THERE IS NO ROTARY MEETING THIS WEEK. We meet again next week …. July 29. 12:15 at Christ Church. Please remember not to park in the parking lot ... the kids pick up needs it. We will send out details on next weeks program later this week.
DUES notices will be going out shortly. There will be a small increase in dues this year due to inflation.
LAST WEEK’S speaker was Vanita Gangwal. In addition to being a partner at KPMG, she is a trustee of the Nature Conservancy and a member of the Millburn Environmental Commission. Vanita grew up in Jaipur, India and moved to the US at age eighteen. During High School, she was an active member and President of her School’s Rotary Interact Club. Her topic was sustainability and some thoughts about taking a reasonable approach to protecting the environment.
She began her presentation by noting the incredible abundance we have in the US and how this abundance can also lead to unintended degradation of the environment. Examples cited were our ever-increasing use of disposable things like all types of plastics, from bags to cutlery to packaging. While convenient, it is now common to find plastic in the bodies of many ocean organisms. This concept can be expanded to many other types of what she described as “affluent waste.” Another environmentally harmful issue denoted was the homogeneity of suburban landscaping – vast lawns with almost no native vegetation. She cited one specific case, the near extinction of the monarch butterfly which can only lay its eggs in the common milkweed plant. As the name implies, milkweed is a weed, spreading rapidly, and it is poisonous to humans, pets, and cattle. Suburbanites and farmers eschew it. Hence, the monarch is going extinct. You can read about her full presentation on our website …. www.snprotary.org
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