Heather Buttaro’s household motto growing up has served her well in her position of director of Keep Columbus Beautiful.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,” was what her grandmother used to preach, Buttaro said.
That sort of thinking helped the elder woman make it through the Depression. It also instilled a caring attitude toward the environment for Buttaro.
Buttaro has been heading up Keep Columbus Beautiful for four years. She previously was a volunteer for a non-profit recycling organization when she lived in Colorado. When she moved to Columbus with her family, she said she was looking for “a part time job and something I could believe in.”
It just happened that the director position was open at Keep Columbus Beautiful. It was a perfect fit.
The organization promotes education and programs on litter reduction and recycling in Columbus and the surrounding communities.
While Buttaro is known for laying on the horn when she sees someone toss cigarette butts and other pieces of trash out their vehicle window, she’s doesn’t expect people to become fanatics of the “go green” movement or become hard-core believers in climate change. But she does think people can make small changes in their day to day lives to make a difference in the environment and in their own communities.
You don’t have to drive to your local car dealer today and trade in your SUV for a hybrid to become more “green.” Instead, Buttaro said, if the situation allows, walk more rather than drive. Or, when shopping for groceries, use reusable cloth bags, and the next time the light bulb needs replacing, replace it with a longer-lasting compact florescent bulb.
It’s all about making small, conscious decisions in our day-to-day life.
“Going green is a personal thing, not a global thing,” Buttaro said. “If we all do our bit, it can make a difference.”
While Buttaro also pushes recycling (she hopes Columbus will one day incorporate curbside recycling), she stresses that one shouldn’t go gangbusters over that either, especially if recycling isn’t already part the routine. Start small, like recycling plastics, then, once that becomes a habit, incorporate paper and so on.
It is typically the younger generation that gets excited about being stewards of the earth. Keep Columbus Beautiful does some educational programming in schools and recyclable collection contents as well. When asked why children are quick to get involved in efforts to improve the environment, Buttaro said it’s because kids have a great awareness of the world around them.
“Kids are at that prime age when they want to dream and do the right thing. Being environmentally aware is the right thing,” she said.
Adults, though, can be a bit tougher to convince. That can be because they are set in their ways. It also can come down to dollars and cents. Buttaro said if adults can see that in the long run that there are cost savings to going green, they will be more likely to make changes to be more environmentally friendly. For example, buying those compact fluorescent light bulbs might be more expensive than the regular incandescent kind, but using them is a cost savings over time because they last so much longer. They also use less energy.
But some older individuals have taken recycling to heart. Residents and staff at Meridian Gardens have incorporated a recycling program there. They recycle newspaper, office paper, plastics, cardboard and aluminum cans.
Jeff Aldridge, maintenance supervisor, said he takes hundreds of pounds of materials to the Columbus Recycling Center each Wednesday. By doing so, the amount of waste has been reduced in half. Instead of twice a week trash pick-ups, they are now down to just one.
Buttaro said statistics show about 22 percent of the nation’s waste is being recycled. Columbus’ percentage is about 25, and 8 percent of the community uses the recycling center. Several have also been using recycling drives the organization has been hosting. September marked the organization’s sixth e-waste drive where thousands of pounds of computers and electronic items were collected.
But recycling is just one part of Keep Columbus Beautiful’s mission. The other is litter reduction.
Each spring, Buttaro and a few others from the community conduct an evaluation of the amount of litter in Columbus. They drive a route through town and rate the neighborhood on a scale of 1-4 on a litter index. The lower the score the less litter there is. This year’s score was a 1.3, which was down from last year’s 1.5. Buttaro said she would like to see Columbus score be a perfect “1”, but knows that will be difficult to accomplish.
“None of us are perfectly green,” Buttaro said, but we can become better at it by diverting as much waste from the landfill as possible.
Caring for the environment isn’t just about looking out for the here and now, but also about future.
“We only get one earth. If we don’t care for it and don’t take steps to keep it a healthy environment it won’t be healthy for our kids and grandkids or even us,” Buttaro said.
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