Environmental Protection and Sustainability
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Easy Tips to Help Improve and Sustain Our Water Quality

The way we choose to handle everyday tasks and activities in and around our homes can have a direct effect on water quality in our local streams, drinking water reservoirs and the Chesapeake Bay.

The Problem

Once water is degraded, the clean-up is always difficult, time consuming, less than perfect, and expensive.

The Solution

Inside Your Home

  • Be a smart buyer (buy bulk and biodegradable)
  • Buy products having less packaging
  • Reuse boxes, ribbons, string and gift wrapping
  • Recycle paper, glass and plastic
  • Read labels: Buy fewer toxins
  • Use traps to catch pests
  • Use a fly swatter
  • Handpick insect pests and weeds
  • Use fewer chemical pesticides
  • Use a plunger and plumber's snake
  • Use safer homemade cleaning recipes
  • Be careful disposing of toxins
  • Donate paint and solvents to non-profit groups
  • Save toxins to turn in on hazardous waste day
  • Recycle used oil and antifreeze
  • Fuel up boat and fill gas cans carefully
  • Use marine pump-out facilities
  • Use your "1 and 1" recycling day
  • Collect and flush pet waste (not kitty litter)

Outside Your Home

  • Reduce paved surfaces
  • Reduce lawn cover
  • Plant trees, shrubs, ground cover
  • Plant drought tolerant and pest resistant native plant species
  • Plant flower gardens
  • Plant trees near streams
  • Water deeply
  • Direct sprinklers away from sidewalks and streets
  • Wash your car on the grass
  • Get a soil test
  • Use less fertilizer
  • Mulch bare spots
  • Use a hand mower
  • Mow grass to the proper height
  • Try "grasscycling" and composting
  • Try non-chemical ice control
  • If you must use chemical ice control, use potassium chloride or calcium magnesium acetate

In Your Community

  • Join a greening committee, plant shrubs and trees
  • Plant gardens
  • Create and maintain a community compost pile
  • Organize a community stream clean-up
  • Adopt the storm drain near your home...keep leaves, grass clippings,soil and trash away from the drain
  • Get permission to paint a storm drain: "Chesapeake Bay Drainage" "Don't dump"

Share these good ideas with your family, neighbors, and friends!

More Information

Home and Garden Information Center
1-800-342-2507

Baltimore County Department of Environmental Protection and Sustainability
410-887-5683

Revised January 23, 2012

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