Easy solutions for a guilt-free green environment

Paper or plastic?

Neal Lewis doesn't care which way you go.

No, that's not quite right.

Lewis, a master environmentalist, wants you to do something: Reuse that paper or plastic bag holding your groceries, over and over again, until there's nothing left.

Lewis told me that last week, minutes after I'd purchased three designer grocery bags from the local Trader Joe's.

I already have a host of other reusables from Waldbaum's, King Kullen and The Home Depot. But it's hard to save the planet if you constantly leave them at home. Oh, the guilt, and our ever-expanding collection, it was making me crazy - until Lewis waltzed in with the simple challenge to do something other than throw paper, or plastic, away.

Whew!

Lewis, executive director of the Neighborhood Network, doesn't look to rant about the environment or make people, like me, feel guilty. Instead, he's looking to plant and harvest solutions. And not just whenever Earth Day rolls around - which is next week.

"We're in the solution business," Lewis would say later, as we sat in a cramped Neighborhood Network conference room in Farmingdale.

Last year, Lewis, a soft-spoken public-interest attorney who lives in Massapequa, took quite the ribbing because of a photograph in Newsday. He's standing there, holding a microphone, but appears in the caption as "Unidentified Man."

What's funny is that for more than 20 years, the Unidentified Man, a co-founder of the Neighborhood Network, almost single-handedly has been leading a revolution to reduce energy costs and keep Long Island green.

He pushed mostly organic pesticides on public golf courses. And won, after a lengthy court battle.

He pushed notifying neighbors about pesticide spraying on lawns. And won. "That took eight years," Lewis said, "and it taught us a lesson on how long it takes to get these things done."

He pushed swapping power-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs for power-sucking incandescent ones. (Although, he said, technology is now making LED lighting, which would save even more power, available for homes, too.) And he won. Suffolk County is replacing every bulb in every county building.

Lewis is now pushing EnergyStar building codes, which will keep energy costs down by, among other things, making new homes tighter to stop heat and air-conditioning leaks to the outside.

So far, seven of Long Island's 13 towns have signed on; and, last week, two more edged closer to joining them.

Lewis, 45, is a policy geek. He and two friends started the Neighborhood Network in 1984. The group helped initiate the Town of Hempstead's recycling program and, after a six-year battle, killed a proposed incinerator in Oyster Bay.

But, after his co-founders moved away from Long Island, Lewis moved the group away from confrontation to promoting solutions.

He's crafted a way to make it almost easy to be green.

"It takes time to push solutions, and even more time to learn all of the pros and cons, to be able to address any point anyone wants to make," Lewis said. "But in the end, as you persuade more and more people that there are options, that they work, you get progress."

The Neighborhood Network does a lot of things. It certifies organic landscapers, for example, and teaches courses in organic lawn care for residents. Its list of 15 Things Long Islanders Can Do to be Energy Efficient starts at replacing incandescent lightbulbs and ends with reducing reliance on, of all things, bottled water. (Lewis keeps a water bottle, one-quarter filled with oil, on hand at his office, to make the point that every bottle burns more in energy than it saves.)

Lightbulbs? Easy.

Water bottles? Tougher, but worth a try.

And I've really got to start using those reusable grocery bags.