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Lower Nazareth Clan Rises To Our Eco-Challenge
By Mariella Savidge
of The Morning Call
Meet the Rudis family, three generations of fun jam-packed into an old Victorian house in Lower Nazareth Township trying to make it through the day — not to mention the workweek — while still trying to respect the Earth and reduce their carbon footprint.
In our search for a family to follow for the duration of The Morning Call's "How Green Is Our Valley" project, we asked for a family with children, preferably a teen and a baby, and at least one family member who commutes a considerable distance to work or school.
With four children aged 13 months to 22 years and one parent who commutes more than 50 miles each way to work, the Rudises are involved in many of the challenges families across the Lehigh Valley face every day. The family also includes a third-generation member — a grandmother — to lend additional perspective.
In taking the mcall.com "How Green Are You?" quiz, they scored a 12, which means "You're Thinking About Your Impact." It's not very far off from a 9, which would have put them in the "EcoWarrier" category. So they're already aware of the task at hand.
Bob, 38, is the dad.
It's a long haul twice a day to get to and from his job as an information security manager in the IT Infrastructure division at Johnson & Johnson's Raritan, N.J., site.
"I saw the gas thing happening," he says, so he bought a Nissan Sentra, a compact car that gets 40 miles per gallon if he drives the way he's "supposed to." Unfortunately, his distaste for 1-78 causes him to get off it as fast as he can, so the mileage is a little less per gallon than he would like.
On the up side, two of his co-workers also live in the Lehigh Valley, so the three usually carpool, he says, unless somebody has to be off-site for some reason.
He has looked into getting a job closer to home, but local technology salaries have not caught up to what they pay in New Jersey.
"He's kind of priced himself out of the market," says his wife, Mary, 42.
Mary teaches computer science at Lehigh Valley Christian High School in Allentown. When she drives to work, she uses the family's Nissan Xterra, a sport utility vehicle.
Buying an SUV was a conscious tradeoff as the couple tried to balance the gas issue with the ability to go places as a family in one car.
"The Xterra was bad enough, but we just couldn't go any bigger. We like to go out to dinner sometimes, or to the bookstore and we wanted to be able to fit everyone," Bob says.
Inspired by The Morning Call's challenge, Mary rode her bike the 13.5 miles to work one day last week. It was fine, but traffic makes the trip a little dicey, she says.
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The Rudis Family includes (from left) Mary Rudis (grandmother); Elizabeth, 22, holding brother Ian, 13 months; Mary
and Bob Rudis (parents); Jarrod, 7; Victoria, 14, and Pippin.
Douglass Kilpatrick Special to The Morning Call. |
Bob's mom, also named Mary, 82, lives with the family, cooks and takes the same good care of them she did of her own children when they were small. Having lived through the Great Depression and World War II, she has known what it means to conserve resources.
"It's the way I was brought up," she says.
Of the four children, Elizabeth, 22, is the oldest.
"It's important to me to do as little as possible to hurt the Earth, though everything degrades over time due to entropy," she says.
With two years at Perm State under her belt, she's working two jobs to make enough money to return to her studies this fall. She plans to study communication design at Northhampton Community College.
She drives a Nissan Maxima, which she wishes she didn't have to buy gas for, but knows it's inevitable. She carpools and uses public transportation when possible.
Between her full-time job at Borders in Whitehall Township and a part-time one at the Carmike Theater in Hanover Township, Lehigh County, she's on the road a lot, but tries to be smart about it by not going out of her way on a whim to shop or whatever, she says.
"There's not a whole lot I do consciously," she says, but in the same breath mentions that she doesn't shower every day.
Of course, when she does, it takes awhile, she says, because her down-to-the-waste blond hair takes a long time to wash.
Indeed she takes so long that her father has been known to shut off the main hot water valve while she's in there.
"Yes, I take a long time in the shower," she says, "But there's a reason."
Younger sister Victoria, 14, attends Lehigh Valley Christian High School, where her mother teaches. She plays field hockey in the fall and is as concerned as anyone her age can be about the environment. She rides her bike to friends' houses and spent Earth Day picking up garbage at Jacobsburg State Park in Bushkill Township.
She's game to do just about anything that would further the family's ambition to be greener except for one thing: She will not take baths. She is relieved to know that showers are better because they use less water. Unless you happen to be her older sister.
Jarrod, 7, Is a first-grader who is home-schooled in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School. He reads like a fiend and is interested in science. He's up for anything — whether it's related to being more environmentally friendly or not.
At 13 months old, baby lan is a big part of the family's plan to be greener, even though he's not consciously participating.
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Between diapers, baby food, baby wipes and other accoutrements of babyhood, he'll have things done differently for him.
The Rudises know the planet's in trouble and they already do some things to try to help.
Their township recycles, but does not pick up the bottles, cans and newspapers as the City of Bethlehem did when they lived there. Once a month, they load up the cars and head to a regional recycling center. More than once they've been asked if they're from some kind of organization because they take so much over.
As light bulbs burn out, they're being replaced with fluorescents. The family is replacing the home's three toilets one-by one with flow models that use one gallon of water to flush instead of the older ones that use much more.
Whenever possible, they buy local produce from Amore Farms, which is sort of nearby but requires a trip in the car.
"We bike to Wegmans when we only have a few things to buy," says Mary, but she wonders which is more environmentally friendly — buying produce at Wegmans when they're there anyway or taking the car to buy things they know have been grown in the area.
Recently, they purchased a front loading washer to try to cut down on water use, but it's a little soon to tell how much that will help, Mary says.
Ideally, they'd like to take water conservation a step further and set up a system to reuse "gray water," the non-sewage wastewater that is left after laundry, showers and baths. It can be filtered and used to water plants.
Also under the heading of "major changes" is Bob's desire to install enough solar panels on the roof of the barn behind the house so the family could go "off the grid," that is, generate all its own electricity. One good hailstorm would wipe out the whole project, though, he says, so that's a drawback.
The problem with both projects is the huge up-front price tag each carries that would mean thousands of dollars out-of-pocket.
For the next six weeks or so, these incredibly good sports have agreed to live in an environmentally-friendly fishbowl, sharing their attempts at furthering their skills at reducing their carbon footprint with regards to computer, electronics and appliance use, parenting, recycling, travel and eating locally with Morning Call readers.
"I think this project will help us do more," Bob says. "We might be able to get more serious with thousands of extra sets of eyes on us."
marlella.savldge@mcall.coni
610-778-2253
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