Conservation Efforts

Of course, one of the main reasons to have local groups of the Sierra Club is to tap into grassroots energy to protect the local (and wider) environment. The Iroquois Group of the Sierra Club is working on these areas:

• Pesticides: We educate about the health and environmental dangers of commonly used pesticides and encourage people to avoid pesticide use on their lawn and other unnecessary uses.
• Recycling: On the state level, we worked to pass an expanded returnable container law, also called the "bigger, better bottle bill."; This would have expanded the deposit on beverage containers to cover most beverages, and any unclaimed deposits would have been returned to communities for recycling programs. This didn't make it through the state legislature this time but will be brought up again.
• Open Space: Central New York is blessed with much natural beauty but - even with slow population growth - natural areas are threatened by sprawl. One of the areas we are trying to protect is Clark Reservation from a housing development proposal adjacent to this beautiful state park.
• Onondaga Lake: We've brought many speakers to our public programs to explain what happened to pollute this lake and what is being done (slowly) to correct the years of abuse. One aspect of this has been an effort to prevent the proposed Midland Sewer Project, which would disrupt an urban neighborhood and not be the best environmental solution.
• Lifestyle Choices: Especially through the efforts of our Environmental Educator, Janet Allen, we have been educating ourselves and others about lifestyle choices which can impact negatively or positively on the natural world.