It is time to think green

Environmental change, climate and pollution and waste have gotten a lot of headlines in the media in recent years.
We are told by scientists the ice caps are melting and polar bears and those cute cuddly fur seals could go extinct. We are cautioned about the increasing usage of oil reserves and how this is accelerating the problems caused by 200 years of industrialization, not to mention requiring U.S. blood to be spilled in protecting America’s interests in desolate far off lands that just happen to have the commodity.
All those things make sense and move some people to living more green lifestyles. Unfortunately, since going green has been glommed onto by the marketing folks, green products are often premium products and outside the realm of budget conscious consumers. Further, these green products sometimes don’t perform quite as well as the traditional products do. Or at least that is the perception.
While reducing waste in the home is a good step, a bigger step would be to look at going green in our governments.
To be sure, local governments recycle and do other things to reduce waste, this just makes good business sense. More needs to be done. We need to stand back and examine what we are doing and how we can reduce consumption without negatively impacting the quality of life. Doing something simply because that is the way it has always been done is not necessarily doing it the best way.
When conditions are right, you can see the glow of Medford’s street lights from Sackett Lake or as far away as Dorchester. Streetlights serve an important function of making people feel safer as they walk outside at night or as they look out their house windows to check that no one is doing things they shouldn’t be doing. That said, the light escaping up to the sky doesn’t do much for increasing safety or improving security. Meanwhile, City of Medford taxpayers are spending tens of thousands of dollars each year for electricity to power the lights.
New lighting technology is available which uses LED units to provide the same output in light while using half as much power as the traditional high pressure sodium lamps currently in use around the world. At the same time, the city needs to look at its current lighting policies and ordinances and address the problem of light pollution.
Another area city leaders should explore is capturing and using the methane in the wastewater treatment facility to help offset the power consumption of the plant. Methane digesters are nothing new and are being installed on some larger farms. Power consumption is a major expense for the city’s sewer utility and capturing the energy in the waste coming through the plant could help both the environment and the rate payers.
Green is good. Green technologies that could save green of another sort is even better. There is no doubt we all want to live in healthy, safe environments. As green technologies mature municipal leaders need to keep abreast of the changes to see if there are ways we can help improve the environment while at the same time being fiscally responsible.