This past Saturday, Rose participated in the Eco District Environmental Cafe Zoom Meeting led by Joan Gagnon.  She reminded us that one of Rotary's Seven Areas of Focus is "Supporting the Environment."  She shared a PBS video that discussed ways to support the environment and protecting our land by changing certain ways that we have been doing things.  Such as, lifestyle choices - using less plastic, deforestration - adding more trees (RTT), use of oil and other fossil fuel - reduction of same.  The mission of ESRAG (Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group) is to raise awareness of climate change, polution and evironmental sustainability.  Some way that Clubs can help is through making financial contributions, start an effective project, build a Rotary climate forest. 

Clearly, our Club is already doing this - with our support to Reforest the Tropics in Costa Rica since 2012 when founder Dr. Herster Barres visited our Club.  Since that visit we have partnered with RTT every year to bring to our schools programs about climate change.  RTT now has three forests in Costa Rica dedicated to Westerly Middle School, Westerly High School and Dr. Dan Alvino.

Another way we can all work to improve our carbon footprint is to use less plastic.  Perhaps going forward, we should buy water in jugs and use paper cups at meetings - thus eliminating individual plastic bottles.  Also, I began a search on bottled water and found that there are at least two companies who sell water in aluminum cans instead of plastic bottles.

  12 cases of Open Water aluminum bottled water costs $257.88 or $1.79 per can.  Another product called "Just Water" can be purchased in a 12oz/24 pack for $35.00 or $1.46 per can.  Maybe too expensive for Summer Pops but isn't it the right thing to do?  Be an example for others to follow????  Maybe we could convince one of these companies to support Summer Pops by providing us a special deal to supply our water at the event????  Free advertising and saving lots of plastic.... food for thought.