April 16, 2005: Headlines: COS - Kenya: Sustainability: Recycling: Environment: Draft: Marin Independent-Journal: Dawn Weisz was born in Kenya to activist parents - "My parents were in the Peace Corps avoiding the draft," she says. Weisz coordinates Marin County's sustainability team, a position in the planning department that is part of refocusing the county's environmental policies and shaping a sustainable future for Marin
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April 16, 2005: Headlines: COS - Kenya: Sustainability: Recycling: Environment: Draft: Marin Independent-Journal: Dawn Weisz was born in Kenya to activist parents - "My parents were in the Peace Corps avoiding the draft," she says. Weisz coordinates Marin County's sustainability team, a position in the planning department that is part of refocusing the county's environmental policies and shaping a sustainable future for Marin
Dawn Weisz was born in Kenya to activist parents - "My parents were in the Peace Corps avoiding the draft," she says. Weisz coordinates Marin County's sustainability team, a position in the planning department that is part of refocusing the county's environmental policies and shaping a sustainable future for Marin
Dawn Weisz was born in Kenya to activist parents - "My parents were in the Peace Corps avoiding the draft," she says. Weisz coordinates Marin County's sustainability team, a position in the planning department that is part of refocusing the county's environmental policies and shaping a sustainable future for Marin
Marin's sustainability coordinator leads by example
By Rick Polito, IJ reporter
[Excerpt]
Dawn Weisz doesn't live in a treehouse. She doesn't weave her own hemp clothes on a backyard loom or bathe her children in carefully collected rainwater.
She lives like any other mom, just a little greener.
Weisz coordinates Marin County's sustainability team, a position in the planning department that is part of refocusing the county's environmental policies and shaping a sustainable future for Marin. But she still lives like any other mom.
Just a little greener.
"My children give me a passion for my work," Weisz says of her 4-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.
Her work coordinating a staff of in the county's planning department is central to Weisz's life philosophy. Born in Kenya to activist parents - "My parents were in the Peace Corps avoiding the draft," she says - Weisz has been concerned about the environment since she was a teenager. She started a recycling club with a trailer and set of secondhand bins when she was a student at the University of Northern California. "The year I graduated, the city took over the program." She was director of the Environmental Forum when she was studying at the University of California at Los Angeles.
But it's not just her life philosophy. It's her life at home.
She uses washable rags instead of paper towels. She buys her clothes and toys for her children at thrift stores to reduce the need for new goods. "They're all hand-me-downs and second use," she says.
She buys organic foods from local growers.
She rigs a trailer and a child's seat to her bike to get to the grocery store and other errands. Her kitchen table was made from wood recovered from benches from a horse track. The Marin Sanitary Services rates her as an "intensive recycler," allowing her a garbage can half the size of the compost bin. Her kids eat organic raisins out of bowls made of recycled plastic.
And she uses cloth diapers, washing them in a water-miser front-loading washing machine and drying them on the clothesline. Her daughter Hannah is the fifth child to cycle through the same set of white cloth diapers. "These diapers came from a friend who raised three children in them," Weisz says.
It's all part of "treading lightly on the planet."
It's not so difficult, Weisz says. She has built it into her life. Weisz and her husband, Tripp Brown, live just blocks from a community gardening "farm." "Walking to the farm and getting vegetables doesn't take any longer than jumping into my car to drive to Safeway," she says. She telecommutes to her county job most days. "This is my office right here in the hallway."
Living greener is possible, she says.
And you don't even have to do all of it.
"Do what you can, when you can," Weisz says.
Too many people are intimidated by the idea that living green is an all-or-nothing proposition. Being more environmentally conscious around the house is always a work in progress.
Weisz and her family moved into their San Anselmo home a year ago. They still have a lawn. "That's my shame," she says. "We haven't gotten around to doing anything about it."
But they do have water-saving drip irrigation, and time the watering cycle to reduce evaporation and waste.
Weisz and her husband have two cars and the kid factor keeps her from biking into the office like she used to.
But her husband still bicycles to work at Industrial Light and Magic when he can. Weisz is committed to "at least three car-free days a week."
The redwood trees that shade her house make solar panels impractical, but she uses fluorescent bulbs and low-energy lighting.
It's all a work in progress.
And everything is progress, she would say. It all adds up. The adage that "all politics is local" is even more true with the environment. All environmentalism is local. Weisz works in local government because she thinks she can have the most impact there. The county has a green-building program now. Her sustainability team has certified 86 businesses as "green." The choices people make here in their daily lives impact the world they experience on a daily basis.
Those choices can make changes.
"If everybody bought local organic food," Weisz says, "that would drive the market."
The 35-year-old mother doesn't set herself up as an arbiter of all things green. She's not applying for sainthood. "There are days when the vegetables don't make it into the compost pile if the kids are falling apart and I have to make it to a meeting," she says. She lives by example. She doesn't preach. She doesn't bore her friends with tips and nagging.
"If they come here they might see a different way of doing things," Weisz says.
But it's a different way that doesn't look all that different.
Weisz doesn't live in a treehouse. She lives in a suburban neighborhood on a quiet street. The diapers on the clothes line and a smaller trash can might be the only visible sign that a deeply ingrained environmental ethic is at work.
Dawn Weisz lives like any other mom, just a little greener.
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Story Source: Marin Independent-Journal
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Kenya; Sustainability; Recycling; Environment; Draft
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