Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 10, 1991 TAG: 9103070107
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It got people talking about recycling again. It got them thinking about paper or plastic. About global warming and the ozone layer.
About garbage.
"But certainly Earth Day didn't answer as many questions about the environment as it raised," says environmentalist and author Diane MacEachern.
So MacEachern, who wrote the best-selling "Save Our Planet: 750 Everyday Ways You Can Help Clean Up The Earth," has come up with some answers of her own.
Starting today, they'll appear weekly in the Extra section in a question-and-answer column titled "Tips for Planet Earth."
"It combines interesting factual information and provides status reports on current issues, plus it deals with the practical side," MacEachern says of the column, which runs in 37 newspapers nationwide.
"People have as many questions about what global warming is as they do about what they can do about it."
While interest in the environment has been dwarfed in recent months by war coverage, MacEachern insists that people are clamoring for concise environmental information they can apply to daily living.
"I don't think the interest is saturated by any means," she says. "More people are joining environmental organizations all the time."
"Tips" tackles questions ranging from the economics of recycling newspaper, to recipes for non-toxic household cleaners. The environmental hazards of juice boxes have been featured in the column, as have ideas for increasing the environmental awareness of grocery-store operators.
MacEachern, 38, selects three questions out of the 20 to 30 she receives from readers each week, choosing the ones with the broadest reader interest. She does all the research and writing herself.
And she practices what she preaches.
The holder of a masters degree in natural resources from the University of Michigan, she lives in an energy-efficient solar house outside Washington, D.C., where she gardens organically, recycles, composts and relies on mass transit to get to work every day.
by CNB