Why not join your Seward neighbors to improve and defend our natural environment?
Here are a few things you can do to beautify our neighborhood and support local ecosystems.
- Enjoy a variety of Seward gardens on the Annual Garden Tour
- Plant trees, take care of them; water if the summer gets dry
- Grow pollinator-friendly plants
- Grow native plants, to support non-pollinator native bugs
- Work with neighbors to change government policies and projects
- Contact your representatives about water quality, data centers, etc.
- Donate to environmental groups
- Reduce your individual impact on the environment by reducing plastic use, encouraging neighbors to recycle, reducing home energy use, reducing car travel, etc.
The Seward Neighborhood Group Environment Committee (SEC) would be glad to have you join us at events and meetings. We hope to see you next month for the Environment Committee meeting on Thursday, May 28th 6:30 at Matthews Park.
Last year the SEC had a lot of passion and effort around MNDOT’s 50-year ‘refresh’ of I-94. This highway brings pollution and disruption to our neighborhood, and one idea is to replace it with a boulevard. We know that simply building more lanes and more highways results in increased traffic — we get more traffic and pollution, and the same rush hour delays. It remains to be seen what MNDOT will do about this highway, but at least the cost to neighborhoods is more visible than it used to be.
This year, the first meeting of the SNG Environment Committee (SNG-EC) touched on three topics:
1. Solid Waste
Many people want Hennepin County to shut down its garbage burning facility HERC (Hennepin Energy Recovery Center) in order to reduce air pollution. This might not happen for a while, but Environment Committee members are also interested in other ways to reduce waste. Minneapolis does a good job of recycling, but we can and should do better. Right now, more metal goes into our trash (and into the HERC) than goes into recycling… that’s not right. We can reduce our own use of plastics; we should, because microplastics are being detected everywhere, and they’re bad for us. We also need to use legal and economic pressure to get manufacturers to stop promoting plastic use.
2. Boulevard Plantings for Pollinators
There’s a new collaborative program in Longfellow Neighborhood making boulevards beautiful and pollinator-friendly. They’re doing bulk purchase of soil and plants, and working with volunteers to place the soil and get things planted. We’ll be watching that, and we may try such a program next year in Seward. In the meantime, we can do a lot for ecosystem support, like planting native species instead of monoculture lawns. For a bit more, look at Your yard — a supportive ecosystem?
3. Earth Day activities
Coming up soon: annual Earth Day Clean Up on Saturday April 25th from 10:00 – 12:00. Meet at Zipps Liquor on Franklin for supplies. Bring your own water bottle, gloves, hat and sunscreen. Pickers, gloves, hi-vis vests and bags will be provided. This year’s event includes recycling, a supportive bike brigade, river art and the opportunity to get involved in our Adopt A Drain program.
Why bother working to save the environment? If you read the news, you know that the situation is dire (The Guardian has relatively unfiltered news). To really reduce the amount of human-caused damage will require major changes to our politics, social values, and economy. You may believe that an individual can’t make much difference in the face of powerful actors and their hostility to environmental protection.
However, working to improve the environment is the right thing to do. Giving up and being passive is not the right thing to do. There’s a moral argument here, independent of your religious convictions, that stewardship of almost any sort is good.
Also, there are benefits to you of joining with neighbors to accomplish something tangible. I recently heard a discussion on how to protect ourselves from scammers: social connections are a good way to reduce the likelihood of getting ripped off. Many scam victims are older, and people tend to get more socially isolated as they age, and isolation makes one vulnerable. It’s yet another good reason to connect with people — not to save the environment, but to save your finances.
Much more relevant to us is our experience with the recent ICE occupation. Things would have been far worse, for us as well as our immigrant neighbors, if we had not worked together. Minneapolis is known for a strong sense of community, and it’s serves us well. Now that things don’t seem quite as urgent, it’s time to get together in other ways, including protecting our home, the natural world.
