April 22 is Earth Day for Equestrians, Too

2010 marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, but it's not just our earth we need to take a closer look at. I was talking today with Lucinda Dyer, author of "Eco-Horsekeeping: Over 100 Budget-Friendly Ways You and Your Horse Can Save the Planet" (www.horseandriderbooks.com), about this upcoming "green day" and how small changes in our horsey habits can mean one big change in our planet’s future.

Lucinda made the personal choice to recycle and conserve more than 20 years ago while she was living in Los Angeles, but even then, she saw a "disconnect" between how people were green at home, but not necessarily at the barn. Like most people, she told me, she'd always had an environmental sensitivity. She even mixed her own natural fly sprays to use on her horses (some of those recipes are in her book), we agreed that even more awareness is still necessary. The amount of chemicals in our horse barns is staggering, and our outdoors equestrian lifestyle still leaves many of us - horse men and women - in a position where we use things, like sun block, without really understanding their consequences.

(Lucinda gave me a great website where you can type in your specific brand of sunscreen and find out more about their rankings for efficacy, what chemicals really are in them, etc. Find that at the end of this blog.)

So... amid the usual April 22 Earth Day eco-festivities, I agree with Lucinda that it’s important for those of us in the horse community to take a moment and consider the part we can play in conserving the world’s natural resources.

Let’s take something simple like water, a resource we don’t think twice about using to bathe our horses, hose down the barn driveway, and water our arenas.

The next time you leave the hose running in the wash stall while you chat with a friend, consider these facts:

∙ Almost one billion people (one in eight) have no access to safe water supplies.


∙ More than 3.5 million people die each year from water-related disease; 84 percent are children. Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing every four hours.


∙ An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a person living in the slums of a developing country uses in an entire day.


So celebrate this Earth Day by making a few easy changes at your barn that can dramatically reduce your use of water:



Fix anything (faucets, toilets, hoses) that drips. A faucet that drips one drop per second will waste a staggering 2,700 gallons a year.


∙ Make sure all hoses have nozzles that let you adjust the spray and a “trigger” that shuts off the flow of water while you’re conditioning tails or soaping up dirty legs.



∙ Before you turn on that hose, ask yourself, “Does my horse really need a bath or will a good grooming do?”


∙ Find a second use for leftover water in buckets—water plants around the barn, soak hay, or control dust in the round pen.


Find out more about the world’s water crisis and what you can do to help at www.water.org
a US-based nonprofit organization committed to providing safe drinking water and sanitation to people in developing countries.

This and other eco-horsekeeping tips from Lucinda Dyer are available for reprint. Contact Rebecca Didier (rdidier@sover.net) at Trafalgar Square Books for more information.

And for that info about sun screens? Go to www.ewg.org, for the Environmental Working Group and its Sunscreen Safety Guide: what's in them, whether it really works, and why. You'll also find a list of which ones test on animals. (And yes, there's an App for that, called the Bunny App, which will provide your phone with a list of companies that do or don't test on animals). Happy Earth Day. Go forth and ride green.