Vicki Nelson

I live in the land of the treehugger - you know, the left coast. Sure it has its down-sides - what area doesn't? But what I do like is this - it is an area where everyone is accepted. I can be who I am, no apologies.

I also like that, for the most part, people here really do care abou the environment. That's why we are called tree-huggers, right? This is spreading acrsoss the country, and in many parts of the world. It's about time.

I didn't grow up knowing about saving the environment. In fact, we were the age of petroleum. But I did grow up in a house that reused items and never wasted food. Maybe that was my set-up for my life.

My husband, children, and I moved to this area ten years ago. Back in the Midwest, I think I was slowly becoming an environmentalist, even though I didn't know it. I became nutty about recycling as soon as the bins became available in our area. We grew some of our own food, even though it wasn't the popular thing to do. I reused items, washed my clothes only in cold water, and saved every scrap of food to use as an ingredient in another meal.

Everything I did, I believed I was doing for the pocketbook. Little did I know that my actions actually were playing a part in the environment.

When I moved to the Pacific Northwest, my reality of what environmentalism was became more apparent to me. We are only given one earth. Unlike most things in our society, our earth is not disposable - we can't get a new one when we use up the old. I watch our water being polluted and wasted, the air becoming thick with carbon dioxides, and trash filling up the landfills. According to www.greenstudentu.com each American produces approximately 50 tons of garbage per year, of which 70 percent ends up in landfills. How much longer can we continue on this trend?

So, with all of the alarming facts out there, I have decided to make a case for earth - our earth. Each act I do, whether it is buying something local, taking shorter showers, or walking to the store, impacts our little planet. My hope is that everyone will do their part, big or small, in caring for our world.