To the Editor:
Greenwich families concerned about rising global temperatures, ocean plastics, and unsustainable consumption patterns must start with their own purchasing decisions. Environmental values mean little if our daily habits continue to reward long-distance shipping, single-use packaging, and global overconsumption. It’s time to align our principles with our purchases.
Buy Saratoga Spring Water instead of Perrier or Aqua Panna. Saratoga is bottled in Upstate New York, using glass instead of plastic, and doesn’t require overseas shipping. Every bottle of imported water travels thousands of miles, burning fossil fuels and adding to pollution—so why do we do it? Marketing and habit. But we have alternatives, and they’re better for the environment and often the economy, too.
The same logic applies to food. Buying local produce from Connecticut farms ensures freshness, supports local agriculture, and cuts down on the carbon footprint of refrigerated trucks and flights delivering lettuce from California and grapes from Peru. Local food spoils less, tastes better, and travels fewer miles. Every time we support a local farmer, we invest in a more resilient, sustainable system.
Perhaps we might even learn to “can” again like my mother did and some of my more environmentally conscious friends still do in glass jars.
Beyond food and drink, we must reconsider our appetite for new things. Greenwich is home to elegant estate sales, antique dealers, and vintage shops that offer quality, character, and value—without the manufacturing costs of something new. Reclaimed wood, secondhand furniture, used clothing, and antique fixtures not only reduce landfill waste, they preserve craftsmanship lost in today’s mass production. There is dignity in reuse and restraint.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, over 292 million tons of municipal solid waste were generated in the United States in 2018. It has only gotten worse in our “I have to have it now from China and practically for free” attitude. With packaging, clothing, and furnishings among the most wasteful categories. We should think twice before buying a new coffee table shipped from China when a beautifully aged one is available here at half the cost and none of the guilt.
Our parents and grandparents knew how to stretch a dollar, mend clothes, and reuse what they had. They were environmentalists before it was trendy, not because they chose to be—but because they had to be. We could learn from their discipline. Conservation does not require sacrifice—it requires intention. It’s time to stop being the consumer nation and start being the thoughtful one.
Greenwich has the resources, the awareness, and the influence to model this shift. Let’s not be the town that preaches sustainability while buying imported strawberries in December and bottled water from Italy. Let’s lead by example: buying local, using less plastic, repurposing what we have, and buying things that last.
Sincerely,
Connie Conservationist
Greenwich resident
