Homeowners apply 90 million pounds of pesticide to their lawns, much more than farmers use.

A farmer friend 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.

• Participate in the National Wildlife Federation Backyard Wildlife Habitat program. www.nwf.org/backyard/
• Learn to love tall grasses, wildflowers, butterflies, and birds, creating habitats that are the aesthetic match of any manicured lawn. www.beyondpesticides.org/pesticidefreelawns/
• Visit http://www.RefuseToUseChemLawn.org/for a copy of their report and to sign the Refuse to Use ChemLawn pledge.
• Try Integrated Pest Management strategies offer alternatives that work better and have less harmful effects. www.epa.gov

Since Thomas Crapper invented the water closet (yes, that is really his name), many experts have come to view our sanitation system as the worst idea of all time. We use 3.5 gallons (per flush) of our best drinking water to dilute a few ounces of “excellent fertilizer and soil conditioner” to create an expensive, wasteful disposal problem.

The World Health Organization recently declared that waterborne sanitation is obsolete, and only waterless disposal of waste will allow enough water for drinking, cooking and washing in the world’s largest cities.

Waterless and low flow toilets could save the average household as much as $50 to $100 a year on water, adding up to $11.3 million everyday nationally. These are not the same low-flow toilets that gained a well-deserved bad reputation ten years ago. Technology has improved even the lowly Crapper so that most new toilets use only about 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf).

Sweden has popularized a dual bowl toilet with separate compartments and separate ways of treating human waste. This system uses no water and results in a high quality fertilizer and composted human manure as byproducts. The separating toilets cost comparably to American toilets but may take a while to catch on. Dual flush toilets are becoming more popular here in the states, and offer users a choice of .8 gpf or 1.6gpf depending on the size of the job.

Composting toilets are completely waterless and can be self contained or attached to a whole building system. If you have many bathrooms a whole building system would be the most economical. It connects all the dry toilets to a single large compost tank usually in the basement. There is no sewer hookup, so the plumbing ends in the compost tank.

A self contained composting toilet is essentially a compost drum enclosed inside a toilet with a fold out handle and tray. Some also contain fans and vents to eliminate odors. Once you get over the initial shock of “no water in the bowl” it is easy to appreciate the simplicity of a composting toilet. Wood chips go in, tree food comes out.

Incinerating toilets are similar to composting toilets in that they are waterless. But they use electricity to incinerate human waste to a clean ash eliminating both pathogens (good) and soil nutrients (bad).

Many of these alternatives are costly and require a bit of plumbing know-how to install. If you want to reduce your water use today:

• Try putting a brick in your toilet tank to save up to 5 gallons of water per day.
• Install a $5 Frugal Flush Flapper valve in your existing toilet and conserve half your water with each flush.
• Try a $1 Toilet Fill Cycle Diverter to save about ½ gallon per flush.
• Pee on the trees if you live in a secluded area where no one will know.
• Flush less often using the “yellow-mellow” rule

Check your toilet for leaks which could waste more than 100 gallons of water per day. To find out if you have leaks, add a few drops of food coloring to the tank and see if any colored water leaks into the bowl after a few minutes.

“About 30-35 percent of your home’s utility bill goes to maintaining a standing tank of hot water that you use only a few times a day.” notes Patrick Gallagher of Warwick-based Gallagher Solar Thermal. “Solar hot water eliminates up to 70 percent of that part of your energy bill.”

Recent incentives and tax credits eliminate about half the upfront costs of a solar hot water installation, putting it squarely within any homeowner’s reach. Unlike solar electric panels, you do not have to have an energy audit, and upgrade your appliances to take advantage of solar hot water. It is the simplest and least expensive green energy upgrade you can make.

Warwick, NY residents Jerry and Lucy Fischetti had Gallagher install a typical two-panel solar hot water system on their beautiful Victorian home. The system cost around $9,000 but more than half of the cost was defrayed by tax credits and incentives. The installed price was closer to $4,000. With interest rates so low right now, a solar hot water system will save you money while paying for itself.

A solar hot water installation could have you pocketing part of the money you are paying your utility company. “In reality you will give the cost of a solar hot water system to the utility or fuel company over the next 7 years anyway,” notes Gallagher, “why not do the planet and your bank account a favor and declare energy independence with a system that pays for itself and adds resale value to your home?”

Summer heat is upon us and the last thing you want to do is waste your money adding more heat to your home through inefficient lighting. If you have traditional incandescent light bulbs, 90 percent of the energy you are paying for is heat, warming your house rather than lighting it. Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) are the brightest idea since Edison’s electric candle. These are the squiggly tubular bulbs that last up to ten times longer than their egg-shaped counterparts. If you replace every light bulb in your house that you turn on for an average of 5 hours a day or more with a CFL, you will save around $45 per bulb on your yearly electric bill, or about $50 per month for the average household.

If all the households in America replaced even just one highly used incandescent light bulb with a CFL, we would save 20% of our energy consumption, and be able to close down many of the coal-burning plants. “Lighting a whole room so you can see what you’re doing is similar to refrigerating a whole house to preserve perishable food,” notes energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Our food system is a highly-subsidized network of environmental disasters. The average bite of food we eat has traveled up to 1500 miles from the farm to our fork according to “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” author Barbara Kingsolver. Those “food miles” add up to about 18 percent of our carbon emissions as a nation, and about 20 percent of our family budget. Eating locally; especially if you convert your perfectly manicured lawn into an edible garden, can save you money on your food bill, doctor’s bills, and the costs of maintaining the perfect lawn.

If you are an apartment-dweller, eating locally means buying in season from the farmer’s market and preserving part of the harvest for the winter. Local food purchased in season is always less expensive and better quality than mass-produced counterparts trucked from commercial farms across the country.

Doing these three green things right now will help your family weather the recession and better the environment at the same time.

With stocks plummeting, home heating prices soaring and money tight, many people looks toward winter with fear and trepidation. One of the best ways to alleviate this fear is to take a positive action like having a home energy audit.

Almost half of our energy use goes into heating and cooling our homes. We are already paying an average of 20 percent higher home heating costs, so anyway you can reduce your costs will pay for it. A professional home energy audit costs $100-$300, but if you take their recommendations, you will quickly make that money back.

Some states like New York, will reimburse you for the cost of the audit, and make you eligible for a low interest rate loan (2 percent) 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. www.getenergysmart.org

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 we never noticed.

The blower door is a tool that auditors use to test your home’s envelope. They install a powerful fan that fits exactly into an open outer door. The air is sucked out of your house causing negative air pressure. The auditor walks around with a hand held smoke machine and points out the major gaps and leaks, usually around doors and window frames. If added together, all these gaps and leaks can equal a huge hole in your wall.

Here are a few ways my home energy audit saved us money and reduced our energy use:

• Just by caulking all the gaps and leaks, we could save almost $1,000 off 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 5 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 of our house. A modest investment of about $1500 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 crawlspace 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 off 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 2-3 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 savings help to offset to 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-$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.

To find a qualified energy auditor near you, go to www.energystar.gov and click the “partners” tab. You can look up a home energy rater by state.

If you can’t find an auditor, do-it-yourself by gathering last year’s utility bills and using the “Home Energy Yardstick” option on www.energystar.gov to get energy saving home improvement advice from Energy Star.

Each rung on the ladder represents about a 10 percent loss of resources. The plants waste 10 percent of the sun growing things the animals won’t eat. The animals waste 10 percent of the plant by growing things like feathers, fur and bones that we won’t eat, you get the picture. What does that innocuous 10 percent really look like?

To produce a pound of wheat takes about 25 gallons of water, a lot of sun, and less than an acre of land. Yet it takes 16 pounds of that wheat (plus soy), and 2,500 gallons of water fed to a cow to make one pound of beef. More than half our farmland and half our water consumption is currently devoted to the meat industry. A 10 acre farm could feed 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn but only two producing cattle, according to the British group Vegfam. We eat most of our grain in the form of meat, 90 percent actually, which translates into 2,000 pounds of grain a year. In poorer countries, grain is consumed directly, skipping a rung in the ladder.

“Imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak dinner,” writes author Frances Moore Lappé in Diet for a Small Planet, “then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of them. For the ‘feed cost’ of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains.”

We Americans don’t often see the unappetizing effects of eating 260 pounds of meat per person, per year. We waste 90 percent of the carbs, fiber, and plant protein by cycling grain through animals for meat.

Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing meat consumption by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free enough grain to feed 60 million people. This year, about 20 million people will starve to death, mostly children.

We don’t often see the hungry and malnourished in our culture, so it’s difficult to make that connection when standing by the grill waiting for your hamburger. Consider ways to replace meat for two or three main meals a week. Marge Corriere, a Blooming Hill Farm customer, said recently; “treat meat like a condiment. Use just a small amount for a meal, much like they do in other countries.” By eating lower on the food chain, even just a few meals a week, we reduce our health risks for heart disease, obesity, hypertension, colon (and other) cancers, and save valuable resources that could be put to better uses elsewhere.

“It boils down to a simple equation,” says Alan Durning, head of the Northwest Environment Watch. “We currently consume close to our own body weight in natural resources every day. These resources are extracted from farms, forests, fisheries, mines and grasslands, all of which are essential to the health of the planet – and to the health of human beings.”

Adding more vegan meals to your diet, and treating animal products (meat, dairy, eggs) as condiments and using very little, improves your health and the health of the planet.

Those lovely twinkling lights can generate as much global warming pollution as about 250,000 cars, according to Union of Concerned Scientists. That means that if you decorate your home and tree with 10 strands of 100 bulbs lit 8 hours a day from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, it can cost you up to $200. Powering the same amount of LED (Light Emitting Diode) mini lights would cost less than $10.

Why not donate all your old lights to Salvation Army, and invest in LED mini lights. Don’t balk at the higher cost of LED’s, you’ll get that money back on your electric bill. Generally, LED’s will pay for themselves in the first two years. An added benefit is there is less likelihood of fires because LED’s give off very little heat, and last up to 20 years. Or better still invest in solar xmas lights.

Tinsel and plastic decorations are an environmental hazard. Most are made from plastics that cannot be recycled and may photodegrade when exposed to sunlight. That means that they break down into smaller and smaller particles that get absorbed into living things and wind up in our bodies. Skip the phthalate-laden plastics and use natural materials for decorations like popcorn and berry strings, cut-paper snowflakes and real greenery.

What you put under the tree is as important as what you put on the tree. Gift wrapping paper is costly, and often used only once before winding up in a landfill. Many of the shiny parts of gift wrap are environmental hazards. Consider buying recycled gift wrap, or better yet, make your own. Paper grocery bags turned inside out make sturdy wrapping paper that can be decorated with real holly, straw, and other natural materials. Putting unwrapped gifts in reusable tote bags instead of gift bags is giving two gifts in one.

Emailing cards is the greenest way to send holiday greetings. Homemade cards or cards printed on 100 percent recycled paper are the next best. Opt for cards with an enclosed coupon or gift certificate instead of mailing bulky gifts to far-flung relations. Bulky gifts take much more gas to deliver and generate more emissions in the process.

When entertaining for the holidays, plan seasonal menus and cook what is available locally in your area, even if it takes a little extra effort and money. This reduces the “food miles” your ingredients travel and generates less greenhouse gases. If you are a guest, bring a bottle of local wine or a dessert from a local baker. When you buy from local food producers, you spread the wealth locally, and get an interesting story to tell at the dinner table.

In the early 1990’s when frankenfoods were being evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, several FDA scientists warned that GE crops could cause negative health effects. These scientists were ignored and blanket approvals of GE crops were passed. Perhaps one reason for the quick approval process is the revolving door at the FDA, which allows corporate executives from biotech giants to hold decision-making positions in the FDA. Michael Taylor was an attorney for Monsanto before being appointed deputy commissioner of the FDA in 1991. Taylor hastened approval of GE crops through the FDA then returned to Monsanto to become the vice president for public policy.

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. 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 dollars and a staff of 75 devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting more than 150 farmers for a total of more than $15 million dollars.
• Demand labeling on all GMO-containing products so that we at least have a choice!

The True Food Now Network also offers a downloadable PDF pocket guide to GMOs to avoid at the supermarket. Seeds of Deception publishes a GM Foods at a Glance guide that is very comprehensive.

The milk is produced on the cooperative’s family farms in the Empire State and bottled, distributed and sold in the region, ensuring fewer miles from farm to table.

The New York Fresh milk is available in skim, low fat, reduced fat and whole varieties in quart, half gallon, gallon, and new, convenient 96 oz. sizes. True to the iconic Organic Valley wood-cut design, the New York Fresh cartons will feature farmer-owners who produce the milk on their pastures and an introduction to their farm stories. The packaging will also display the “Pride of New York” logo. As with all Organic Valley products, the farmers who produce New York Fresh milk never use toxic pesticides or non-organic fertilizers. New York Fresh milk is produced without antibiotics, synthetic hormones or GMOs.

“Our vision is simple: keep it organic and close to home,” said George Siemon, founding farmer and C-E-I-E-I-O, Organic Valley. “We have long had a presence in New York State, a key dairy farming region for our cooperative. Regional production and distribution means our customers get the delicious, fresh product they enjoy, while supporting local farmers and building the local economy. We are proud of our New York farmers and our New York Fresh milk.”

Organic Valley’s New York Fresh milk comes from 121 local farms, including Paul and Maureen Knapp’s Cobblestone Valley Farm located upstate in Preble, where 300 acres of land have been farmed by the Knapps for four generations. Paul, Maureen and their three sons live in the 1896 farmhouse Paul’s grandfather built, farm 80 acres of Certified Organic pasture and milk 80 organic Holsteins.

Over in Chenango County, Jim and Nancy Gardiner are also producing New York Fresh milk on their 300-acre grass-based dairy. Jim tours the state giving seminars on organic, grass-based dairy farming and teaches organic farmers how to make more efficient use of their available pasture.

And finally, David and Susan Hardy of Mohawk, near Utica, not only milk 70 cows and organically farm and steward 550 acres (300 owned; 250 rented) of pasture, woodland and wetland, but they also have “adopted” an elementary school in Greenwich Village, New York City. Once a month, they travel to the city to bring the farm to the classroom, teaching city-dwelling K-8 students about hatching chicks, milling corn, and making butter.

These are just a few of the many farms that produce New York Fresh milk. More farmer stories are shared on Organic Valley’s “Who’s Your Farmer?” online tool at http://www.organicvalley.coop/who-is-your-farmer, where consumers can enter their zip code and meet the farmer closest to them, see their photo and learn more about their farm.

Organic Valley’s New York Fresh milk is bottled at Mountainside Dairy in Roxbury, NY, and is now available at supermarkets, natural food stores, neighborhood markets and food cooperatives across the region.

BIG!NYC is a non-profitorganization. In 2011, they are proud to have:

• Kept 900 tons of building materials of out the landfill.
• Provided $250,000 of material support to other non-profit and arts organizations.
• Saved New Yorkers nearly $1 million on purchases.
• Provided a site for 120 green collar trainees in partnership with CWE.

They have over 75 tons of materials on sale at half or below their new prices:

• doors
• flooring
• sinks and toilets
• lighting
• windows
• trim
• cabinets
• metal studs And more…

Visit Build it Green NYC site.