Rotary Day of Service – April 19
For the fourth straight year, the District Environmental Sustainability Team is encouraging our clubs to participate in the “Rotary Day of Service – A Focus on the Environment.” We have set aside Saturday, April 19, as a day when clubs throughout the District are asked to do an environmental project in their communities. If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to start planning. In past years, clubs have done a variety of environmental cleanups – highways, trails, streams, parks, and community spaces. Other clubs have planted pollinator gardens, trees, and native plants on streambanks (riparian buffers). If April 19 doesn’t work for your club, maybe you can plan for another day in April to help celebrate Rotary’s Environment Month.
District Grants to Support Environmental Projects
March 31 is the due date for submitting an application for a District Grant. You may want to think of an environmental project that you could partially fund through a District Grant. How about a stream restoration project? Or maybe a tree-planting project or pollinator garden in a local park. You could contact a watershed association or parks department or nature center to get them involved in planning the project.
Keeping Food Out of Landfills
The West Reading-Wyomissing club currently is sponsoring a food waste composting project in the City of Reading at a local arts center. The GoggleWorks has community gardens, and now with the help of a District Grant has a composting facility in the gardens. People in the neighborhood surrounding the arts center bring their food waste to the gardens to be composted. The District Environmental Sustainability Team is currently working on how to develop food composting projects with school cafeterias. Stay tuned for details in the months ahead.
Plastics Recycling
Our personal goal should be to refrain from using soft plastic materials completely. It’s almost impossible to do so. We are inundated with soft plastic materials in our society. Just think about how widespread is its use – grocery and shopping bags, bread bags, water and soft drink overwrap, pallet wrap, shipping envelopes, dry cleaning bags … it goes on and on. It truly is hard to avoid using this material that helps fill up landfills and finds its way into streams and all along the roadsides. Well, there is a way to help keep plastics out of landfills. Have your club join the NexTrex Plastic Bag & Film Recycling Program. More and more of our District clubs are doing it. Collect 1000 pounds of plastic in one year, and receive a free park bench made of Trex material. The Hamburg club is up to four benches in four years. www.nextrex.com.
Environmental Display at the Multi-District Conference.
Our District Environmental Sustainability Team will be joining the environmental group from District 7390 (Central Pennsylvania) at the Multi-District Conference in Hershey in April. We will have a joint display in the House of Friendship showing Rotarians some successful environmental projects from clubs in our two Districts.
Terry L. Reed
Chair, Environmental Sustainability
Rotary District 7430