Simple Ways to Save the World

Simple Ways to Save the World

A s activist Julia Butterfly Hill is quick to acknowledge, people don't have to sit in a tree for two years to make an impact on their local environments. Here are a few eco-friendly suggestions from Hill's new book, One Makes the Difference, that consumers can start to adopt in their everyday lives:

MANY SAFE, ORGANIC CLEANING PRODUCTS can be bought in a health food store or made from ingredients you may already have around the house. Club soda helps take out stains, orange scents eliminate odors, and four teaspoons of baking soda per quart of water can clean almost anything.

FIX THAT DRIP! Just one faucet leaking 60 drops per minute wastes nearly 200 gallons of water a month.

Used soapy dishwater is a good pesticide for your houseplants. Outdoors, natural manure or compost gives great nutrients to plants and flowers. Marigolds planted around your garden can keep out hungry critters, and ladybugs also will help reduce garden pests.

TO PREVENT ANTS FROM COLONIZING YOUR HOME, plant spearmint, southernwood, or tansy around the perimeter of your house. Indoors, combining baking soda with powdered sugar can help get rid of cockroaches.

CLOTHES LABELED "DRY-CLEAN ONLY" OFTEN CAN BE HAND-WASHED with a gentle detergent. If you must dry-clean an item of clothing, choose a local "green" dry cleaner that does not use harmful chemicals. (Check your Yellow Pages.) And if you can, conserve energy by hanging your laundry out to dry. It will smell great too!

If you like to breath you're an environmentalist, whether you think you're one or not," says Julia Butterfly Hill, 29, whose latest book, One Makes the Difference, is a how-to manual for the environmentalist in all of us. "We tend to think that environmentalists are a small group of radical, tree-hugging extremists," says Hill, but that's not the case. The environmentalists she highlights in her book include three sixth-graders who started an oil recycling program in Texas, two college students who fueled a cross-country trip in a Winnebago with used cooking oil from fast-food restaurants, and Erin Brockovich, who she writes "couldn't be further from the stereotype of a tree-hugger." The founder of the Oakland-based Circle of Life Foundation, Hill has spent the past three years traveling nonstop with the message that environmental action is in everyone's power.

Hill, who herself came to public attention as a "tree-hugger," explains that one person can make a difference. We live in an extremely disposable culture. We don't realize how everything we buy, everything we choose to throw away or recycle, how many times we get in a car vs. how many times we walk or ride bikes, what we buy things in, how much packaging it comes in--all these things that we do unconsciously in our daily life-what a huge impact they have!"

Making a difference can be as simple as turning off the water when you brush your teeth. You can replace paper towels with cloth, or buy towels made from recycled paper (look for "100% post-consumer waste"). "We can make a commitment to putting a water filter on our sink instead of buying water in single-serving plastic bottles,'' suggests Hill. "We can commit to driving less and walking more."

Many ecologically sound steps have the added advantage of saving money. Turning your thermostat down, installing a low-flow showerhead, and periodically cleaning your refrigerator's condenser coils will reduce your energy bills. Buying rice, soap, and other items in bulk not only saves packaging, it's also cheaper, as is cleaning your windows with vinegar and water. Instead of buying plastic containers or using aluminum foil or plastic wrap, store leftovers in empty glass jars and plastic margarine and yogurt tubs.

Accepting a little bit of inconvenience in your life can also make a big difference. For example, try carrying around a lightweight reusable mug instead of using paper or plastic cups, or bringing your own bags to the supermarket. Hill writes that "If 25 % of American families used just 10 fewer plastic bags each month, an estimated 2.5 billion bags could be saved from landfills each year." And while organically grown food and recycled paper products may cost a little more, the benefits to the health of your family and the rest of the world are incalculable.

Another positive step--although one admittedly more difficult than some people are willing to consider is to eat less meat. "What we put on the end of our fork is truly one of the most revolutionary acts we take as a society," Hill contends. "Every time a person eats a hamburger from a fast-food, corp6rate restaurant, approximately a 3x3 square foot of tropical rainforest disappears'' with enormous repercussions for the health of the world.

Hill's approach comes down to the five R's: Respect, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Respect for the planet and everyone on it comes first. Rethink your everyday purchases, reduce your energy consumption, reuse what you've already got, and recycle what you absolutely can't reuse.

Born February 18, 1974, in Mount Vernon, Missouri, Hill got her nickname as a child when a butterfly attached itself to her during a hike. Her uniquely evangelical approach to environmentalism, which has made her a popular speaker on the college circuit, betrays her youth as the daughter of an itinerant Fundamentalist preacher. "I was always in church or on the road to the next church," she explains, "but I did get to see a lot of different places and learn a lot in my home-schooling based on where we were." The family lived in a trailer and Hill put on puppet shows for local children as they traveled from town to town. Hill calls her parents, Dale and Kathy, "accidental ecologists." "We were so poor that we made a very light imprint on the earth because we were looking to get as much value out of anything that we had. When you make use of everything, you're actually being ecologically minded without even knowing that that's what you're doing." Hill got her first job at the age of 5, helping her brothers Michael and Daniel with yard work.

In her teens Hill's family settled in Arkansas and she attended high school, taking college classes at 16. She majored in business, did some modeling for catalogues, and turned a love for cooking into her own restaurant, which she opened at 18.

But one night in August of 1996, Hill's life took what could have been a tragic turn. A drunk driver in a Ford Bronco smashed the Honda hatchback she was driving, shoving the steering wheel into her skull. Hill's brain injuries required almost a year of rehabilitation. The accident "literally and figuratively steered me in a new direction," she says. "When something like that happens, it makes you think, 'Why am I really here?'" Hill was going to use the insurance and lawsuit money to see the world, but when a road trip with a couple of friends took her into the Northern California redwoods, her plans changed. "I was deeply touched at the beauty, energy, and power that I felt from these forests," she recalls. "When I found out that they were being destroyed, that 97% of them are already gone, that heavy industrial logging practices are extremely toxic and degrading to the place and to all of its inhabitants, that made me say, 'I need to do something about this.'"

Environmental activists were looking for someone to take over a shift sitting on a 6' x 8' platform 180 feet up in a 1000-year-old redwood named Luna to protest logging in the forest, which had caused a mudslide that had destroyed several homes in the valley below. Hill volunteered. "l ended up in a tree because I had no environmental activism experience whatsoever," says Hill, "but I did grow up with two brothers, so I've climbed a lot of trees. It was something I could do." She never anticipated the ensuing media circus, or that her feet would not touch the ground again for more than two years. Hill survived the harassment of Pacific Lumber, the storms of El Nino, and the ridicule of shock jocks as recounted in her bestselling 2000 memoir The Legacy of Luna.

Actor Woody Harrelson spent the night, and then complained when Hill's cell phone rang at 6 A.M. Bonnie Raitt and Joan Baez were lifted up to Hill's platform attached to ropes hauled by striking steelworkers who were sympathetic to Hill's cause. By the end of 1999 the tree had been saved by Hill and her supporters, who raised $50,000 to buy the surrounding three acres.

Of course, you don't have to sit in a tree for two years to make a difference. "At first people feel overwhelmed by all the choices," admits Hill, but the idea is to take the first step. "See how good it feels to realize, 'Wow, I just made a difference. I just helped save trees, l just helped save water. I just helped save energy, l just helped clean up the air.' All of these things that we think are simple actually affect every single aspect of our lives."

In her very first stint as an environmental activist, Hill protested the logging of a redwood forest by living on a platform 180 feet up for over two years

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ANN LEWINSON IS A FREELANCE WRITER LIVING IN NEW YORK.