How much do you have to love smoking to dig around in the ashtrays of the coffeehouse patio for cigarette butts? Revolting …
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AUGUSTA — We asked experts to helps us compare how Maine was doing environmentally compared to the nation.
Not surprisingly, Maine is doing better in air quality, water quality and the amount we recycle.
It started 40 years ago when Maine U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie sponsored what became the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. (More bragging rights, Muskie was a native of Rumford.) Because of those laws and all the work that followed, “Maine has air and waters statewide that are much cleaner than they were, and much cleaner than other states east of the Mississippi River,” said David Littell, Department of Environmental Protection commissioner.
Maine has many of the most intact ecosystems among eastern states, such as strong cold-water fisheries, which have 75 percent of the eastern habitat in Maine, Littell said. “We need to continue to protect high-quality air, water, and habitats, while permitting development in lower quality areas.”
The next environmental battle, he said, is climate change.
Click on the link for the rest of today’s story and guide by Bonnie Washuk in the Lewiston Sun Journal.
[Thinking too much about the magnitude of the environment and what we’ve done to this planet can be extremely daunting.
“What can I do? What can one person do?” can be rattling around nearly everyone’s head.
The thing, it isn’t about what one person can do or what one group of people can do. It is about we all can do. What can we do? We start small and build on small victories until we make a dent. And then we push forward some more.
Attached with the story are three lists of what we all can do to help in the long run. Try one or two from each list. Then another and another. – KM]
5 things to do to improve air quality:
Source: Department of Environmental Protection, American Lung Association of Maine
5 things to improve recycling rates:
—From George MacDonald, Maine State Planning Office
5 things to improve water quality
Source: Department of Environmental Protection
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