Blog

Wow, have you been to the new Miller Library in Elli­cott City?  The joint was jump­ing last Sat­ur­day when I finally took my daugh­ter over there.  We enjoyed check­ing out the new space; the kids area, com­put­ers, meet­ing rooms and quiet study areas.  The His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety room on the sec­ond floor is neat and it’s [more…]

Yes­ter­day, on my way home from work the dri­ver of the car in front of me rolled down her win­dow and threw a candy wrap­per onto the street. I just do not under­stand that men­tal­ity. I mean, who did she think was going to pick up that wrap­per? I won­der, while prepar­ing din­ner does she [more…]

The home energy audit pro­gram is still accept­ing appli­ca­tions — but is look­ing to wrap up the pro­gram at the end of Jan­u­ary.  Have you been con­sid­er­ing apply­ing for the pro­gram but did not have enough details about the actual audit?  Well, I present to you my expe­ri­ence observ­ing a home energy audit: It was a dreary and [more…]

The fol­low­ing post is from Christo­pher Rus­sell, Energy Man­ager. Ask any busi­ness leader if they want to reduce their energy costs, and they will almost invari­ably say “yes.”  Then, ask them if they want to devote any resources to energy man­age­ment.  That’s where the head-scratching begins.  The idea of invest­ing time and resources in order [more…]

Last year, with the theme of “Don’t Waste Our Future: Reduce, Reuse, Recy­cle”,  you over­whelmed us at Green­Fest with your gen­eros­ity and brought your old bikes to donate to Bikes for the World; cell phones and eye glasses for the needy; binoc­u­lars for kids’ nature explo­ration; clothes, toys, games, fur­ni­ture and more for Good­will Indus­tries; [more…]

The last week in Octo­ber, a group from the John’s Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity Applied Physics Lab (JHU APL) met in Sav­age to clean up trash.  No, they weren’t in trou­ble and being pun­ished.  They actu­ally vol­un­teered to do this. It was a cool but beau­ti­ful sunny day.  We met at the entrance to the Sav­age Mill Trail [more…]

This post was writ­ten by Jim Cald­well, the new Stormwa­ter Man­ager with Howard County’s Office of Envi­ron­men­tal Sus­tain­abil­ity.  Wel­come, Jim! As a col­lege under­grad­u­ate my major was wildlife biol­ogy.  I enjoyed study­ing the life his­to­ries of ani­mals, the evo­lu­tion­ary changes that helped species adapt, and the eco­logic prin­ci­ples that made it all pos­si­ble.  Many of my class­mates [more…]

Say what you want, but I have always loved garbage.  I worked in garbage for many years, but have made the tran­si­tion to Sus­tain­abil­ity Coor­di­na­tor for the Office of Envi­ron­men­tal Sus­tain­abil­ity.  I have not aban­doned my first love, but have sim­ply broad­ened my hori­zons. Garbage, and by this I sac­ri­le­giously include recy­cling, still cap­ti­vates me.  [more…]

This past Tues­day, the League of Women Vot­ers, the Envi­ron­men­tal Sus­tain­abil­ity Board and the Howard County Cit­i­zens Asso­ci­a­tion held a forum on storm water.  The recent floods from Trop­i­cal Storm Lee high­lighted to the com­mu­nity what many of us have known for quite some time:  how we man­age and con­trol our stormwa­ter is a seri­ous [more…]

Howard County’s Bureau of Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices is offer­ing some great oppor­tu­ni­ties to de-clutter and get rid of some stuff before the hol­i­days and cold weather are upon us: Paper Shred­ding — So many bills and credit card offers come in the mail with our per­sonal infor­ma­tion on them.  If you would like to have them shred­ded [more…]