Taking a Position for the Environment

The Florida Federation of Garden Clubs, FFGC, has issued two Position Papers:

Ban Hydraulic Facturing in Florida

The text of the document, including rationale for the following position statements can be accessed by clicking on the document  title above:

• Permanently halt or prohibit the initiation of gas and oil extraction using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of horizontally drilled wells
• Permanently halt or prohibit the initiation of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations on public lands, which are not only home to the last remaining wild places in Florida, but public and private drinking water supplies for millions of people
• Permanently halt or prohibit the initiation of treating, discharging, disposing and storing of waste from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations
• Repeal oil and gas industry exemptions from the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Superfund Act, and Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act

Reduce Marine Plastic Pollution

The text of the document, including rationale for the following position statements can be accessed by clicking on the document title above:

• Strictly regulate disposal of plastic waste from both ocean‐ and land‐based sources
• Increase recycling capacity and efficiency to keep pace with the volume of materials collected from recycling receptacles
• Require that producers of plastic take their fair share of responsibility for infrastructure (such as, recycling plants and full capture devices on storm drains) needed to properly recycle materials or prevent them from reaching the marine environment
• Ban the most common and damaging types of plastic debris, such as single‐use plastic bags and polystyrene foam food packaging
• Promote public awareness of environmental and health impacts associated with plastic pollution, and benefits of recycling plastic waste and reducing consumption of plastics
• Expand marine pollution clean‐up programs and invest in emerging technologies to increase the efficiency of cleanup measures Charter

Our garden club has supported FFGC environmental positions, such as the Florida Water and Land Legacy, and is committed to furthering these important positions.  In fact this year our club has reduced its use of single-use plastics and non-recyclable materials; our hostesses and co-hostesses have been using more non-plastic items (such as glass) and recyclable plastics (which we collect to deposit in recycling containters) for luncheons.  We use multi-use bagging for carrying items and even sell and raffle of multi-use non-plastic bags.  Every action has an impact, and our choices make a difference.