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By
Audrey McCollum
In a brief punchy
film titled “The Story of Stuff,” United States culture is
portrayed as obsessed with the extraction, production, distribution,
consumption and disposal of material goods. Yet Emily Neuman, 32,
Sustainability Coordinator for the Hanover Consumer Cooperative
Society (which includes the Hanover and Lebanon Co-op Food Stores,
the Co-op Community Market on Lyme Road and the Park Street Service
Center) lives a life permeated by frugality, simplicity and delight
in nature.
Appearing friendly,
open-minded and thoughtful in a recent contact in the Hanover Food
Co-op, she engaged with me in an e-mail exploration of her values as
well as her current responsibilities.
”The earth is an
absolutely incredible thing that we so often take completely for
granted,” she wrote. “And material stuff … gets in the way of
noticing, appreciating and respecting it. It’s still going against
the grain to bike to work but I love it! It just adds to the pleasure
… that biking to work is also good for our environment.”
In good health and
with many physical skills, she enjoys using the power of her body.
For example, she prefers hiking up a hill and skiing down rather than
using a ski lift, as well as canoeing and swimming, berry picking,
gardening, dancing and hanging out the laundry. Along with reading
and sharing dinner with friends, these activities comprise her
“frivolities.”
“I come from a
family with more than enough access to material resources. I
sometimes wonder if my frugality has been a reaction against that
abundance or a way to limit my world a little,” she wrote in what
was an uncommonly wise observation. “I’m inspired by people who
carve out their life with care rather than buying their life, so to
speak.”
Growing up in Le
Claire, Iowa, along the Mississippi River, Neuman was surrounded by
nature. With both parents engaged in full-time professions (her
mother was the first female Iowa Supreme Court Justice), Neuman and
her sister were provided with daycare in the home of a woman who had
grown up on a farm.
“We helped her
pick grapes and apples. We ate apple crisp and drank grape juice in
season. She made wonderful zucchini bread for us too. She canned jams
and stored them in her basement. She made tomato sauce from scratch
while we played in the living room and …we took walks up in the
woods to pick raspberries,” Neuman reminisced, adding “the fact
that she engaged us in the richness of these activities is the
important part.”
Yet it was not until
her teens, when she went backpacking in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain
National Park, that her concern for environmental conservation became
focused.
As a freshman at
Dartmouth College, she became fascinated by the influence of
agricultural practices on weed and insect populations, a topic
explored in an Introduction to Ecology course, and became active on
the student organic farm. Prior to that, she had never heard of
organic agriculture, had never considered that farming could be done
on a small scale, or even that a woman could be a farmer!
Those revelations
led her to post-graduate study in Sustainable Agriculture and
Sociology, as well as ongoing work in organic farms and food co-ops.
Then her husband’s medical training brought her back to Hanover and
she assumed her current job in ’07.
Recycling
constitutes a major realm of responsibility. Neuman has organized a
staff team to increase recycling across all co-op locations, and
shoppers are encouraged to recycle glass, #1 and #2 plastic bottles,
#5 plastic dairy containers, mixed paper, metal cans, corrugated
cardboard, EcoPak containers, CFL bulbs, rechargeable batteries, and
heavy plastic shopping bags.
In addition to these
goods saved from the landfill, the Service Center recycles scrap
metal, motor oil, oil filters, antifreeze, tires and car batteries.
About 70% of the
co-ops’ organic waste (e.g. edible but slightly bruised fruits and
veggies) is donated to a non-profit called Willing Hands that
distributes it to people in need, and food scraps are given to
farmers.
In parallel to the
wide-ranging recycling program, Neuman coordinates energy audits of
the facilities, surveys shoppers about the environmental information
they seek from the co-op, and writes for the Co-op News.
And in yet another
realm, she encourages staff to “green commute” – biking,
walking, car-pooling and using Advance Transit.
Finally, this dynamo
– who generates remarkable energy within herself – serves on the
Sustainable Hanover Steering Committee. But that is another story.
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This column was
published in the Spectator on June 26 ’09 . Audrey McCollum can be
reached at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
CARVING
OUT A LIFE WITH MINIMAL STUFF
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