Local Motion Green Wants Healthy Environment

Names: Robin Heller and Melissa Cooper Sargent of Local Motion Green.

Heller is the executive director and Cooper Sargent is the education coordinator for Local Motion Green, an organization that hopes to raise "awareness about the links between environmental toxins and negative health consequences," according to its website.

Local Motion Green will hold an on Saturday, April 30, at the Richard Lot in Grosse Pointe Farms.

Heller and Sargent came to the green movement in different ways.

“I was aware but certainly not impassioned about it until probably 10 years ago when a dear friend was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time,” Heller said. “And that made me re-examine things that I was doing and say is this how I want to spend the rest of my life. And it wasn’t.

“So I actually left a corporate career and decided to spend more time with family and friends and that led to Local Motion. It’s been a huge learning curve in the last five years in particular of things that are going on. It’s actually quite exciting because this is an amazing area to be in right now with heightened awareness and interest."

Cooper always has felt a connection to the environment.

“It’s more of a lifetime interest that I’ve had,” Cooper said. “I went to school for this–I went to the University of Michigan, their school of natural resources and environment. I graduated with a degree in resource ecology management.”

Why Go Green? “There are many reasons, of course,” Cooper Sargent said. “There are many more chemicals out in commerce today than there ever have been so we are exposed to a tremendous amount of chemicals everyday.

“We can have an impact on our own lives,” Cooper Sargent said. “We can really make a difference in our own daily choices between our gardening products, our cleaning products and our personal care products. These are simple, everyday choices. If we can become educated about the healthiest choice we can really be in control of our own personal environment and therefore that does have an impact on everyone else’s environment and the environment as a whole."

Heller is driven by personal experience.

“From a personal perspective, concern about my health, my family’s health, and my grandchildren’s health, I’ve seen a lot happening and being diagnosed in recent years,” Heller said. “It seems if we can prevent it by our own actions, so much the better.”

Green Dream: “The dream of Local Motion Green is that preventable cancers and other ailments are eradicated,” Heller said. “For me, I’d say to have absolutely no reason for Local Motion Green to exist because we are already there.”

To get involved with Local Motion Green, go to the website at localmotiongreen.org or call 313-881-2263.