Ecology Camps : Local summer programs that focus on the environment offer youngsters valuable lessons on not being wasteful.

It’s time to think about summer camps if you want the best choices. As you might expect, I think that a camp with a strong eco-orientation is a good thing.

When youngsters arrive at Camp Alonim in Simi Valley for summer fun this June, it’s not very likely that many of them will be too environmentally conscientious at their first meal. But by their second day at camp they’ll be aware as never before.

“They don’t get warned the first day,” said Arthur Pinchev, the camp’s director of youth and family programs. “But what we do is weigh the food scraps after each meal and see how much is wasted. When we tell them the figures, the waste stops.”

Well, not exactly. There’s still some food detritus, but it’s used as compost at the camp to grow everything from corn to roses.

Pinchev and his management practice what they preach when it comes to eco-camping. Last year they switched to glass and plastic dishware from paper disposables. As a result they’re no longer sending railroad car-sized loads of trash to Ventura County landfills each week. Nowadays it’s only a single dumpster a week for the whole camp.

Just by changing the shower heads to the water-saving aerator type, they saved an amount equal to that needed for their pool, the gardens and ground cover.

Across the Tehachapi foothills in Ojai, an almost identical plan is in effect at Ojai Valley Summer School and Camp. This is also true at Camp Ramah in Ojai, the subject of praise in the local press for its ecological-minded work last summer after Ramah youngsters cleaned up an illegal dump.

All three camps have a strong ethical emphasis. Alonim is the outgrowth of a program founded by jurist Louis Brandeis, and Ojai Valley school was founded by Edward Yeomans Sr., a leading light of the Progressive movement in California. By coincidence, both camp programs will be celebrating 50th anniversaries this summer. Ramah is 35 years old.

All three are open to children of all creeds, but Alonim and Ramah provide Jewish children with a structured opportunity to connect with their roots. Environmentalism is part of that heritage, fitting in with the concept of “tzeadkeh” or charitable acts. At Ojai Valley the rubric is “stewardship.” Whatever term you choose, it means the kids have to work at it. Good news for parents who want a consciousness-raising program for their children. Bad news for youths who want to goof off all summer as mall rats.

Alonim has instituted a plan so rigorous that its enrollees have become the national poster boys and girls of summer camp environmentalism. The trade journal Camping Magazine recently carried pictures of them shoveling compost and baling cardboard. The same issue, in a related article, enumerated “Fifty Ways Campers Can Save the Earth.”

In San Diego County, the YMCA camps have a policy that gets the point across even better than the food scrap weighing gambit used hereabouts.

At Camp Marston in Julian, if a youngster leaves a candy wrapper lying in the woods, that brand of candy disappears from the camp store by the next day. The children, as you might expect, figure out pretty fast what’s going on and don’t make the same eco-mistake twice. Would you want to be known as the one responsible for the removal of Reese’s Pieces from the summer diet?

But fun doesn’t take a complete back seat to eco-virtue. One of the 50 ways cited in the Camping Magazine involved using 35-watt capsule fluorescent bulbs instead of 300-watt incandescents throughout the camp, thus achieving a 90% saving of electricity. That’s done at Alonim. But at Bera Creek Camp in Pennsylvania it didn’t work out so smoothly. Few such bulbs survived the footballs and Frisbees of last summer. So they still use cheaper-to-buy but energy-wasting incandescents in the “high risk” areas of that camp.

According to Gary Abell of the American Camping Assn., summer camps nationwide are gearing up to give youngsters a new eco-outlook this summer. The Western Assn. of Independent Camps, a regional accrediting arm of the American Camping Assn., has an office in Santa Monica that can give parents advice and provide directories showing which camps emphasize what programs. Now is the time to start checking it out. The best and most time-convenient summer camps in Ventura County or nearby are being filled this month.

* FYI

* Ojai Valley Summer School and Camp, kindergarten through 12th grade, 646-1423 or 646-7186.

* Camp Alonim, K-12. Transportation to this day camp is included in the fee from pickup points in the Simi and Conejo valleys. 582-4450.

* Camp Ramah in Ojai, grades three to 11. For information, call 301-476-8571.

* For information on camps elsewhere in Southern California and the West, call the Western Assn. of Independent Camps at 310-985-8070. The national accrediting group American Camping Assn. at 1-800-428-CAMP publishes a useful directory and other information on eco-camping.