litter, create a “trash fishing contest” to clean up the water ways. Take computer equipment or deliver it to the transfer station.

 Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and director of the Wallkill River School and Art Gallery in Montgomery, NY. Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Recently, most of Orange County’s industry has been “outsourced,” causing a loss of jobs and the disintegration of hometowns built around companies like IBM. Our current recession is an indication that this global economy is not working. Economist and author Michael Shuman said recently “about 42 percent of our economy is “place based” or created through small, locally-owned businesses.” This means that almost half our economy depends upon small independent businesses that make up the backbone of our hometowns.

These small businesses are what give our town local color and local flavor. They are what differentiate us from every other exit on the Thruway which has the same six chain stores. Local businesses are also committed to their hometowns, and support the local economy through hiring people in the area, donating to local charities and volunteer ambulance and fire service, and paying local taxes. Shuman estimates that we could expand our region’s economy to be 70 percent local or more by incorporating these ten simple steps that will actually save you money in the process.

–Localize your home! The biggest expense most of us have is our mortgage. Actually, 60 percent of our annual expenses go to shelter. This money often flies out of our community and into absentee landlords’ hands, or corporate banks in other states. By renting from a local landlord, or buying your own home with a mortgage from a local bank, you can localize this expense. Local banks and credit unions typically have the best rates anyway, possibly saving you money in the process. Try to find a bank that doesn’t repackage and sell loans on the secondary market which would stop your money from flowing through the community.

–Drive less! According to Shuman, Americans spend one out of every five dollars on transportation. That amounts to almost $5,000 per year! Until we can start replacing imported oil with locally-produced biofuels, our best bet is to drive less.

–Using mass transit, bicycling, or walking are highest on the list, but not very easy for us rural folks. Use the car sparingly, buy gas from an independent gas station if you can find one, and use a local repair shop you trust.

–Eat Independently! Households spend about $2300 per year on restaurants; unfortunately it’s mostly fast food chains. This one is a simple matter of choice with very little effort required to find a wonderful independently-owned restaurant.

–Local Arts and Entertainment! Most people opt for a movie at a corporate multiplex at the mall. Enjoy homegrown talent! Visit the small repertory theaters, see a real play instead of a movie. Visit an art show and buy art from local artists, buy music directly from the bands.

–Localize Your Health Care! Most of us have health care plans that are far from local, yet two components: high-tech equipment and prescription medications can be localized. Get your meds from an independent pharmacy, preferably one that also uses local suppliers. If we take better care of ourselves, walking more, eating local, building strong family and community ties, we will reduce our need for the high-tech equipment. Using local midwives instead of OB-GYN’s, and naturopaths or herbalists are alternative ways.

–Buy Locally Grown! Eating locally, meaning buying fresh vegetables, meats, and dairy from local farms reduces transportation costs and vitamin loss. Farming is one of the few industries left in the Hudson Valley. The closer you eat to home, the more you improve your health, your view, and your local economy.

–Localize Electricity! If Taylor Biomass were online, we would have local electricity. Until then, increase energy efficiency by improving insulation and having a home energy audit, then invest in solar hot water through a local provider.

–Give Locally! More than 6 percent of the U.S. economy is nonprofit according to Shuman. Most of these nonprofits are in the forms of hospitals, universities, and churches, but locally we also have arts organizations, environmental groups, and many others.

–Buy Local! In the time it has taken you to read this, Americans have collectively spent $23 million. Shuman says that $16 million of this figure could be spent in small locally-owned stores. Imagine how much $16 million would help our schools and communities.

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. Shawn@zestoforange.com