By Shawn Dell Joyce
Almost half of our energy use goes into heating and cooling our homes. We are already paying an average of 20 percent higher home energy costs, so reducing your energy usage by ten percent will pay for itself. A professional home energy audit costs $100-$300, but is free to homeowners who sign up through NYSERDA at www.getenergysmart.org.

Some states, like New York, will reimburse businesses and municipalities for the cost of the audit, and make you eligible for a low interest rate loan to pay for major renovations. If you take out the loan and make the improvements, the money you save on your electric bill easily covers the loan payment, often with plenty left over. If you plan to go solar, or incorporate some form of renewable energy into your home, the same program will pay for half the installed cost.

Having a trained eye look at your home is invaluable. My auditor spotted right away that my furnace was operating at 80 percent efficiency in spite of just being serviced. He also found some leaky and uninsulated ductwork that was never noticed previously.

Here are a few ways my home energy audit suggested would save ten percent of home energy costs in the coming year:

• Just by caulking all the gaps and leaks, we could save almost $1,000 on our annual heating and cooling bills. Even if we hired a contractor to do this and had to pay $4,500 for caulking, we would make that investment back in under five years. You can’t get a rate of return that good on the stock market right now.

• One of the most obvious leaks in any home is an uninsulated attic and basement. We were losing much of our heat right though the roof. A modest investment of about $1,500 added six more inches of insulation in our attic and made a considerable difference in how warm the house feels, and how much energy we use to heat it. We reinsulated many of our outside walls at the same time, and were able to cut our home heating costs dramatically last year.

• If you have an unisulated basement, insulating exposed crawl space ceilings and walls could save you as much as $800 annually, depending on the size of your house. Again, if you paid someone to do it, you would make a return on your investment in under five years.

• Switching out your incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent or LED lights can save you an immediate 20 percent on your electric bill. The more bulbs you replace the greater your savings.

• About 14 percent of our home energy use is spent on keeping water hot at all times. Buying an on-demand water heater will save you the cost of that new water heater in about two to three years.

• Appliances and cooking can account for 33 percent of our home energy use. If you replace older appliances with Energy Star Rated appliances, you can save about $100 per year per appliance on average. This saving helps to offset the cost of the new appliance over the years.

• Replacing windows can be expensive, making the payback period much longer. In my case, we would save $30 to $50 annually with a payback period of 10 years. We opted instead to invest in window inserts to use during the winter. An immediate action you can take is to cover every window with clear plastic window sheeting from your local hardware store. It curbs heat transfer, and will save you energy.

The Wallkill Valley Times will be covering the progress of the Town of Montgomery and its villages in reducing their energy usage by ten percent. If you have a tip or story you would like to share about your personal experience reducing your family’s energy usage, email ShawnDellJoyce@gmail.com

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School of Art in Montgomery, and a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist.

By Shawn Dell Joyce

The Town of Montgomery voted at the last board meeting to accept the Ten Percent Challenge and put the entire town and its three villages officially on board. This means that we need to reduce our energy use by ten percent at a municipal level, as well as encourage ten percent of our residents to do the same.

If you would like to be one of those ten percenters, you can sign up at any Village Hall, or the Town Hall on Bracken Road. This is an opportunity to save ten percent on your energy bills over the next year.

Central Hudson notes that about one-third of all electricity produced at power plants in the United States is for home use. Of that, heating and cooling uses 44 percent of household energy; lighting, cooking and other appliances use 33 percent; water heaters use 14 percent; and refrigerators use 9 percent. If you are trying to reduce usage by ten percent, Central Hudson is offering some incentives to make efficiency an even better investment.

You could get up to $600 in rebates, and save hundreds on your utility bills by taking advantage of these incentives. Central Hudson is offering:

• $50-$100 rebate for recycling your old window or through-the-wall air conditioner and upgrade to an Energy Star rated unit.
• $600 rebate for a new cooling system.
• $50 for getting rid of that old working fridge or freezer.

• Rebates up to $700 on energy efficient heating equipment for your home.

• Rebates up to $1,200 on new, energy efficient natural gas furnaces and boilers for your business.

You can take advantage of these rebates from Central Hudson by downloading the forms from their website at www.savingscentral.com. You can find out more about the Ten Percent Challenge by visiting Sustainable Hudson Valley’s website at www.sustainhv.org/10pct-main.

The Wallkill Valley Times will be covering the progress of the town government and all the village governments in reducing their energy usage by ten percent. If you have a tip or story you would like to share about your personal experience reducing your family’s energy usage, email ShawnDellJoyce@gmail.com

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, a benchmark business in the Ten Percent Challenge. The Times Community Newspapers office is also a benchmark business. Read about our efforts to reduce our energy use by ten percent in upcoming issues of this newspaper.

By Shawn Dell Joyce 

The Ten Percent Challenge is off to a great start after last weekend’s kick off party in Walden. This week, the Town of Montgomery Chamber of Commerce voted unanimously to endorse the Ten Percent Challenge. That means that many of our local businesses will be pledging to reduce their energy use by ten percent and get ten percent of their employees to do the same.

The first step is signing the pledge, available at most village halls, at the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, or online through google.com/site/sustainablemontgomery. Once you sign the pledge, return it to the committee, and it’s time for an energy audit.

An energy audit is free for homeowners, and virtually free for businesses and municipalities. The cost of an audit (ranging from $100-$400) for businesses is based on the number of employees. But, the cost is refundable when you take one of the auditor’s recommendations.

Ronnie in the Montgomery Village Hall filled out the application for a commercial energy audit with me, for the Village of Montgomery.  The application is a one page form available online at getenergysmart.org, and is very simple. It requires only a few facts about the square footage and number of buildings, employees, and electric usage over the past year. If you don’t have copies of your utility bills, the auditor can find this info online through your utility company.

Getting an energy audit is crucial because it gives you a baseline to measure your current energy usage (you would also want to add in gasoline, and fuel oil if you use it) and some easy ways to reduce your usage, along with the payback periods for efficiency upgrades.

In our county, you have a choice of auditors for residential, most of whom are local businesses with owners that live in our region, some may even be your friends and neighbors. Commercial audits are done through Daylight Savings in Goshen, and the application must be filed through NYSERDA first.

The Town of Montgomery will be discussing supporting the Ten Percent Challenge at the Aug. 4^th Town Board Meeting starting at 7:30 at the Town Hall on Bracken Road. Town Board member Dan Dempsey will present the pledge to the board for a vote.

If you need help finding a copy of the pledge, or signing up for an energy audit, contact Sustainable Montgomery or me, and we will help you.  The next meeting for the Ten Percent Challenge is Aug. 3 at 7pm in Maybrook’s Village Hall.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the Director of the Wallkill River Art School in Montgomery, which along with the Wallkill Valley Times is a benchmark business in the Ten Percent Challenge. Both businesses will be reducing their energy usage by ten percent in the next year.

Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

The Ten Percent Challenge has officially passed through the village boards of Walden, Montgomery and Maybrook, making all three municipalities officially on board. This means that the mayors of all three villages have committed their village to reducing its energy usage by ten percent, and activating ten percent of the residents to do the same. This will result in using energy and tax dollars more efficiently.

The 10% Challenge is an initiative of Sustainable Hudson Valley, and is underway in other communities like Red Hook and Warwick as well. There is a “friendly competition” between these communities to complete the challenge, because the winning municipality will get such perks as an installed solar thermal system and a vacation trip for the board members.The Orange County Chamber of Commerce has also signed on to the pledge because they see that it benefits the local economy as well; especially the building trades related to efficiency and insulation.

Village residents now have the opportunity to sign on to the pledge this week during the official “kick off.” Maybrook and Montgomery will have informational tables in their village halls with the pledge available for people to sign on the spot.  Walden will have an informational table in the public library instead with related books. The forms on these tables were donated by Ciardullo Printing in Walden.

Signing up for the pledge is very simple, it’s a form you fill out that the stays at the table so the committee and measure how many people are signing up and from which village. If you can’t make it to the village hall during the next week, you can find the pledge form on the Sustainable Montgomery website: https://sites.google.com/site/sustainablemontgomery/ or on Facebook at Montgomery’s Ten Percent Challenge.

The next step after signing is to get a free energy audit through NYSERDA from a local energy auditor. That auditor will show you what you can do to lower your energy usage and how much money you can save in the process. Walden is able to meet the goal of a ten percent reduction in the municipal buildings just by a few lighting changes. Some of these simple and inexpensive changes will save so much that it’s a criminal waste of money not do them!

Take a few minutes this summer and sign on to the Ten Percent Challenge. You benefit, the community benefits, and it’s a great way to encourage your household to work together to lower bills and do something positive for the environment. Next week I’ll show you how to get a free energy audit.

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning writer and director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. The WRS is a benchmark business along with the Times Community Newspapers office in the Ten Percent Challenge, both businesses have signed on and will reduce their energy consumption.  Follow our progress in future articles.

Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

It’s hard to accept the death of someone you love, especially when it happens unexpectedly. Joe Devine was loved by many and held a deep love for Montgomery as well.

Joe worked well with others and was a conservative Republican who often helped members of other parties, especially on important historic preservation issues. He was always there when the community needed him, and was scheduled to be the Grand Marshall of this year’s Montgomery Day.

He was a historian who delved deeply into our region’s prehistory, and was a resource for the archaeologists who excavated at Benedict Farm. I served on the advisory council for the development of Benedict Town Park with Joe, and forged a friendship born of respect.

Joe would point to a particular hill at Benedict Farm and tell me what type of points were found there, how many prehistoric layers of human habitation were found there, and date it back tens of thousands of years.

If you sat still long enough, Joe would tell you the history of any given village, building, person, or landscape feature. He was one of the most knowledgeable historians in our area, and was integral to many local projects including the Coldenham Preservation Society, the Mastodon Mural that hangs in Town Hall, and the Mastodon Museum proposed by Evan Galbraith.

Joe’s best story is the one he captured in his book “The Montgomery Mastodon” about Samuel Eager watching Charles Willson Peale unearth the first prehistoric creature ever discovered in the world — right here in little old Montgomery in 1801. I illustrated Joe’s book with my paintings, and he posed for me as Peale for my mural, which now hangs in the Town Hall on Bracken Road in Montgomery. Joe brought the story to life for new generations in Montgomery, including me.

The book was based on the life of Orange County’s first historian, but the inspiration was Joe’s grandson who helped him locate the site of Peale’s discovery in Montgomery. Joe was so delighted with his grandson’s work, that he asked me to paint him into the Mastodon Mural as the young Samuel Eager. If you look closely at the mural, you will see a boy sitting on a bridge and pointing at Peale. (Joe Devine modeled for me). Joe wrote the book in honor of his grandson, and gave it freely to our school district, along with many presentations about the mastodon.

Joe worked tirelessly with Evan Galbraith as well as doing public presentations on the Montgomery Mastodon and presenting Evan’s museum idea to the community. Evan had this to say about Joe:

“While history is filled with people who make incredible discoveries, we should also celebrate those who prevent great discoveries from becoming extinct. Joe did just that. His leadership and passion for Charles Willson Peale’s 1801 discovery of the first complete prehistoric animal in recorded history, a mastodon, kept that amazing part of our heritage permanently above ground. The site and history are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Moreover, he loved to share his work with so many, especially children, who I hope will never forget what he did for Montgomery and beyond. He was a good friend and will be greatly missed.”

By Shawn Dell Joyce
We Americans complain bitterly about the rising cost of food. Most Americans don’t realize just how good we really have it in the land of plenty. In other countries where people make much less money, they spend a much higher percentage of their income on food.

In their delicious book, “Hungry Planet: What the World Eats,” photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D’Aluisio document the weekly food budgets of 24 international families in full-color photos. A family of eight in Guatemala spends 573 Quetzales (equivalent of $75.70) on groceries each week. The average yearly income is around $4,000, making groceries the highest expense for most families.

Meanwhile, back in the states, a family of five can spend a whopping $242.48 per week on groceries out of an average income of $35K per person. While the cost sounds much greater, compared to income and other expenses, Americans eat the cheapest food in the world, and plenty of it.

Marion Nestle, author of “Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health,” writes, “Here we have the great irony of modern nutrition: At a time when hundreds of millions of people do not have enough to eat, hundreds of millions more are eating too much and are overweight or obese. Today … more people are overweight than underweight.”

In the U.S. 72 percent of men, and 70 percent of women are overweight. Cheaper food does not translate into healthier food. In fact, our current agricultural policy is to subsidize corn to the point where it is ridiculously cheap and ubiquitous in our food system. So cheap that we even burn it as fuel for our automobiles, a crime against humanity when you consider all starving people that could be fed.

Looking back at our Guatemalan family cited above, their weekly diet consisted mainly of potatoes, rice and beans, and vegetables from their garden. Meat was added to a meal less than once a week. While the American family ate mostly processed foods like canned soups, frozen meals, packaged cookies, cakes, and crackers, and lots of meat. Another major difference is cooking. The Guatemalans eat every meal at home and one person spends most of her time cooking, preparing, and purchasing ingredients for meals. Americans eat one out of three meals at home.

How can we curb our national eating disorder?

—Eat local! When we eat what is grown in our own region we eat healthier, and at the peak of freshness. This is better four our health and the environment, as well as boosting the local economy.

—-Grow your own food! Victory gardens helped our grandparents survive the wars and Great Depression. Save money at the grocery store by skipping the imported produce and processed food.

—–Eat lower on the food chain! Meat is a threat to our health and environment. Treat it as a condiment and purchase locally-raised meats from farms you trust. www.hvfoodnetwork.com  or www.localharvest.org

By Shawn Dell Joyce
The Ten Percent Challenge is taking root in the Town of Montgomery, where the Village Board recently passed a unanimous resolution to support the challenge, pledging to reduce energy use at the municipal level by 10 percent or more in the next year. Also, the village will be getting 10 percent of its residents to join in. This challenge will result in fewer tax dollars being spent on municipal utilities and residents lowering their utility bills.

Montgomery joins Walden in pledging to reduce energy use. Walden Mayor Brian Maher first embraced the challenge issued by Sustainable Hudson Valley. He called public meetings, attracting residents from all over the Wallkill Valley. The group formed into the Ten Percent Challenge committee and has been meeting monthly ever since. The next meeting is at Montgomery Village Hall at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 6.

The Ten Percent Challenge is a baby step toward energy independence. The more efficiently we use the energy we have, the less energy we need to import, or produce through environmentally damaging methods like fracking. Energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins points out that “it’s much cheaper to buy efficiency than it is to buy energy.”

The goal of the Ten Percent Challenge Committee is to get Maybrook and the Town of Montgomery on board as well, and have the whole Town of Montgomery committed to the challenge. Neither government has been approached yet; but interested residents should come to the next meeting to find out how they can take a resolution before the board.

NYSERDA is making the pledge simple for residents by offering free energy audits through their website www.getenergysmart.org. Residents can take part in the challenge by signing the pledge at their village halls on July 16. Informational tables will be set up in all three villages to tell residents about the pledge and the free energy audits. At most tables, residents can speak to an auditor directly. The tables will remain in village halls for the week of July 17-23 with free literature. Walden will have a booth at the big block party on Ivy Hill on July 16^th.

Warwick recently made headlines by announcing its own version of the Ten Percent Challenge called “Energize Warwick” where they are offering a $10,000 cash bonus to the nonprofit that gets the most “points” for households reducing their energy usage. This incentive is a great way to get community groups like the Boy Scouts, Little League, churches and other nonprofits to mobilize their memberships. It would be a real boon to the Town of Montgomery to have an incentive package to offer as well.

All municipalities are in competition through Sustainable Hudson Valley for a prize to the one that reduces its energy usage the most. Among other prizes, the winning municipality gets a solar thermal unit installed on a municipal building, and a vacation at Omega for the municipal leaders. While prizes are nice, the real winners of the Ten Percent Challenge are the residents who will pay lower taxes in the winning communities. Let the change begin with you, take the challenge with us, get involved, and let’s make a change!

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School, a nonprofit arts org in Montgomery that is a benchmark for the Ten Percent Challenge. The entire org will reduce its energy usage and encourage ten percent of its members to do the same. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Instead of making pricey travel plans this year that damage the environment as well as your bank account, consider a local vacation, or “staycation.” This is a chance to rediscover the beauty of your home region by taking the time to visit cultural attractions and natural places that you may be too busy to see in your daily routine.

A staycation does not mean staying home and doing yard work, or the list of jobs you’ve been putting off for the past year. “Instead,” suggests Pauline Frommer of Frommer’s Travel Guides, “become a tourist in your own hometown.” Plan to see tourist attractions and historic sites, take an art class, learn to swim. Or try small adventures you always wanted to do if you had the time.

A fringe benefit of staycations is that you develop a deeper connection to your community and hometown. People feel more connected to a place when they experience its history and natural beauty firsthand. Try to see something different each day; a different spectacular view, a different museum, a new restaurant. At the same time, you benefit your local community by pumping vacation money into the local economy.

Some staycationers go so far as to camp in a nearby campground to get away from the daily routine. If you are addicted to technology, and can’t imagine a day without email or internet, then consider leaving the house and staycationing in a local campground or bed and breakfast. You’ll still save gas money and travel expenses, but you’ll feel refreshed after being away from the computer for a few days.

Here are a few tips for a successful staycation:

• Explore the rail trails in your area by bicycle. Most communities have rail trail projects connecting larger cities by walking and biking paths. Explore your area by riding in five-mile sections each day. www.railtrails.org
• Go to the local tourism office or website for a list of historic sites and museums to visit.
• Spend a Saturday touring farms and farm markets in your region to find out what is grown locally, and get a fresh delicious taste of the local flavors. www.localharvest.org
• Pick a nearby town on the map, and spend the day walking through the whole town, antiquing, eating in local restaurants, and getting a real sense of the history and culture of the place.
• Take an art, music, or acting class. Do something you always said you would do if only you had the time.

If you really must go out of town, make your vacation as green as possible:

• Stay in a green hotel when possible. If you strive to be green at home, why not on vacation as well? www.greenhotels.com , www.environmentallyfriendlyhotels.com
• Travel with friends, and share the costs and carbon of each car trip. If you carpool andd share a vacation rental including meals, you form tighter friendship bonds, use less gas, and eat out less.
• Consider a working vacation and volunteer to work on an organic farm located in a place you wish to visit. Many countries also have programs for whole families to spend a vacation working as part of a relief effort. www.globeaware.org, www.globalvolunteers.org
• Offset the carbon emissions from your air travel by purchasing carbon offsets through the airline. www.carbonfund.org

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Susan Soons of Soons Orchards pointed out to me recently that homeowners in our community use more chemicals on their lawns than most farmers use on their crops. Sure enough, a little research turned up some really startling statistics behind the American obsession for the perfect lawn.

Pesticide application rates for farmers are 2.7 pounds per acre, while homeowners (and lawn care companies) slather on 3.2 to 9.8 pounds per acre. According to a recent Virginia Tech study, homeowners commonly use up to ten times as much chemicals as farmers.

Each year, homeowners apply at least 90 million pounds of pesticides to their lawns and gardens, according to the Boston-based Toxics Action Center. Homeowners represent the only growth sector of the U.S. pesticide market, as agricultural uses of these chemicals are declining. This market trend was started by the pesticide industry in an attempt to establish new markets for old products. Most lawn pesticides were registered before 1972, and were never tested for many human health hazards like carcinogenicity, neurotoxicity, and environmental dangers.

Lawn chemical companies are not required to list all the ingredients on their containers. Many toxins are hidden on the product label by being classified as “inert.” Inert does not mean “inactive” and in the case of benzene and xylene, can be even more toxic than the listed chemicals.  Some of the listed chemicals include components of defoliants like Agent Orange, nerve-gas type insecticides, and artificial hormones.

The blue meanies of lawn chemicals are 2,4-D, Captan, Diazinon, Dursban, Dacthal, Dicamba, and Mecocrop. These chemicals were registered without a full safety screening. A combination of several of these toxins is usually found in on store shelves. 2,4-D is a hormone disruptor, Dursban concentrates in the environment, and Diazinon is an organophosphate which damages the nervous system. Some of these chemicals have been banned for use on golf courses and sod farms due to massive water bird deaths, but are still widely used on lawns and gardens.

Pesticides applied on lawns are harmful to humans who inhale them, ingest them, or absorb them through skin contact. These chemicals also get tracked into our houses on our shoes and pets. An Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) study found outdoor pesticides loads build up in carpets, and can remain there for years, where they do not degrade from exposure to sunlight or rain.

This leaves our pets and children most vulnerable, as they most frequently play on lawns and carpets, and breathe in toxins. The Toxic Action Center report notes that “children’s internal organs are still developing and maturing and their enzymatic, metabolic, and immune systems provide less natural protection than those of an adult.” Researchers caution that children are most vulnerable in the fetal and adolescent stages when “chemical exposures can permanently alter future development.”

The EPA’s risk assessments indicate that home lawn care products account for 96% of the risk associated with using this chemical for women of childbearing age, and that anticipated doses are “very close to the level of concern.” EPA’s studies found that rats exposed to the most common lawn chemical; 2,4-D in utero showed an increased incidence of skeletal abnormalities such as extra ribs and malformed ribcages. In rabbits, 2,4-D and its diethanolamine salt caused abortion, skeletal abnormalities, as well as developmental neurotoxicity and endocrine disruption. Even though many lawn chemicals are legal, and widely available, that doesn’t equal “safe.”

Even though some lawn chemicals may advertise “safe” on the label, that is not often the case. The EPA fined Dow Elanco for “failing to report to the Agency information on adverse health effects (to humans) over the past decade involving a number of pesticides,” including Dursban. This information was kept hidden from the EPA until a number of personal injury claims against Dow Elanco exposed the connection.

One couple; Barry and Jackie Veysey told Family Circle Magazine that they believe lawn chemicals were responsible for the death of their infant son in 1991. Barry was a professional lawn care specialist and may have had mutated sperm thanks to some of the chemicals he worked with. When his wife Jackie washed his uniforms, and may have absorbed some of those chemicals through her skin which permeated the placenta. Jackie held her newborn son only once before he died due to massive failure of his underdeveloped organs.

The concern that certain widely used lawn chemicals can cause birth defects has prompted California to require that consumers are informed about these risks. California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) announced its intention to list the herbicide 2,4-D and related compounds as developmental toxicants under California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. Ontario and other Canadian governments have moved to similarly ban toxic lawn chemicals. 

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

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Traditional gas-powered lawn mowers are responsible for 5 percent of the nation’s air pollution according to the Environmental Protection Agency. One gas mower running for an hour emits the same amount of pollutants as eight new cars driving 55 mph for the same amount of time, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Even the innocuous Weedeater emits 21 times more emissions than the typical family car, while the leaf blower can emit up to 34 times more, says Eartheasy.com.

All this adds up to about 800 million gallons of gas burned each year in the quest for the perfect patch. But, about 17 million gallons of that fuel doesn’t quite make it to the mower tank and winds up spilled on the ground. That’s more than the Exxon Valdez spilled in 1989, and chances are that most homeowners do not clean it up. If that spilled fuel is left to evaporate into the air, it forms smog-forming ozone when cooked by heat and sunlight, and seeps into our water supply.

If your mower happens to be a two-cycle engine, it releases 25 to 30 percent of its oil and gas unburned into the air, along with particulate matter, carbon dioxide, and other ingredients of smog. This unhealthy soup we breathe contributes to cancer, and damages our hearts, lungs and immune systems.

Want lessen the environmental impact of your lawn?

The “greenest” thing you can do is convert your lawn to a vegetable garden and replace the turf with lovely raised beds of edible greens.

If that is too crunchy for your taste, how about trading in those gas guzzlers for the old-fashioned human-powered kind? Reel mowers are easier to use, quiet, non-polluting and you don’t have to worry about spilling the gas. With the money you save on gas alone, you could buy a good pair of clippers for the bushes and a scythe for weed whacking.

If you want to take the work out of lawn care, consider investing in an electric mower and weed whacker. Electric mowers range in price from $150 to $450, and the average cost in electricity to power the mower for one year is about five bucks, with no spilled gas and less emissions. Propane powered lawn equipment is a good choice when your lawn is the size of a golf course.

Leave grass clippings on the lawn instead of using chemical fertilizers. This keeps yard waste from landfills, and cycles the nutrients from your lawn back into the soil. It also provides a little mulch so that your lawn needs less watering. shawn@zestoforange.com