Ten Things You Can Do to Nurture the Local Ecosystem

• Purchase and use only biodegradable personal care, household, automotive, and boat cleaning products
• Use only biodegradable / inert packaging and building materials (glass, metal, paper wood, etc), then compost and recycle
• Grow your own food in healthy soil produced on site or purchase food from local organic farms or farm markets
• Collect kitchen and gardening debris as well as raked leaf litter on site and develop long term compost / gardening projects at home or in a community garden
• Employ native / novel permascaping and food forestry around your home, and advocate for its use on public land
• Harvest rain, then slow, spread, and soak all rain and storm water so that it can be processed through the widest array of soil biodiversity and have the longest route to our aquifer or bays
• Be mindful and prevent the destruction of the unique assets that Hampton Bays offers through its historic shingle-sided cottages and natural terrain, employ historically referenced architectural practice, and draw from and build upon its traditional fishing, farming, and ecological heritage
• Advocate for the creation of additional private conservation easements and the development of regenerative stewardship programs on both private- and publicly-owned land
• Cultivate ecotourism, unite private, town, and county-owned conservation land to integrate ecosystem and community amenities, reduce paved areas, merge lots, create permeable pathways and constructed wetlands, and work to define our community as environmentally benign and in possession of an abiding heritage
• Define a cultural identity based in ecosystem knowledge. Every child in Hampton Bays should grow up understanding the vast processes of evolution taking place around them, should spend time as a child in the woods and marshes, on the bays, in the ocean, and forming a personal understanding of the relationship between all organisms and their non living environments

This list was generated in cooperation with the Hampton Bays Civic Association as part of a regenerative design lecture series