Living a ‘Green’ Life Every Day

Whenever Maureen (“Mo”) Hart needs a few small items from the grocery store, she doesn’t get in the car and drive the mile or so to Bishops Corner. Instead, she hops on her trusty old bicycle and pedals to pick up milk and bread.

Not only is it great exercise, said the Cumberland Road resident, but it reduces carbon emissions and other air pollution, as well as saving gasoline.

“Idling at stoplights and driving short distances causes much of our air pollution,” said Hart, 54, who also bikes (in good weather) almost two miles to Farmington Avenue to her office, where she runs a private consulting business, Sustainable Measures. She helps communities, businesses and nonprofits measure the effect they are having in creating a better community and a better world.

Hart practices what she preaches in her work.

“One of the real issues we have is that as people pave areas more and more, water runs off faster on roads and driveways and carries pollution into rivers and oceans,” she said. To do her personal part to counteract this, she found plants for her backyard that soak up water so the excess rainfall doesn’t run into the street.

She showed a reporter the “rain garden” in her backyard, with soon-to-be blooming flowers and prolific strawberry plants. All her plants are native to the area, so they don’t need watering but instead thrive with the amount of natural rainfall. She pointed to lobelia and ironweed as examples.

Hart does not water her lawn.

“Why bother?” she asked. “The more you spend to take care of your lawn, the more energy you use. Fertilizing your lawn uses up energy and when fertilizer gets into water it fertilizes algae. When the algae grow, they consume the oxygen in water and that kills the fish.”

She tries to conserve water, because, she explained, “the less water you use the less energy is used in processing it.” She can take a shower only using five gallons of water. She doesn’t run water while washing dishes in the sink.

Among her other eco-friendly activities: She has completely insulated her attic to save energy; she drives a Honda Civic hybrid and she likes to buy clothes that last.

In Hart’s backyard sit three bins for composting, where she puts items such as banana peels, parts of vegetables that aren’t eaten, eggshells, potato skins and coffee grinds. The items are then covered with earth, mixed in and at the end of the year, it all turns to mulch. She planted mint around the compost bins to help with the smell and to beautify the area.

The mother of two grown sons, Hart is a big believer in recycling items she no longer needs. She joined The Freecycle Network, a grassroots and nonprofit movement of people who give and get items for free. She just finished “freecycling” and donated items such as sleds and sports equipment. When her toaster oven broke, she went to the online site and found a used one, from the West Hartford Freecycle Group.

“Yes, it’s recycling but you are giving to other people,” she noted. “It helps reduce the amount of trash and keeps garbage out of landfills.”

This year, Hart joined a Community Supported Agriculture program, wherein local farms offer a share of goods to purchase and shareholders are then entitled to a weekly allocation of seasonal produce.  She is on the organizing committee of “Jewish Local Greens” which is partnering with “Adamah,” a Jewish educational farm located at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT.

Eating locally benefits everyone, explained Hart.

“The more you reduce your own energy use, the more your money goes to pay for things in your community,” said Hart, who is a MIT grad and has a master’s degree in hazardous materials management from the Civil Engineering Department at Tufts.

“Sustainability is not just about the environment and ‘saving’ Mother Earth,” Hart concluded. “This is a system—an economy that works well and a society that lives in harmony with its resources. We are trying to preserve human society to be healthy and happy. It’s about supporting communities.”