Bridgewater Family Maintains 'Green' Living

It is just logical for Bridgewater resident Jim Rokosny to be “green”—and it is something he has been doing since he was a young boy.

“When I was a child, my parents used to recycle all the bottles and cans in our house, and you used to have to separate the brown, green and clear bottles,” he said. “My father used to walk around the house turning off the lights left on in rooms, counting ‘one, two, three’ out loud as he did it. And then he told us we were wasting electricity and money.”

“We were little kids, but I guess it stuck,” he added.

It definitely did, as Rokosny now does all he can in his own home, with his wife Debbie, to protect the environment and be green.

“We both just look at this as logical,” he said. “Why would you want to ruin the land, water and air?”

“We look at it as, if everyone did what they could, the planet would be cleaner and more sustainable,” he added.

And Rokosny has a list of ways he and his wife stay green in their home, the first of which being to compost everything.

“And we use the fertilizer to grow our own tomatoes, herbs and peppers in the summer,” he said. “We buy them from the 4-H group.”

Rokosny said he is planning to install a rain barrel for watering this year, after having made it at the Rain Barrel workshop that was recently sponsored by the Bridgewater Township Environmental Commission, of which he is the chairman, and the NJ Water Authority.

But those aren’t the only things Rokosny and his family do. To maintain a green lifestyle, the family: 

• Recycles everything—“we even take paper that we get from printing errors, cut them in four and make ‘note pads’ from them,” he said.
• Uses the water from the dehumidifiers to water plants
• Declines using fertilizer on the lawn and instead uses vinegar to kill weeds on the driveway
• Wears sweaters in the house in the winter to keep heating down
• Uses canvas bags for shopping and refuses to take plastic bags at stores for one item
• Re-uses plastic bottles filled with water to keep food cold in coolers rather than buying ice
• Bags leaves in the fall and takes all yard waste to the Bridgewater Yard Waste site
• Uses only fluorescent light bulbs, and only leaves lights on in rooms they are in
• Uses “green friendly” cleaning products when possible
• Buys paper products from recycled materials
• Uses a Brita filter instead of bottled water, and drinks from reusable stainless steel bottles.

And, Rokosny said, his wife makes her own preserves from fruit she gets from local farms.

“She uses raspberries, strawberries and blueberries, and she ‘cans’ them in reusable glass jars,” he said.

Rokosny said things like working outside come naturally to his family because they enjoy the outdoors.

“Bicycling, camping, fishing, going to the beach, this only makes sense,” he said. “And I’ve been involved in environmental groups since college.”

For Rokosny, the methods he and his wife employ to stay green are not difficult to maintain. He said they do not require a lot of work, except maybe the simple act of putting leaves in bags.

“But even that is good exercise,” he said. “What we do is very easy. Once you get used to a mindset of don’t waste and always look for things to re-use, it becomes second nature. Any of the things we do, any family can do.”

And Rokosny said he and his wife are constantly looking for new ways of recycling and being green in their home. He said he has several books that help with ideas, including “50 Things to Help the Planet” and others.

“My wife is an avid newspaper reader, so she finds articles on the subject all the time,” he said. “At this point, we just keep an eye out for new products.”

In addition, Rokosny said, stores like  have plenty of green products and ideas.

“We aren’t perfect, and don’t like to preach to anyone, but for us, this is how we like to live,” he said. “We are always open to new ideas that are more environmentally friendly.”

In his advice to other families wanting to live a green lifestyle, Rokosny said, he would say people need to do what they feel comfortable with.

“If I had to pick the easiest couple, it would be using the canvas bags at the grocery store,” he said. “In addition to not using plastic bags, they actually hold more and are easier to carry.”

“Another would be to just follow the local laws on recycle and hazardous waste disposal,” he added. “The township and county make it very easy to recycle and dispose of items that should not be thrown out.”