George Goes Green

End of Year Recycling Tally

2010-05-20T13:14:00.007-04:00

38,474.3 pounds.

19.2 tons.

Of recycling. This does not include the secure paper that gets collected, which I would guess is at least another few thousand pounds, and it definitely doesn't include all the items that were collected during Give and Go to be reused, or any of the composting that was done (another few thousand pounds).

Yes, it is the end of the year. And over the course of the spring semester, the recycling team collected a grand total of 38,474.3 pounds of recycling. Over the course of the entire year- 65,078.4 pounds (32.5 tons). Well done, recycling team. Well done. That is the equivalent of 12 adult male Asian elephants. Or 260 newborn elephants.

I have to add that a few thousand pounds of that recycling was done in the last week of term, after finals, when everyone apparently cleaned out every single liquor bottle they had drank throughout the year. I could tell, because they had signed and dated each and every bottle, and many of them dated back to September. I'm not sure what has prompted this trend, but it certainly makes end of year recycling a lot less fun. All those glass bottles are pretty heavy.

I also found, as I was recycling, several couches, refridgerators, tvs, two countertop grills, a coffee maker, a VCR, an untold number of lamps and trash cans, about a million storage boxes of some variety, a lot of unopened beers, books, clothing, two pairs of rubber boots, bedding, pillows, a desk, hundreds of hangers, vases, and a fish bowl. Oh, and my personal favorite, a deck of Bible Go Fish cards. I'm kind of mystified by how all these things get thrown away. We do offer a pick up for unwanted items- there is a drop off in the Student Center, where items can be left to be donated to thrift stores and the food pantry. But apparently some people were uninterested in taking the time to move their goods to the appropriate place. Leaving them instead for the poor housekeepers (and me) to haul away.

So while we've done an excellent job at recycling, we've still got a ways to go. Next year let's make it the goal to reduce as much waste as possible- and not just the bottle and can kind!!

Here's a fun post on recycling written by one of my favorite people ever, the trash guru clickclackgorilla: Save the Earth with Our Easy 12-Step Program

The Topic on Our Minds

2010-05-06T15:08:00.001-04:00

Oh, the oil spill.

I’ve been avoiding writing about it, because it’s almost like, what can you say? I’m not surprised by it. Some people have expressed to me their disbelief that such a thing could occur: we thought the oil rigs were safe! I’m not sure what universe they’re living in, but I was never under the impression that they were safe. Have they been saying that on the news? I mean, when you think about it, what about an oil rig makes you think “that sounds like a brilliant idea”?

“Since 2001, 858 fires and explosions have broken out on oil and gas industry facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, killing more than 55 workers, according to the US Minerals Management Service.” - BBC

Yeah.

And of course, the irony is that this happens at the same time that Obama, supposed liberal hope of the future, approves offshore drilling. Hardy har har. It’s almost too coincidental to believe. It’s almost like his opponents went and caused an oil spill just to make him look like an idiot. Or that some group did it to raise opposition for off shore drilling. Or maybe it is a conspiracy to drive the price of oil up… by dumping half of what’s left into the ocean, there will be less of it? And then they will be forced to open the Atlantic to drilling because they will claim, like the flat out liars they are, that this will lower the prices again.

Here is part of a statement from Oceana that I think sums it up nicely:
Despite the oil industry’s statements, events like this one will happen again unless we act to prevent them. It is time for the U.S. to recognize that the risks of offshore drilling far outweigh any benefits. We must stop ignoring government studies showing clearly that expanded offshore drilling does nothing for the consumer: it does not lower the price of gasoline and it will not make us energy independent. As we watch the response efforts in the Gulf, and try to imagine the sheer magnitude of oil gushing from the bottom of the ocean with no end in sight, it is clear that our ability to find oil far outstrips our ability to respond to a blowout.

I think this is so hard to write about because it hurts, so, so, terribly. The sheer amount of devastation that comes from a spill like this- the lasting devastation- the loss of wildlife, of habitat, of livelihoods for thousands who depend on the sea for their incomes- it’s hard even to comprehend. And what is even harder to wrap your mind around is the fact that people want it to continue. People want underwater drilling to continue. People are willing to take the risk of THIS MUCH DAMAGE just so we can have a pittance more oil. Because that’s all you’re going to get out of the earth, at this point. There are only so many dead dinosaurs we can dig up.

The fact that the US government would be willing to spend billions of dollars chasing the pipe dream of additional oil, rather than say, oh, I don’t know, cut back on the amount of oil used, proves to me (as if I needed more proof) that the government does not have our best interests in mind. It has the interests of the lobbyists that pay the most. And those would be the oil companies. When I read the statements from legislators saying things like “we need this oil” and “with more research, this will never happen again,” I’m so angry I can’t even see straight. Both are blatant lies.

I think what disturbs me even more is the support American people have given to the concept of drilling offshore. There was an opinion piece in the college newspaper just last week arguing in favor of using more oil. This just makes no logical sense. There is no more oil, and the sooner we get that into our heads the more chance we’ll have to avert complete disaster. In the article the student argued that it is her lifestyle choice to use more oil, and that no one should be able to take that away. Which is fine, except that her lifestyle choice has caused tragedies like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. All of our lifestyle choices have. If you drive a vehicle, if you use ANYTHING made out of plastic, if you have power in your home, if you eat anything in a grocery store, if you buy anything from a store, it doesn’t matter if it’s the greenest hemp reusable bag out there, it used oil. And using oil causes oil spills. There is NO WAY AROUND IT. None. Don’t want oil spills? End the use of oil. Period. It belongs in the ground. It was there for a reason in the first place.

Sadly, people are delusional. I was having a conversation just the other night with two very intelligent young men- who were still arguing that it’s ok, we’ll find a technical fix long before oil runs out. But this is not the case, because we simply don’t have the time. Time’s up. Time to make a change. Time to end dependence not just on foreign oil, but on all oil. NOW. Because if you think this oil spill is a disaster, wait until you see what happens where there is simply no oil left- when people start starving to death because there are no more oil based fertilizers to make crops grow, when there are no more trucks to transport food, when suddenly oil is so scarce that our entire economy collapses under the increased price of literally everything- because that’s where we’re headed, people. There’s no way out. Not so long as we allow the status quo to remain.

Not so long as we ignore the fact that the US government is more interested in appeasing lobbyists than in the future health and safety of the entire US population.

One last note from the news, and the only person in the news I’ve actually agreed with: "That's what's sad about this opportunity," says Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation. "We're going to expend a lot of energy towards these moratoriums when we could be addressing the underlying problem, which is the oil consumption itself."

Things to Do This Weekend!

2010-04-21T14:04:00.003-04:00

Readers, April is a difficult month for posting because there's so much going on. In fact, there's so much going on, that I thought I'd post the entire list, here for your perusal. All events are free unless otherwise specified:

Thursday, April 22
EARTH DAY CELEBRATION
11am – 2pm
Hodson Hall Commons and Cater Walk
An open community event for students, staff, faculty and friends of the college featuring foods from local farmers on our menu. We will be hosting a farmers market along Cater walk and showing the film "2 Angry Mom’s" in the Center Stage.
Fee to general public for lunch buffet $6.00

Friday, April 23
"Nourishing Traditional Diets for the 21st Century", a talk by Sally Fallon
7PM
Author Sally Fallon Morell exposes the dangers of low-fat diets and urges a return to traditional food choices and preparation techniques. She will speak in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, Washington College. Sponsored by the Anthropology Department and the Center for Environment & Society.

Saturday, April 24
Mutt Strut & Earth Day Festival
9:00 AM to 1:00 PM
Fountain Park & Memorial Row
Chestertown

The Kent County Humane Society, the Town of Chestertown, and Washington College's Center for Environment & Society will present the annual Mutt Strut & Earth Day Festival in downtown Chestertown on Saturday, April 24, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Festivities begin in Fountain Park with the Farmers' Market, live music, and registration for the 13th annual Mutt Strut. The dog parade starts at 10 a.m. and winds through Town, finishing at the Courthouse where Shelter Associate Courtney Phelps presides over a series of "pawsitive" pet tricks, canine competitions and agility contests. There is a $10 registration fee for Mutt Strut, while Earth Day and pet fair festivities are free and open to the public.
Earth Day features eco-friendly exhibitors, crafters and vendors; free paper shredding; free recycling of fluorescent bulbs; free recycling of rechargeable- and alkaline batteries; environmental education, and opportunities for kids of all ages to learn why it is important to take care of Mother Earth's air, land and water. "The social, environmental and economic choices we make today have real consequences for the planet," says Mayor Margo Bailey.
For more information, call 410/778-7295 or visit ces.washcoll.edu and www.kenthumane.org.

* 8:00 AM - Farmers' Market opens in Fountain Park
* 9:00 AM - music begins on Memorial Row
* 9:00 AM - dog walkers register in Fountain Park
* 10:00 AM - dog parade begins
* 10:30 AM - dog agility contests begin in Fountain Park
* 1:00 PM - festival ends on a happy note

Mutt Strut & Earth Day is a community event sponsored by the Town of Chestertown, the Kent County Humane Society, and the Center for Environment & Society at Washington College.

Sunday, April 25
Taste of the Town
Featuring sampler plates of the signature dishes of 15 of Chestertown’s finest restaurants and caterers, including the beneficiary of the event, the Culinary Arts program of the Kent County High School.

Participating restaurants and caterers range from nouvelle gourmet to those famous for regional classics such as Maryland Crab Soup.

The tented event will take place from 12:00 noon to 3:00 p.m in Chestertown’s waterfront Wilmer Park.

In addition to food, Taste of the Town will offer beer, wine from the local Cassinelli Winery, beverage stations, a cookbook sale, raffles for restaurant gift certificates and
a live auction of select premier items donated by restaurants and sponsors.

"Skipjack: America's Last Sailing Oystermen", Christopher White and the Watermen of Tilghman’s Island
5pm – 6pm
Decker Theatre, Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts
Join us for a powerful discussion about the decline of the oyster harvest and the future of the oystermen's way of life. The event will include a talk by Christopher White, author of the critically-acclaimed new book, Skipjack: The Story of America's Last Sailing Oystermen, and a unique public conversation with four legendary senior skipjack captains: 89-year-old Arthur Daniels, Jr. and his son Stan Daniels, both of Deal Island, and Wade Murphy, Jr. and Stanley Larrimore of Tilghman Island.
You are invited to "Meet the Captains" at the post-program Oyster Reception and book signing. Attendees will also have an opportunity to explore a remarkable exhibition of skipjack-inspired art, including photography, paintings and models by Chesapeake masters Marion E. Warren, A. Aubrey Bodine, John Barber, Carolyn Egeli, Tim Bell, the CBMM Modeling Club, and many others.
The event is co-sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and the Center for Environment & Society at Washington College.

McDonalds Scraps Composting Program Because Food Won't Decompose

2010-04-01T15:06:00.000-04:00

McDonalds Scraps Composting Program Because Food Won't Decompose

Scary cause it's true. Or is that funny cause it's true?

Pointing the Finger

2010-03-24T16:51:00.001-04:00

I was reading the book Cunt (Inga Muscio) again last night and had a thought. If you aren’t familiar with the book, it is a feminist book that attempts to reclaim the term “cunt” as a woman-positive word. I was reading the chapter on rape and abuse, and she finished it by suggesting that if women loved their vaginas, really loved them, they would not be so inclined to allow the silence and shame in regards to rape and abuse continue. The thought is, that if you really love something, you will stand up for it. What allows women who suffered rape or abuse to remain silent, and not to run out trying to find their attacker and kick his butt to kingdom come, is often a feeling that somehow they are at fault, or that they deserved it, or some kind of convoluted psychological analysis that leaves them feeling helpless and victimized but blaming themselves, not the perpetrator.

We have this problem in general, in our culture. We blame the victim. An author whose book I am in the middle of reading was attacked last week while in the middle of giving a talk- attacked by people who were supposed to be on her side. On the radio and online, people blamed her for the attack. Oh, she deserved it. Oh, she brought it on herself. She is a slight, middle aged woman with a spinal disease that renders her body very fragile. She was talking about the harm that agriculture does the environment. And for that, she deserves to be attacked? Really? She brought it on herself?

The point I am aiming for is that this happens in the environmental field, too. Environmentalists very often blame themselves for allowing the environment to be destroyed, or something. Like somehow they are personally responsible for deforestation, because they use toilet paper. They may be against deforestation, they may dedicate their entire lives to eradicating deforestation, but somehow it must be their fault that it continues. I myself am often guilty of this supposition. I have dedicated my entire life to trying to stop the destruction of the environment, but it hasn’t stopped, and there are many times when I despair and blame myself.

There are two reasons, I think, for this tendency. First, we are taught to take it personally. Recall the ending to An Inconvenient Truth. If you haven’t seen it, basically you are given a list of things you personally can supposedly do to stop climate change. They include things like changing light bulbs. I have spoken before on this blog on why I don’t believe for a minute that changing light bulbs will stop climate change. But this is common: most environmental books, most documentaries, most news reports, all end with what YOU are supposed to do to end climate change. Not once (at least in conventional circles) does someone say, you know what, I bet there are some things major industrial polluters could do to stop climate change. Not once does someone say, wow, I bet if those big polluting factories shut down, that would really help at least slow down climate change. Because it is clearly our fault. It’s because of what we’ve done, not because of what the big polluting factories have done.

The second reason is related. I’m reminded of the scene in Grapes of Wrath where a neighbor comes along and tells the family they have to leave their farm (and I am majorly paraphrasing here, because I don’t have a copy), because the land has been foreclosed or something. A company owns it now. The family asks, well, who is this company? Who are they, so we can go shoot them? And the neighbor answers, they are no one, they are just a company. There is no one to shoot.

We have this idea that companies, or corporations, or the government, or NGOs for that matter, are these entities that have no faces. How can we hold them accountable, if we can’t find someone to shoot (metaphorically)? When people first become conscious of environmental devastation (for many of us, this happens when we are children), they want to lash out at someone, anyone. And they realize that major corporations are a pretty big source of the problems. But how do you stop a corporation? Who are they? And so we blame ourselves, because the prospect of attempting to defeat a corporation is just too much to handle.

But it is not your fault. It is not my fault. It is THEIR fault. And a corporation is nothing but a group of people acting together. They have faces. They have names. They have no more power than they are allowed- and by hiding behind an “entity”, as they call themselves, they have an awful lot of power right now. But we have NO reason to remain silent and shameful, about rape or about the rape of the environment. If we love our environment, truly love our environment, and stop beating ourselves up because we sometimes have kind of a shaky relationship with it, we will do anything in our power to stop the abuse. Won’t we? Or are we too afraid of a bunch of random people who are too afraid to make their individual identities publicly known?

Rapists get off because they are sure the women they rape will not speak out against them, and that even if they do, they will not take matters into their own hands to make sure that rapist can never rape another woman again. Corporations get off because they are sure people will not actually speak out against them, and that even if they do, they will not take matters into their own hands to make sure that corporation can never rape another woman, I mean the environment, again. They are so certain of their power that they count on our fear and our own sense of powerlessness to keep us from acting.

But we are not powerless. If we really love our land, if we can love ourselves enough to stop blaming the victims and start blaming the perpetrators, it’s just a matter of finding the right person to shoot.

County Threatens to Cut Recycling

2010-03-22T10:58:00.003-04:00

Chestertown Spy: County Cuts Curbside Recycling

Dear readers,

When you read the above news item, please also read the commentary. I would like to attempt to dispel some of the preconceived notions regarding recycling that the general public seems to hold. I feel that as the Recycling Coordinator for a 2000 person community I can speak with some accuracy in regards to the larger issue of the surrounding Kent County community.

First of all, recycling is an expensive proposition. As Ford Schuman states in the commentary (and he is one of the few other people who can speak accurately about recycling, being the head of a recycling company himself), “It has always been a misconception that recycling pays for itself. Recycling easily costs less than landfilling. Even if you have to pay $20/ton to ship a load to a manufacturer that accepts it free, you’re well below the trash tipping fee of $55/ton, not counting shipping. Plus you don’t have to safeguard the recycling for perpetuity and more jobs are created.”

Recycling does not pay for itself. Recycling will never pay for itself so long as raw materials are cheap and largely subsidized. Consider the plastic bottle. Plastic bottles are made of PETROLEUM, ie OIL, and we all know oil is in short supply. However, it is so heavily subsidized by the federal government that the price is unnaturally low. This allows beverage companies to use it copiously to produce plastic bottles for your consumption. You are not paying the price to them. They are not paying the price of extracting the oil, particularly from conflict areas. The federal government (and our soldiers abroad) are paying for this with YOUR tax dollars.

After you’ve used a plastic bottle, if it gets recycled, it is then somehow the county government’s responsibility to figure out what to do with it. They need to put out the money to collect it, and, because people are insufferably lazy, in Kent County they have chosen to do this via curbside collection to make it as easy as possible. We have gone a step farther at Washington College, because our community was too lazy even to be bothered with curbside. Instead, we installed 230 fairly expensive bins directly in hallways on campus and employ 10 students to empty them on a weekly basis, and still, STILL, we are not capturing all of the recycling that goes through this campus. An enormous amount of it goes into the trash, because apparently it is too “inconvenient” to walk ten feet down the hall to the recycling bin.

The fact that the county has been successful with curbside is a stellar recommendation for their efforts and commitment. But let’s talk costs for a minute. Here on campus, we have spent thousands of dollars on installing recycling bins (one sturdy bin that is able to hold up to the beatings students regularly give them is approximately $120- just as an aside, this is comparably cheap when placed next to your average public trash can). We annually (or rather, the federal work study program) pay about $25,000 for student work. And then there’s me, the only “full” time staff person dedicated to recycling, and considering I am technically only paid half of my salary to do recycling, but spend more like 80% of my time on it, the college is getting a pretty good deal. It’s expensive. And, to top it off, we aren’t paying for containers, or hauling. The county is (thanks, guys).

The point is, we as a society expect to pay to have our trash removed. We somehow expect recycling, because it is associated with the environmental movement, to pay for itself. Newsflash: it doesn’t. It never will, unless oil subsidies vanish and the real cost of raw materials reveals itself (I’m hoping for that option, personally). Recycling is not, and never will be, saving the environment. It is diverting a few types of waste away from landfills and converting them (through an extremely energy intensive and expensive process) into other materials. If we were really concerned about the environment, we wouldn’t be producing the recyclables in the first place, we’d be concentrating on zero waste and reusables. We’d be holding companies responsible for the products they are creating, so that the cost of dealing with a beverage container was put back on the creator (and the purchaser), NOT the tax-paying public and the municipalities.

But that, of course, would be inconvenient.

In closing, if the county is truly shutting down the recycling program because they are disappointed it’s not more of a money generator, I would really like to see the figures on how much they put out annually for trash removal and tipping fees. If these costs are covered by the towns (as I believe they are), then I move that it should be the responsibility of the towns to pay for recycling as they also pay for trash removal. And if people are not willing to pay more to live in town and have someone come to their doorstep to pick up their waste, they need not to create so much waste in the first place.

I invite anyone who complains about the expense of recycling to spend a day collecting and transporting recyclables from the public. After seeing the inordinate amount of materials people waste in the space of a single week, please feel free to come back to me and complain again about the expenses. All we, the recycling collectors of the world, are trying to do is manage YOUR waste in the most efficient way possible.

Believe me, it’s not a job that receives a lot of thanks.

Toxic Chickens, Anyone?

2010-03-17T12:58:00.002-04:00

Chestertown Spy: MD Farms Putting Arsenic in Chickens
Washington Post: A Deadly Ingredient in a Chicken Dinner

This is a hot topic in the area right now, as we are in the middle of the chicken belt and Perdue's national headquarters are smack in the middle of Maryland's Eastern Shore (which is almost entirely rural, and dedicated almost entirely to raising chickens and grain for chickens- both of which are sorely contested as one of the main causes of the failing health of the Chesapeake Bay).

There have long been reports of arsenic in the drinking water on the lower shore, especially around chicken houses, and many children have tested positive for highly dangerous levels of arsenic in their systems.

This is the bit that got me going though:
"“It’s inhumane to withhold effective … treatment from sick animals,” Krushinskie said, comparing it to withholding antibiotics from a sick child."

Let's be clear that this is referring to giving arsenic based medication to chickens who are raised in chicken houses, to keep alive long enough to get to slaughter, because of the filthy conditions they live in- which are already about as inhumane as you can get.

Delegates against the ban actually argued that there is no problem with arsenic because it is natural and organic, citing its presence on the periodic table of elements as a basis for their argument. And of course, if the FDA says its ok, it must be.

Perdue claims to have stopped using it for their chickens but really have been using it off and on again, based on how much pressure they are getting from the companies they sell to (such as McDonald's). None of this is particularly surprising though, especially as Jim Perdue, CEO of Perdue, was recently awarded a prestigious award by the governor of our state: http://www.perdue.com/company/news/press_releases/press_release_detail.html?id=1224

Perdue cites their commitment to stewardship, sustainability, and family farming as the reasons for the success of their company- though they are well known around here for submitting their farmers to surveillance, harassment, and threat tactics to keep them from saying anything bad about the company, and several Perdue "family farms" have recently been sued for the MASSIVE amount of nutrient run off from their farms- including record levels of E. Coli, which run off straight into the Chesapeake Bay.

Just another example of how government officials are in the pocket of major corporations (did you catch O’Malley say he frequently turns to Jim Perdue for advice???), how corporations are able to get away with murder and yet still receive recognition as pillars of the community (AS IF), and how we are all in really, really deep trouble.

Confused Fish

2010-03-09T16:17:00.000-05:00

Flushed Drugs Harming Bay Fish

I'm totally amused that he believes the fish no longer have any idea of whether they are boys or girls. Its an odd way to say it, it makes it sound like the fish are gender curious or something.

The idea for the take back makes sense to me. I don’t know how likely it is that drug companies will go along with the idea, however. And, as a veteran of recycling programs in general, I know it’s VERY unlikely that people will bring their unused prescriptions back to the drug store. Even I, coordinator of an entire college’s recycling program, constantly forget to take my recyclables up to the college, leading to the giant ziploc bags of batteries on my counter. So it’s a nice idea, and all, but I don’t have any faith that it will work.

I’m not sure what I would propose as an alternative. I do agree that drug companies should be responsible for dealing with the leftovers. They should also be responsible for recycling the containers. Maybe if there was a mail back program? Like when you received prescription drugs at the pharmacy, they came in an envelope that you could send them back in when the container was empty/ when you finished with the drugs but possibly had leftovers? I guess this would cause issues with the mail, ie transporting hazardous materials via the mail service. Who knows what kind of black market drug trade would spring up if you could raid mailboxes and steal leftover prescription drugs. But I don’t currently have any better proposals, aside from thinking that people take far too many prescription drugs in the first place.

Any thoughts?

Upcoming Local Food Meeting

2010-03-08T15:12:00.000-05:00

If you live in Chestertown, on the Eastern Shore, or nearby, and are interested in local foods: eating them, supporting local farmers, and being part of a community that cares about it's members, then please join us on March 16, 2010, for a discussion on food freedom in our area. A small group of concerned citizens have decided to do something about the constant threats that endanger our access to local foods, the question is, what? What does our community need to make local foods available to everyone in the community, to increase knowledge of healthy foods and how to prepare them, and to assist local farmers in staying in business? In the interest of answering these questions, we are calling a meeting of all interested parties to find out more. In the future, we will most likely keep in touch by monthly or bimonthly updates on our activities, meetings, and information about local food in the area. If you are at all interested, PLEASE attend the meeting, if you are interested but cannot attend, please keep checking back on my food blog for updates. If you chose to join us, we will be doing our best to spread the word on articles, legislative actions, events, and opportunities in the area pertaining to local foods and food freedom.

Please pass this information on to anyone else who may be interested! We hope to see you at the meeting on the 16th.

Advocate for Local Foods
March 16, 2010
5:30 PM
Unitarian Universalists of the Chester River
914 Gateway Drive
Chestertown MD 21620

Even as small farms multiply and more local produce and farm products become available to consumers, the state government is just as quick to create new regulations making our access to those same products more difficult. Come learn about recent legislation that may threaten our ability to purchase our food at the farmer's market, as well as standing regulations that make it difficult for farmers to produce value-added products locally and direct market them to consumers. We will discuss what we as conscious citizens can do to ensure our right to choose our own foods, educate ourselves about the healthiest choices for ourselves and the environment, and advocate for food freedom throughout the state of Maryland. Activists from the local food movement around the state will be on hand to answer questions and propose solutions. Free and open to the public.

The Wrong Kind of Green

2010-03-08T14:13:00.002-05:00

The Wrong Kind of Green, by Johann Hari. Nation: March 4, 2010.

This is another one of those, no, REALLY? sort of articles. No, REALLY? Massive environmental organizations take money from major corporations?

No, it couldn’t be.

Sometimes it is so difficult to control the sarcasm on this blog. The funny thing is, I posted about this before, though in reference to the smaller scale version. Actually, upon reading that post again, I’ve already said just about everything I might say in response to this Nation article.

I do want to point out one other part. Hari mentions the phenomenon in which environmentalists are happy to be thrown a bone, any bone: a few trees here, a few concessions toward climate change there. Many environmentalists will accept just about anything if it makes them feel like they’re accomplishing something. It’s sad, but you see it happen again and again. They just back down and back down and say things like, well, the political climate isn’t right, and next thing you know, the actual, physical climate is too far gone to do anything about it. And then there’s no going back.

It’s so sad, and it’s one of the delusions that plague the environmental movement. We feel powerless. We have been raised feeling that nothing we do really matters, and really, how could we possibly defeat the massive corrupt army that is Congress and its multitude of corporate funders? What can we possibly do? Easy to accept the sad concessions thrown in our direction when faced with all THAT. I think the 2004 election had a lot to do with it. I think a lot of us, after staying up all night thinking to ourselves, no, there’s really no way that idiot could be elected president TWICE, woke up the next morning (or dragged ourselves into work after no sleep) with a different view of the world. No, our votes don’t matter. No, sense and the best interests of the population (and the planet) do not matter. Money matters. Money, and expansion, and the economy, and the rest, and we can scream ourselves hoarse trying to convince anyone else differently.

Some people seemed to become hopeful again after Obama election, and maybe these are the people who were still hoping something would actually come out of the Copenhagen debacle other than a lot of waffle. But really, anyone who actually expected some kind of effective decision to come out of Copenhagen was delusional. Anyone who still expects Congress, despite its immense corporate sponsors, to act in some kind of reasonable and responsible way as far as climate change goes, is living in a fantasy world. So in that sense, the accusation that the major environmental organizations are only aiming for what they think might have a chance of passing Congress is unfair. Those major organizations have a much better sense of reality than the environmentalists who thought real action would come out of Copenhagen.

Of course, that’s no reason not to take a hard line. After all, that’s how the major corporations get their way (well, that, and a whole lot of money). They stand their ground. They decide what they want and they fight tooth and nail, do everything in their power, to ensure that they get that outcome.

Shouldn’t that be what we do, as well? I’ve had about enough of waffle.

Surprise, Surprise: An Expansion

2010-03-06T14:57:00.000-05:00

I realized, after posting on the recent death of a Sea World trainer, that I might not have been entirely clear on the subject. At the time, I was so pissed I couldn’t see straight, and that unfortunately leads to posts dripping with sarcasm and not really addressing the issue at hand.

Let me start with why this issue hits so close to home, for me. I wanted to be a marine biologist growing up. I wanted to be a lot of things, like most kids, but it was always a toss up between some kind of artistic career (art teacher/ fashion designer) and marine biologist. Specifically, I wanted to be a dolphin trainer. I have been nothing short of obsessed with the ocean and specifically dolphins for as long as I can remember. They are intelligent, arguably more intelligent than humans (they haven’t destroyed the planet, after all). And they seem to symbolize, for many people, something which is inherently lacking in our civilized lives: a freedom, a joy in living which is somehow expressed by a dolphin’s careening leaps above the waves.

My desire to be a marine biologist was thwarted by two things: an aversion to cutting dead things up in biology class to study them, and the realization that dolphins are not happy in tanks. It is highly deceptive, the dolphin’s smile: no matter what their mouths twist up at the corners, and it gives the impression that they are pleased as punch to swim in circles all day and leap out of the water for the entertainment of screaming visitors. But if you have spent any amount of time near captive dolphins, and I have spent long, long hours sitting by the window at the National Aquarium in Baltimore gazing at these magnificent creatures, you will begin to understand the ineffable sadness in their eyes. You can watch them swim around and around and around their tank between shows, always the same circle, as if they are pacing, frantically, looking for an exit, looking for something that isn’t there. There’s nothing in those tanks. They are solid concrete. They must be infinitely boring to a creature with an intelligence on par with most humans. I mean, think about it: how would you react to being kept, for your entire life, in the same room, with absolutely nothing to look at except blank concrete walls? There is absolutely no justification for that kind of torture.

The main arguments I’ve heard in favor of keeping marine mammals in places like Sea World (and performing for audiences) is that it promotes conservation efforts. I’ve used the same argument myself, in favor of the Baltimore aquarium. And it’s true, these places do a lot of great work to save the oceans, and to educate people as to why the oceans are worth saving (though this should be so blatantly obvious it appalls me that we NEED that kind of education). But is that a reason to keep marine mammals in captivity? And not only to keep them in captivity, but to force them to perform over and over again for human audiences?

I could maybe tolerate the argument in favor of rescuing injured marine mammals and nursing them back to health before re-releasing them into the wild. But most people seem to think that just because places like Sea World participate in conservation efforts, it doesn’t matter in the slightest whether or not whales are kept in captivity. In fact, I’ve heard the argument that whales should be happy to be in captivity, entertaining humans, so that more people will be inspired to save whales. The thought is horrifying. If you applied the same argument to a human, say, if you proposed keeping children from Darfur in captivity to entertain and inspire Americans to donate money to end the civil war in Darfur, the uproar would be nearly unanimous. But most people also think humans are more important than animals, which, when it comes down to it, is why whales are in trouble in the first place. And really, so long as that attitude prevails, whales will continue to be in trouble: oceans will continue to be polluted, whaling will continue, climate change will continue unabated and we’ll all be screwed.

The real issue with a place like Sea World is that it encourages the notion that whales are there for whatever purposes we devise for them. They’re there for our entertainment, they’re there for our education, whatever you want to call it. They are there for human purposes alone. The purposes of the whales do not come into question. And I bet if you could ask one of these whales who have been in captivity their entire lives, would you rather be swimming free in the ocean or jumping out of a chlorinated swimming pool for the entertainment of humans who are probably not going to leave the theme park much more educated than they were going in, the whales would probably vote on the ocean. After all, it’s not like Sea World has thus far managed to end the threats to whales in its over 50 years of existence. If it had, I might be much more prone to agree with those who argue that a conservation program is reason enough to keep intelligent mammals in captivity.

There’s absolutely no reason why we should not be inspired to save whales by seeing them in their natural environments. But then again, as I said in my previous post, we keep ourselves in captivity, and seek to rationalize this at every turn. So it’s not in the least a surprise that we seek to rationalize the continued captivity and enslavement of marine mammals. After all, if we started to argue that whales have the right to enjoy freedom and joy in their lives, we might start to question whether we (humans) deserve the same.

If you don't get it, we can't help you....

2010-03-01T13:00:00.005-05:00

Western Shore Dorms Dominate Campus Recycling Competition

2010-02-26T14:46:00.004-05:00

As was explained in a previous entry “RecycleMania: Now at WC,” the Recycling Program is hosting a campus-wide recycling competition to encourage recycling within dorms. As of February 22, the Western Shore dorms were sweeping the floor with the rest of campus, leading the competition with a staggering 7.71 pounds per capita. The Hill Dorms (namely East, Middle, and West Halls) followed in second with 3.77 pounds per capita. Sadly, our fraternity housing doesn’t seem to be pulling their weight, bringing up the bottom of the pack with a lowly 0.91 pounds per capita. With all the partying that us students know goes on there, one cannot help but wonder at what happens to all those bottles and cans.

With the addition of new recycling containers to Caroline House, Minta Martin, Reid Hall, and Queen Anne House, these dorms have joined in the competition. Information regarding their per capita recycling rates will become available in future updates regarding the competition.

Here are the rates in pounds per capita as of February 22, 2010:

Western Shore: 7.71
Hill Dorms*: 3.77
Cullen Dorms**: 3.11
Kent: 2.37
Harford: 2.27
Chester: 1.66
Sassafras: 1.20
Quad: 0.91

Thank you to all Washington College community members who actively recycle their reusable materials, and please continue to do so! If you haven’t been recycling those bottles and cans, it is never too late to begin. Stay tuned for additional updates about campus recycling and sustainability initiatives!

*East, Middle, and West
**Wicomico, Somerset, and Worcester

Surprise, Surprise

2010-02-24T21:00:00.003-05:00

So I caught this on the news today: Killer Whale Kills SeaWorld Trainer.

All I can say is, no, REALLY?

You put a 12,000 lb whale in a tank and expect it to jump through hoops? Seriously? Are you delusional?

But of course they are. People believe they can tame nature, that they can pen up a 12,000 lb social animal alone in a tank, and that everything will be fine. Because we're in control, aren't we? Don't we have control over everything? Isn't that how it's supposed to be?

Of course, we put ourselves in cages, too. We call them offices. And we wonder when people "go postal," as they call it. And then we're just as shocked when a "killer" whale does the same. Of course, in that instance, it's all about a failure to follow job safety. I bet OSHA will get involved. Even the Humane Society recommends shooting the poor thing if it threatens human lives.

They can investigate all they want, to "determine what went wrong in this case", but it doesn't take an investigator to know an animal in an environment where it doesn't belong will eventually lash out.

Let me give you a hint, SeaWorld. Orcas do not give hugs.

The 11th Hour

2010-02-20T23:25:00.001-05:00

I have a long list of environmental documentaries in my Netflix queue, but I very rarely watch them (even though many of them are instant!). I think the reason is that they annoy me far too much. I imagine many of them are intended for people who don’t know that the environment is in trouble, but for me, I tend to tune out half of what they say (because I’ve heard it a thousand times before) and then become aggressively angry at the other half because I don’t agree with the type of solutions they suggest.

The 11th Hour was a perfect example. Leonardo DiCaprio managed to annoy me so badly I nearly turned the movie off half way through. If you are new to the environmental movement, or looking to be told what you already know for the umpteenth time, than by all means, watch this movie. This is a perfect film for those who are just getting their introduction to the concept that humans have royally screwed themselves over by destroying so much of our environment (read: our surroundings, the place that we live). It will also make the many people who believe that environmental destruction is bad but don’t want to change their lifestyles feel very good about themselves, because it promotes, unsurprisingly, the same “vote with your dollars” nonsense that ended An Inconvenient Truth.

Let’s start with the same old, it’s us and nature, and we have to save nature nonsense. I was glad that he (Leo) at least acknowledged that part of the problem is our society’s tendency to view the two as separate entities: we are part of nature, whether we like to believe it or not. But, after pointing this out, he went on to ask if nature holds the answers to our environmental crisis. I suppose he is referring specifically to the non-human part of the world, which yes, Mr. Smarty-Pants, probably holds some answers. You will notice that the non-human part of the world would be getting along very well if it weren’t for us. They must be doing something right, don’t you think?

Leo clearly thinks so, too. At least, he featured plenty of fairly uninteresting speakers who seemed to think so. But then he went on to ask what a city would look like if it was designed like a forest, and my brain nearly exploded. This particular bit boggled me so much that I will ignore his assertion that we need a “new industrial economy,” which means more regulation from the federal government and a revised tax structure, to more heavily tax those persons who pollute. It is naïve and somewhat delusional to think the government will ever tax industry more than a pittance for pollution, and will never charge them with cleaning up the mess they’ve created. Government and big industry go hand and hand, and you can be sure that no politician is going to cut off their own funding by angering big business.

But to get back to this city designed like a forest thing. If a city were designed like a forest, it wouldn’t be a city at all. This is one of those paradoxical questions. A city, apparently, according to the dictionary, is a large town or an incorporated municipality (which would technically make Chestertown a city). A forest is, well, a forest. It’s got trees, diversity, healthy soil structures… it’s self-contained… and a city requires thousands of people to be living in the same place. Usually all on top of each other, in one big building. That’s the definition. In order for a city to exist, massive amounts of resources must come from other places, to the city. Even if they invent some fabulous way of creating food in quantities large enough to feed all the people in cities, I can almost guarantee it will require some kind of technology (because we’re big fans of technological fixes), which will require some kind of metal, which will require mining, which will probably require petroleum, which is a non-renewable resource- are you seeing how this is unrelated to a forest? People in those kinds of numbers always require outside inputs, which are inherently unsustainable, which forests are not.

Not to mention the fact that forests, every few decades or sometimes hundreds of years, deteriorate and decay and burn down or fall down and go back to shrubs or prairie or what have you before growing back up into big forests again. It’s part of the cycle of life. Death, growth, change. Forests evolve. Species come and go. There are cycles.

Can you imagine a city like that? Would it still be a city? Cause I think the answer is no.

And oh, please, shut up about the voting with consumer dollars thing. It’s getting old. There are ways to create change without going out and buying more THINGS.

Besides, where’s YOUR shirt from, Leo?

Suspicious Statistics

2010-02-18T10:00:00.003-05:00

I read an article a while back (The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies) that brought something to light I had always known but never really thought about. Companies make claims all the time, without any of us really expecting them to mean anything. So often you see billboards that say things like “best beer ever” or “#1 in the US”, which, if you look at the products being advertised, seems very unlikely. But no one is fussed by this, it’s just the way things are. Companies can make all kinds of claims and no one questions them or pays much attention to them.

As I was driving into work this morning, I passed a Waste Management truck. Waste Management does all sorts of things, but mostly they haul trash and other waste away from businesses and towns and that sort of thing. The side of this particular truck said, “Our landfills provide 17,000 acres of wildlife habitat.” Or something very close to that, I was driving rather fast.

Now, this kind of baffled me. Landfills… wildlife habitat?

…

Sorry, that was a pause while I attempted to make sense of that. I looked it up on the Waste Management website (Waste Management Wildlife Habitat Council), and apparently what they mean is that after landfills are full, they cover them over and plant things on top. I’ve seen covered landfills, but usually they just have grass on top, due to the fact that there are vents all over it to let the methane out. The smell is usually pretty horrendous. Sometimes I think they build schools on top and that sort of thing. Apparently now they’re building wildlife habitat, which is all well and good, we could use more wildlife habitat. It’s the landfill bit that’s got me a little perplexed. Somehow it just doesn’t seem like a great idea.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t use landfills for SOMETHING. And wildlife habitat seems to be a better suggestion than most. I’m glad Waste Management is concerned about wildlife habitat. I’m just suspicious when I see messages purporting that a company is environmentally friendly on the side of a truck hauling trash. Their whole company is founded on hauling waste- they are (to my knowledge) the largest such company in the US. And I, personally, do not believe we should be producing all this waste, no matter how much wildlife habitat we build on top of it. I’d rather have the wildlife habitat intact in the first place, thanks ever so much.

But I suppose it’s technically not Waste Management’s responsibility to reduce the amount of waste produced- all they do is haul it after it’s been created. But, I have to ask, if it’s not their responsibility, whose is it?

RecycleMania: Now at WC

2010-02-15T16:53:00.005-05:00

The Recycling Program, located within the Center for Environment & Society, has been incredibly busy during these first few weeks of the spring semester in order to coordinate a wide variety of events and competitions promoting recycling and sustainability initiatives on campus. One such event that is currently underway is RecycleMania, a competition among over 600 colleges and universities to compare the efficiency and effectiveness of recycling programs by collecting results from participating colleges and universities in a variety of categories.

According to their website, RecycleMania is “a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities.” This competition, which was founded in 2001, occurs over an eight-week period and is currently in its second week. Sunday, January 17 marked the beginning of the two-week trial period, which precedes the official competition. During the two trial weeks, recycled materials at WC weighed in at 1.26 lbs. per capita and 1.57 lbs. per capita. Unfortunately, these numbers did not carry through to the first actual week of the competition, during which recycled materials weighed in at 0.49 lbs. per capita.

WC has been participating in this competition since 2007.

RecycleMania categories include Grand Champion, Per Capita Classic, Waste Minimization, Gorilla Prize, and Targeted Materials, including Paper, Corrugated Cardboard, Bottles and Cans, and Food Service Organics.

Additionally, the Recycling Program is hosting its own private competition among dorms to promote recycling. The competition, which started on February 1, is comparing recycling by weight per capita by dorm, and the dorms with the highest total pounds of collected recycling per capita will be announced at the end of the semester. Dorms will be penalized for their “grossness factor,” meaning that pounds will be subtracted from their total at the discretion of either the Recycling Assistants or the Recycling Coordinator based on quantity of un-recyclable products found in the recycling bins, and also for any items, such as food or plastic cups, that are particularly gross or annoying to find within the bins. The winning dorm will be recognized in the Elm and online, and results will be posted each week. Full details will be available at georgegoesgreen.com.

The Recycling Program has expanded this semester to include additional dorms. The only dorms not currently participating in the on-campus recycling program are Caroline House, Minta Martin, Reid Hall, and Queen Anne House. These dorms will receive new recycling bins, and therefore will be included in the competition, as soon as the snow clears and the recycling team can distribute bins among the halls.

Snow, Snow, and more Snow

2010-02-15T09:18:00.000-05:00

I’m going to admit up front this doesn’t have much of anything to do with the environment. It is a rant, pure and simple. But I think it reflects on why we treat the environment the way we do: we can’t accept a loss of control, pure and simple.

In my position at the college I am privy to most of the complaints levied by the population in relation to the goings ons of the everyday sort of campus affairs- broken toilets, out of order exit signs, and, most often, heat that is either too hot or too cold and air conditioning that isn’t functioning, depending on the season. I get just as many complaints at work as I do through facebook, which seems to be the repository of everyone’s bad feelings about their daily activities. And in the past week, there have been even more complaints than normal- and all about the snow.

Oh, I’m tired of being stuck in the house. Oh, there’s nothing to do. Oh, I’m so tired of shoveling, oh, I wish it would stop snowing, oh, the lines at the grocery store, whine whine whine. People who I know don’t like their jobs much complaining about how much they want to go back to work. People on and on and on about how the college shouldn’t have been closed for a whole week, that it was taking too long to get things cleared, that the state botched things up, that if we lived up north they never would have dealt with things so badly.

Well, I for one am appalled at these reactions. First off, knowing how hard the crew worked on campus to clear away the snow as fast as they could, staying overnight, not seeing their families, working endlessly to clear away snow that was already piled high on the ground, not to mention the places where it drifted- I saw damage to buildings, pieces of roofing pulled right off by the snow. And the understaffed crew had to clear it all away with two pick ups with plows, because one of them broke clean in half from the weight of the snow, a broken tractor, and a rented Bobcat. People asked why the snow wasn’t cleared faster. Well, what would you expect? It’s not like they’re willing to divert more money to the grounds crew, for extra staff, or for better equipment. And yet somehow they expect them to be able to make the snow magically disappear the day after it stops falling? Really the complainers should be ashamed of themselves for having so little respect for the people who have worked so tirelessly to clear the campus for them.

But it’s not just people on campus. Everyone I’ve talked to goes on and on about how miserable they were staying in their houses, not being able to get out and drive. It’s all about having to get out and drive- and honestly the roads would have been clear a lot faster if it weren’t for the people who insisted on trying to drive on them before they were ready, so that road crews (on campus included) spent more time towing people out of snowbanks than actually plowing. And what I can’t understand, is why people are so incapable of being inside their own houses (especially if they have children). Is being at home so bad? I got so much done over the week at home- and enjoyed myself more than I had in months. It was a right little vacation.

But then again, I’m ok with the slow pace. I’m definitely ok with not driving. I keep all the food I need in my house, because I don’t shop at the grocery store anyway. And I’m willing to admit that some things are just more powerful than business as usual, which seems to be what everyone else was so upset about. “Nature” cannot be allowed to stop the ongoing rush of daily activity. Snow? No. Snow cannot be allowed to cause interruptions, no matter how many feet of it fall on the ground. We must assert our control over it immediately, show that no manner of snow fall can keep US from driving on the roads.

And, to attempt to make this relevant, this is how it relates to the environment: we believe, as a society, that we can control natural forces. We believe weather has no effect on us. THIS is how we end up growing tomatoes with massive petroleum inputs in January. THIS is how we start to believe that we can change the composition of the atmosphere and not have any negative effects. We believe we, and the natural world, are two separate entities at war with one another. And, if we believe that it is direly important to conduct business as usual on a daily basis, we are at war with nature, because nature is not business as usual. Stuff happens, and that stuff usually happens for a reason (not like fate, or something), but because those weather events are important to the survival of the ecosystem. And we can fight them all we want, but in the long run, we will lose. Business is not going to conquer nature. Unless we accept the fact that we are as subject to its ever changing progression, we will get left behind.

So get over it, people. It snowed.

Recycling is Bull S***

2010-02-04T17:29:00.001-05:00

Treehugger: Recycling is Bull S***

Before anyone gets offended, I’m borrowing the title from Treehugger. And I agree.

*waits for gasps of shock to disappear*

Recycling is a huge waste of time. The fact that students spend a total of about 50 hours per week collecting and sorting recyclables on this campus: waste. Those recyclables have to be trucked somewhere, and Kent County, just like so many other municipalities all over the country, is responsible for finding someplace willing to buy the materials (usually China). They don’t make very much money at it. But the alternative is to dump them in a landfill, and landfills are even more expensive.

Why is this such a waste? What alternative could there possibly be, you ask? Well, not so very long ago in the past, there were refillable bottles. You drank a Coke, say, and then you gave the bottle back. And they washed it out and put more Coke in it. Whoa. Same with most other beverages, including alcohol.

But for this to be possible, there had to be places making beverages in the relatively near vicinity of the place where people were drinking them. Otherwise you had to transport a load of glass bottles over long distances, and, well, obviously glass doesn’t travel very well. Plus it’s heavy, and costs a lot to transport. Having a lot of little places each making soda or beer or alcohol meant lots of little companies each making their own product, often unique, often with local ingredients. There were hundreds and hundreds of brands of sodas, and probably thousands of microbreweries.

Now, Coke couldn’t have that, could they? Thousands of people doing their own thing, making unique diverse products? Bad for business. And Coke couldn’t afford to have lots of little factories all over the place- far more efficient, and far cheaper, to make Coke in one place and ship it all over the country. But not if you have to ship glass bottles back, and wash them, and refill them, and ship them out again. Thus was born the aluminum can. Lightweight and cheap to ship. Can’t be refilled. Never mind the fact that aluminum is ridiculously expensive to mine, that’s all done in Africa, and who cares if strip mining demolishes native populations and leaves millions of people in stark poverty. For Coke, it’s not only cheaper, but now they don’t have to deal with the end product: it’s all yours! Part of the bargain! But what in heavens name are you supposed to do with that aluminum can?

Well, for years, throw it in the trash. Then the environmental movement got all crazy, and you had to recycle it. Notice the key word here: YOU. YOU had to recycle it. YOU had to figure out what to do with it. Municipalities, which are not exactly money making organizations, had to figure out what to do with it. And they, and you, have to do this with every single consumer product.

But I say NO. NO, it is NOT my responsibility to figure out what to do with this plastic bag. I don’t want it. I don’t take them. What the hell are they doing in MY river? I don’t remember anyone ever asking companies to make plastic bags. I don’t remember anyone asking the companies to start producing aluminum cans. And seriously, did anyone go around asking companies to make the ridiculous tons of plastic s*** that plague waterways around the world? I certainly didn’t. And yet it’s supposed to be MY responsibility to deal with it? Are you kidding?

It is time, far past time, that we stop putting all the blame on ourselves. Oh yes, you as a consumer can vote with your wallet and all that. I’m just not sure why we have to continue to be defined as consumers at all, as if we don’t have any option other than to consume. What if we become producers? What if there are local microbreweries, who start taking bottles back again, and refilling them, and selling them? What if you buy products locally, so they don’t have to be shipped at all? What if you buy them from craftspeople, who don’t wrap them in tons of packaging? Or, if you’re still determined to keep using those multinational corporation products, why don’t you DEMAND, with your consumer dollars that are supposed to be all-powerful, that THEY take responsibility for the packaging of their products? That THEY deal with the millions of tons of plastic, of aluminum cans, of other useless packaging, instead of passing that cost on to you, the consumer (because the municipalities are collecting recycling using your tax money)? What if THEY take responsibility for the pollution they create, and not just the waste, but the air and water pollution? Why is it our problem? Did we ever ask for it?

Companies will undoubtedly say this makes their products more expensive, but I say bull S*** to that too. Coke spends billions of dollars on advertising. If their product was really all that great, they wouldn’t have to. They could use some of that money to solve the problem THEY’VE caused.

But, oh right, the global economy depends on shifting all the responsibility away from corporations, who have the legal rights of people, but none of the responsibilities, and putting it on “consumers.” And CLEARLY the global economy is more important than the environment, and our health, and our lives.

How very silly of me.

George Goes Green in US News & World Report

2010-02-04T15:45:00.004-05:00

Look! We're in the news!

5 Unique Ways to Go Green if You're Living in a Dorm

I'm just amused that every time I'm quoted in a national newspaper, its for saying something that I have never in my life said. I definitely did not say "But if you want to get fancy, try organic hand towels and bamboo cutlery." I don't think I even said anything remotely resembling that. But, ah, well, the press. They do like to embellish.

At least we got featured! That's pretty exciting.

Ten Things Not to Buy in 2010

2010-01-14T16:22:00.003-05:00

Ten Things Not to Buy in 2010

I think this list is kind of funny because I probably wouldn’t buy a single thing on it anyway, except maybe a newspaper subscription. I disagree that books are going out of style (send me your books! I’ll give them a good home), probably because I’ll never get a Kindle (my eyesight is bad enough without trying to read on yet another computer screen). I can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would buy new college textbooks anyway. And I definitely agree that buying CDs is pointless (when you can get them for free, and save waste in the process). Thumbs up to the no gas guzzling cars or energy inefficient appliances- but that’s another one that should have been a no-brainer.

I have another what not to buy list. In fact, call it a New Year’s challenge to rival the one to exercise more and lose that last ten pounds (except I encourage you to actually try and do this one). In fact, this one is even more of an imperative: it might actually make a difference.

1. Things from the grocery store
If you’re lucky, you live in an area with a farmer’s market and CSAs and co-ops. The marvelous thing about CSAs is that you don’t have to think about it at all- you just show up for your pickup and there is an array of fabulous delicious (local) produce for your selection! There are even meat CSAs and if you are in the right area fruit CSAs- all of which you pay for beforehand, in the winter- so you don’t even need your credit card when you go. The farmer’s market can supplement your purchases with things your CSA doesn’t offer- ranging from bread to pastries to jam to candles to produce to chicken to lamb to eggs and much more. Finally, for those products you can’t typically find at the farmer’s market, you can join a co-op to get (more or less) locally produced dry goods- I get flour and other baking necessities, as well as dry beans and rice, from my co-op. As long as I remember to put in my order each month, a wonderful friend of ours divides up the orders and gives everyone their bills. If you don’t know of a co-op in your area, start one up! It’s easy- it just requires a little extra time each month to put in orders and email everyone when its time to come pick them up. As a result, the only thing I buy at the grocery store is paper towels, and occasional random items like salt and lemon juice.

2. New Electronics
Seriously, why would you even bother to buy new electronics? Talk about a waste of resources. Check out this website for more on why: Last Year’s Model

3. Disposable Pads and Tampons
Many, many, reasons for this one, from the environmental to the personal. Check them out here: Green Girl Talk

4. Anything that comes in individually wrapped packages
And that includes granola bars- as well as candy, gum, tampons, crackers, snack products, and who knows what else. It’s pointless to individually wrap something when you can just buy a big version and save the waste. Besides, have you ever noticed that individually wrapped items are ALWAYS more expensive than bulk? Buy in bulk- save money, save time, save the waste!

I also want to include in this one bottled water. This is the biggest waste of resources known to consumerism, if you ask me. DRINK TAP WATER. If your tap water is not drinkable, bring it up with your city. Don’t spend all your money on bottles of water that are probably not much cleaner than your tap water, AND require ridiculous amounts of energy (and oil) to produce, as they are made out of oil, and the FDA does not allow bottles that contain food products to be made out of recycled plastic. So you can recycle all the water bottles in the world and STILL each new plastic bottle must be made from oil. Besides, even recycling uses ridiculous amounts of energy. Recycling plastic is not efficient.

5. Tissues
Handkerchiefs. I had to use a tissue again the other day, after having switched to handkerchiefs maybe… three years ago? And I got snot all over my hand. I was not pleased. Tissues are sad pathetic excuses for handkerchiefs. Believe me, your nose will thank you. I make mine out of old shirts, and just throw them in the wash when they get gross. They come out good as new!

6. Gag gifts/ Keepsakes/ Paper weights/ Things they sell at the Hallmark Store
I find these to be the most irritating things to receive from other people. They don’t DO anything. Apparently sales of them are high because there are entire stores devoted to these sorts of things. I go inside them every once in a while out of fascination: what is all this for? Why do we spend our hard earned money on things that have absolutely no purpose? Gag gifts can be funny, but it is more the concept that is funny, and after you’ve seen them once the laugh is over and that’s the end of it. Then what? Then it just sits around collecting dust and taking up space. Same with the objects people buy- I mean, one or two, sure, but seriously, some people have hundreds of these random little figurines and statuettes and who knows what else sitting around.

7. Soda
Do yourself a favor this year and give your system a break. It will thank you- as will the waterways that are poisoned every year by run off from the corn fields that go into the production of soda and other items made entirely of corn. You can find all about it elsewhere on this blog: here and here and here, to start.

8. Cleaning products, especially the nasty ones
You can clean with vinegar and baking soda. Really. There are tons of recipes out there for making your own cleaning products from very basic ingredients, and there are even more recipes for personal care products. Do some research, be a little creative and DIY, and spare our waterways from the nasty chemical runoff coming from our sinks and drains. No one needs fish kills and fish with both types of reproductive organs. If you must buy cleaning products, look for things that are biodegradable and contain the least number of toxic death chemicals possible. And buy in bulk.

9. Clothes
I once made a pact with my cousin not to buy any new clothing for a year. I used to have a serious addiction to buying clothing, especially shoes, and found myself spending an awful lot of money and time on the pursuit, and then not wearing half of what I bought. So I made a pact, and I broke the habit. Now I still almost never buy clothing, unless I really need something, and when I do I try and give away at least one item in my closet (to keep it even). I think in the last year I’ve bought: underwear, new snow boots, and leggings (which I wear every day). Definitely saves an awful lot of money, and reduces waste.

10. iPhones
This one is just because they annoy me. I know I already put “electronics” on the list, but I hold a special level of dislike in my heart for iPhones and Blackberries and the rest of them. When my dad is interrupting conversations to check his email on his Blackberry, and my friends are surreptitiously taking pictures of me and uploading them to facebook on their iPhones while we’re hanging out, I develop more and more reasons why the internet should just stay on the darn computer.

Forget Shorter Showers

2010-01-06T12:28:00.002-05:00

Forget Shorter Showers

This is so spot on I almost don't feel the need to comment on it, except I think a lot of people might be confused by the message. But take a look at that statistic: if EVERYONE in the US did ALL of the things Al Gore promotes at the end of Inconvenient Truth, they'd still only reduce emissions by 22%.

22%, people. That's not exactly ending global warming.

It's not that it doesn't help. It's not that we should all go around leaving all our lights on all the time, because yes, the old saying "every little bit helps" stands true. It is, however, why I don't beat myself up when I take twenty minute showers.

I am not releasing billions of tons of carbon emissions into the air. Industries are emitting billions of tons of carbon emissions into the air. Now, whenever I've pointed this out to people, and suggested possibly shutting down industries, they usually reply with cries of horror and "no, that's not possible!" They then go on to tell me that it's me: the industries are producing all this stuff for me. Well, no, not really. Vote with my dollars? I do. I don't buy anything. Seriously, I really don't buy anything, except every once in a while a new pair of underwear. Oh, and soy milk, I still buy soy milk. But that's beside the point: I don't want the industries to keep producing things. I never asked them to produce all these (mostly) useless things. And yet somehow its supposed to be my fault that the industries keep emitting tons and tons of carbon and pollute the water and all the rest.

I get really, really tired of the arguments that put all the blame on consumers. Even if you stop consuming, which is next to impossible, because you are an animal and you have to consume SOMETHING to stay alive, you will not stop carbon emissions. You will not stop aquifers from drying up. You will not stop the production of millions of tons of waste. You really won't even make a dent- not compared to industry, government, and military uses. But you certainly aren't going to see Al Gore on TV telling everyone to take out industrial plants. Can you imagine? He'd be thrown in jail, or at the very least discredited and never heard from again. His supporters, after all, own many of the very corporate industries that are causing quite a lot of the pollution. Hm.

None of this is to say you don't have any power as an individual. You have quite a lot, as a matter of fact. But you can be guaranteed that any action that is condoned by people who stand to make money off it probably will not stop the destruction. Just a thought.

Also I love the phrase "systematic misdirection." I think that sums things up quite nicely.

Side with the Living

2010-01-05T12:14:00.000-05:00

Side with the Living

Lovely article by Derrick Jensen.

Tidal Wave of Recycling

2009-12-22T12:43:00.002-05:00

Here's a fun holiday picture to make up for the gloom and doom:

The Cove

2009-12-22T12:24:00.004-05:00

Well, I was amused to spot one of the people in the film wearing a Sharkwater tshirt, having shown that film at the college a few years back.

They’re very similar films, Sharkwater and The Cove, except The Cove is (sorry Sharkwater guys, we love you) overall a little more coherent and compelling. Part of that is the underlying narrative which gives the film its name: a group of concerned activists discover a place on the coast of Japan where thousands of dolphins are annually driven in to shore, where they are rounded up and captured to be sold in the live dolphin trade. The dolphins that aren’t taken, including infants, are herded into a nearby secret cove where they are slaughtered for their meat, which is packaged as whale meat in Japan since the Japanese do not traditionally eat dolphin. The group of activists decide they must infiltrate this cove and film the slaughter process to get the word out to people the world over.

The film definitely had me on the edge of my seat, as it combines real life activism with a kind of Ocean’s 11 crack team operation suspense (they make the reference themselves in the film, but I found it to be fairly accurate). They obviously get the footage, and by the time you finally get around to the slaughter part your brain feels like it’s about to explode. Well, mine did. I was so angry that things like this constantly continue to go on that it was a miracle I didn’t run from my house screaming. It wasn’t simply the slaughter- it was the capture and trade of live dolphins, it was the fact that they were hiding that they sold the meat, which is highly contaminated with mercury, it was that children were dying of mercury poisoning because someone was trying to make money- it was the Japanese representative to the IWC blaming the decline in global fisheries on whales, who, according to him, eat too many fish- and backing it up with "scientific" evidence.

None of this is actually surprising. If you’re still surprised that stuff like this goes on, you’re living in a naïve fantasy world. And maybe I’m bitter and cynical, but stuff like this is going to CONTINUE to go on. Endlessly, maybe. Because no matter how many movies you make about this stuff, it doesn’t stop. Making movies does not stop people from slaughtering whales. Nor does writing letters, the suggestion given by the website of The Cove. Yes, write letters. Go for it. To whom? Who are you going to write a letter to who’s actually going to stop these people? It’s great to raise awareness, for people to know what’s going on. But everyone in the world being aware that dolphins are being slaughtered is not going to stop them from being slaughtered. Stopping people from slaughtering them is going to stop them.

Oddly enough the better depiction of how to stop people killing whales is to be found on South Park- given, they do a bang up job of making fun of everyone in the process, but that’s what the point of the show is. But as always, decide for yourself. Watch the movie, get angry, and decide for yourself if “letter writing” is the appropriate response to that slaughter- to the man who believes whales eating too much are responsible for the catastrophic decline in global fisheries- to the slaughter of millions of sharks- to all the rest of it.

Oh. And happy holiday.

Compost Testing Yields Good Results

2009-11-13T15:46:00.008-05:00

Since the start of this semester, it has been my goal to put some science behind the composting that goes on at Washington College, and yes, we do compost by the way. Mid-September, I met with Dr. Sherman, associate professor of chemistry at Washington College who specializes in soil chemistry. She agreed to guide me through the testing and soon I was on my way to determining the quality of our compost.

The procedures were taken from the manual Test Methods for the Examination of Composting and Compost (TMECC), developed by the U.S. Composting Council. The purpose of following these procedures rather than our own is to have the ability to analyze our compost according to widely used standards. Also, in the future we may want to market our compost to the public, and following the TMECC procedures will allow us to put a Seal of Testing Assurance on our compost.

So far, three tests have been performed on the compost from last year, which finished decomposing over the summer. It has been tested for pH, conductivity (soluble salt concentration), and moisture. It is still in the process of being tested for organic matter, which will tell us the percentage of carbon-based materials in the compost. This does not, however, tell us the carbon to nitrogen ratio which is most important during the process of composting, determining the ability for the pile to decompose aerobically and at the correct temperature. This test is quite complicated, so we must send samples to select labs with the proper equipment.

These are the results:

pH: 7.43
Conductivity: 10.83 dS/m
Percent Moisture: 42.8%

Analysis of the results:

A pH within the range of 6.0 and 7.5 is optimum for compost according to the TMECC. In this range, necessary nutrients are available for microbes and the compost can decompose readily. If the pH were below or above this range, necessary biological processes would not occur. A pH within this range indicates that nutrients necessary for plant growth are available. The presence of toxic metals is also an important factor in compost quality. Toxic metals are indicated by a pH less than 5, so we do not need to be concerned about toxic metals in our compost.

Electrical conductivity measures the soluble salt concentration in a sample. Salts are important factors in compost quality because high concentrations can damage seedlings, prevent or delay germination, and decrease nutrient availability. Low concentrations may indicate low fertility levels. Typical compost samples have a conductivity of 1.0 to 10.0 dS/m, and although our reading was slightly higher, it is not excessively high and will not likely damage plants when mixed in with soil.

The percent moisture measures the amount of water in the sample. Percent moisture does not really affect its quality, but rather its ease of handling and transportation. A preferred moisture range is 40-50%, so our compost should be easy to handle.

By the end of the semester we should have results for the organic matter tests as well as results from a sample being sent to a soil analysis lab to determine carbon/nitrogen ratio.

You may be wondering about the actual application of the compost on campus. Some of the compost from last year’s pile has just been applied in front of Daly Hall. Now with these data we can rest assured that the plants are growing in quality compost. Look for signs in front of Daly indicating the use of the compost and be on the lookout for more signs in other areas in the future!

The Cutest Little Trash Collector

2009-11-11T11:42:00.001-05:00

That would be me, apparently. At least that’s what I was called, while collecting the recycling the other morning.

The funny thing is, I basically am a trash collector. Some people like to make a big fuss and insist that we’re collecting recycling, as if this makes the act of collecting it inherently different from collecting trash. The end use is different, certainly. The recycling gets, you know, recycled. But when it comes down to actually going through every building and pulling out bags of bottles and cans and hauling them all over campus, it feels a lot like trash collection to me, except the trash goes straight in the compacter. We have to sort the recycling. By hand.

It’s the sorting that really gets to you, after a while. It would be one thing if you grabbed a bag of recycling, and it was full of clean bottles and cans that had been rinsed and emptied. But chances are someone threw a full cup of coffee in the recycling, and neither the cup nor the coffee are recyclable. Most of our bins around campus sport prominent labels that read “BOTTLES AND CANS ONLY”, but somehow we consistently end up with objects which are neither bottles or cans. Paper coffee cups are a popular addition, as are those greenware cups from the dining hall. Hate to break it to you, campus, but just because it says “greenware,” they do not suddenly become recyclable. They are made out of corn. Technically they could be composted if we had a way to collect them and a much bigger composting system. But they can not go in with the petroleum based plastic bottles.

The thing that really gets me is how, even when we put a big giant label on something that says “NO CUPS,” you will lift the lid and, surprise, there are cups.

This has me a bit worried. Is our campus illiterate? This idea was suggested to me by another staff member who was astonished by the amount of trash I displayed in one bag of recycling I had pulled. “But why would people but trash in the recycling?” he asked, perplexed. Possibly they can’t read the signs.

But we decided to start asking students, and see if there was another answer. It seems unlikely that students were able to get accepted to the college if they were unable to read simple words like “NO” and “CUPS.” The common answer seems to be that there aren’t enough trash cans. It is far more convenient to put your trash in one of the many, many recycling bins on campus than to hunt down a trash can.

Now wait a minute- I thought we didn’t have enough bins? This is what I hear all the time, when people are trying to tell me that we don’t collect enough recycling, that recycling isn’t convenient enough, that I need to buy more bins. But, as it turns out, we have too many bins. And not enough trash cans.

Unfortunately that’s not something I’m allowed to put in my budget. Any ideas, dear readers, on how to keep the trash out of the recycling bins, in lieu of buying appropriate trash receptacles? Because the cutest little trash collector is getting a little tired of getting covered in coffee every morning.

One Day Only, Hazardous Waste and Recycling Drop Off

2009-11-04T12:19:00.003-05:00

MIDSHORE HOUSEHOLD HAZARDOUS WASTE COLLECTION

MERCURY THERMOMETER COLLECTION

"eCycle" - CONSUMER ELECTRONICS RECYCLING

SATURDAY, NOV. 7 - 8 am to 2 pm - DENTON, MD - Free !

Click below for the full announcement.

Household HAZ Waste & eCycling events on Saturday, Nov. 7 - (One Day Only)

Rain or Shine, 8 am to 2 pm

Caroline County Public Works, Denton, MD

For your information – SEE DETAILS BELOW or visit www.midshorerecycling.org regarding specifics about:

* A one day collection of old fuels, solvents, lawn & garden pesticides, oil-based painting products and many more items, including Mercury Thermometers.

* A Recycling event for electronics such as computers, computer peripherals, TV's and many other electronic items.

DIRECTIONS:
From West:
Take Route 404 East to Denton (stay on 404 East, don't take Business 404)
Cross Choptank River
Right at Denton / Greensboro Exit (McDonalds, Pizza Hut)
Right onto Route 619 South (6th Street)
Right on Wilmuth.
For GPS & Mapping programs, the street address is 520 Wilmuth St, Denton, MD 21629

Future Events:
* Spring 2010 - Queen Anne's County, Date & Location TBA
* Fall 2010 - Talbot County, Date & Location TBA
* Spring 2011 - Kent County, Date & Location TBA
* Fall 2011 - Caroline County, Date & Location TBA

Who May Participate:
* Residents of Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne's & Talbot Counties
* NO Business, Industrial or Commercial Farm Waste
* Residency and Household Status Verification will be requested

What Will Be Accepted:
* Gasoline, Gas/oil Mixes, Fuels
* Acids
* Cleaners
* Solvents
* Automotive Fluids
* Bleach
* Ammonia
* Pool Chemicals
* Dark Room Chemicals
* Household and Lawn & Garden Pesticides
* Insecticides & Herbicides
* Painting Products: Oil Based Paints, Paint Thinner, Turpentine, Wood Preservatives, Wood Strippers, etc.
* Dispose of solidified LATEX paint with trash - to solidify, add dirt, mulch, kitty litter, etc.

Pre-arrange large loads. Empty fuel containers returned upon request. Stall will unload vehicles.

What Will NOT be accepted:
* Explosives
* Ammunition (contact Fire Marshall at (410) 822-7609)
* Medical Waste
* Radioactive Materials
* Picric Acid (Don't transport - call MDE at (866) 633-4686 or HazMat Co.)
* Compressed Gas Cylinders (propane, refrigerant, etc.)
* Asbestos
* Smoke Detectors
* Materials from BUSINESS, INDUSTRIAL, OR COMMERCIAL FARM SOURCES

Suggestions:
* Buy quantities that match the task
* Try to use materials up
* Find a use or reuse for materials
* Follow label instructions
* Label all items & store in proper containers
* Choose safer products & substitutes
* Keep out of reach of children
* Put dirty empty cans in trash
* Recycle clean & empty metal cans
* Recycle lead acid vehicle & marine batteries at retailer
* Recycle motor oil, antifreeze and tires at existing transfer stations during normal operating hours
* Motor Oil & Anti-Freeze Dropoff Locations
* Recycle Rechargeable (Ni-Cad, etc.) batteries at Radio Shack, True Value and other location see www.rbrc.org
* Don't bring latex paint
* Solidify & dispose of latex paint with trash

Project Partners:

Midshore Region - (410) 758-6605
Caroline County - (410) 479-4040 or (410) 479-0520
Kent County - (410) 778-7448
Queen Anne's County - (410) 758-2697
Talbot County - (410) 770-8170
Midshore Landfill (MES) - (410) 820-8383
MD Dept of the Environment - (800) 633-6101

Funded by Midshore Counties (Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne's, Talbot) & available grants.

__________________________________________________________________
Mercury Thermometer Collection

Turn in old mercury thermometers:

* Weekdays at either the Kent or Queen Anne's County Health Departments
o Kent County Health Dept (410) 778-1350
o Queen Anne's County Health Dept (410) 758-0720

* At the Fall 2009 HHW Collection Event
o Where & When:
+ Saturday, November 7, 2009
+ 8:00am to 2:00pm
+ Caroline County Dept of Public Works - Denton, MD
+ See Directions Above

Visit the Maryland Department of the Environment's Mercury Website

__________________________________________________________________
Consumer Electronics Recycling

Where & When: (also see new drop-off sites below)
* Saturday, November 7, 2009
* 8:00am to 2:00pm
* Caroline County Dept of Public Works - Denton, MD
* See Directions Above

What will be accepted:

Computers:
* CPUs, Keyboards, Monitors*, Mice, Printers, Cables, Modems
* Computer Speakers, Scanners, External Disc Drives, most other peripherals
* Note - for computer equipment only, see the list of new county drop-off locations below.

Other Electronics:
* Televisions*, Remote Controls, VCRs, CD Players, DVD Players
* Calculators, Cell Phones, Telephones, Radios, CB Radios, Stereos^
* Facsimile Machines, Answering Machines, Copiers

Pre-arrange Large Loads
*Recycling fees for TVs and Monitors will be waived for the November 7, 2009 collection event.

Please assist with unloading, if able.

What will be NOT be accepted:
* Large or small appliances, power tools, household items, manuals, diskettes, packaging
^Wooden-cased TVs, stereos or speakers

General E-Cycling Information:
* Typical monitors & televisions have 4 pounds of lead
* Lead & other toxic and valuable metals can be recovered and reused
* These bulky items with toxic materials can be kept out of the landfill
* This event is a pilot program with the Maryland Department of the Environment, Midshore Regional Recycling Program and eCycling partners.

New - Computer recycling drop-off sites were recently set up in each Midshore County for computers & computer peripherals;

*
Kent County - Nicholson Drop-Off Center near Chestertown;
*
Queen Anne’s County - Grasonville Transfer Station in (8-5 daily - except Thursdays & Sundays);
*
Caroline County - Hobbs Transfer Station near Denton (Tues, Wed, Fri 11-6; and Sat. 8-4 ) ;
*
Talbot County - Chesapeake Center at 713 Dover Road in Easton, by appointment on weekdays with Lisa Korrell at 410-822-4122, for details, there is $10 fee for monitors (TV's also accepted: $15 fee) .

Chickening Out, Pt 2

2009-10-29T15:09:00.001-04:00

The reason the whole chicken thing is so significant (aside from the fact that I broke a nearly ten year hiatus on meat), is what it implies. When I was standing there watching the chickens have their throats slit with one of my neighbors, she asked why I had decided that I needed to watch the chickens die. She wasn’t the only one- a lot of people have been asking why I couldn’t just decide to start eating meat, why I had to be there to witness the blood (there’s less than you’d think) and guts and gore (which is mostly fat).

And I told her that my biggest problem with our food system is that it allows you to look away. A live, feathered chicken looks absolutely nothing like the chicken you buy in the grocery store, and it’s amazing how quickly after death they cease to look like animals and more like hunks of meat. And that’s fine- you wouldn’t want to eat it with all the feathers on- but people in our culture have the luxury of not having the faintest clue where their food comes from. And when you don’t know where your food comes from- especially when it comes in a bright and shiny package in the store- you divorce yourself not only from the knowledge of what went into the process of bringing that food to your table, but from the responsibility of choosing foods that are not only going to nurture your body, but are thoughtful, humane, and environmentally friendly choices.

In direct contrast to my afternoon standing outside in the sunshine butchering chickens, last night the college showed a PBS Frontline feature called “Poisoned Waters.” In it, journalist Hedrick Smith explores the causes of the vast amounts of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, pollution that never seems to abate regardless of how much money we pour into the problem. And he traces that pollution, unsurprisingly, back to CAFOs- Confined (or Concentrated) Animal Feeding Operations, a term more commonly used to apply to cattle, but which can also refer to chickens. The audience around me gasped at images of vast chicken sheds- often holding as many as four hundred thousand chickens in one long building. Chickens live in close, cramped quarters, usually in darkness, frightened and falling all over one another. They end their lives by being unceremoniously dumped into a truck, driven down the highway to one of the plants (plenty of ‘em down around Salisbury), and butchered on an assembly line. Stainless steel belts filled the screen- workers in gloves and hairnets and masks each making one cut, each only doing one part of the process, as fast as possible- and certainly not talking to each other. I had to lean over to the person next to me and point out the difference- our slaughter was a community event- people came to see their chickens before picking them up, they brought their kids, they talked and caught up and brought snacks. Not so in the poultry industry.

Smith interviews Jim Perdue, Chairman of Perdue Farms, one of the biggest poultry growers on the shore. Perdue argues that to succeed in business you need efficiency- and “efficiency is often size. Things had to become bigger to keep costs lower.” And this does indeed keep prices down. But chickens on the Delmarva, in addition to providing cheap chicken, produce about 1.5 billion pounds of manure. A year. And there’s not a whole lot you can do with 1.5 billion pounds of chicken s***.

Instead, a lot of the nutrients are washed into the bay. At one site where manure tainted water was running off into the bay, E. coli counts were found to be 48,392 colonies. The standard for clean water is 126. Arsenic was found at 9 times the standard levels- not to mention the high doses of nitrogen and phosphorus, which cause the algae blooms that suck the oxygen from the bay and cause massive fish kills every year.

This was no surprise to me. After all, there was a reason I was only going to eat chicken from a farm where the chickens are raised on grass, and where the manure is just tramped down into the soil, where new grass grows up out of it. You can only do so many chickens this way, and chances are it is a far more expensive process. It is nowhere near efficient. Efficiency doesn’t even begin to account for expenses like pausing in cleaning a chicken to explain to a child why we saved out all the livers (for fishing) and what that green stuff was (accidentally slicing into a gall bladder). Not to mention that most of us had never butchered a chicken before, and kept pausing to compare techniques and debate over whether or not we’d gotten the lungs out (they are tricky little things).

The one problem I had with the film was its’ sideways attack on farmers. No, it’s not right that farmers allow so many nutrients to wash away from their chicken operations that the bay is barely functional. But the farmers are not the only culprit. The film spent a long time attacking the poultry industry- the CEOs who could very easily assist their farmers in upgrading their farms to manage wastewater and to prevent those nutrients from escaping into the bay- but who will not do so because of the cost. They certainly share a far greater portion of the blame than many of the farmers, who aren’t given a whole lot of options if they want to keep their land.

But there is one other place where the blame can squarely fall. After all, would Perdue produce millions and millions of chickens if no one was eating them?

What if the millions of people who eat chicken EVERY DAY demanded that chicken operations prevented those pollutants from running off into the water? What if millions of people actually visited the chickens they were eating, and then watched them being slaughtered, and took a turn at helping with the butchering?

Do you think we’d still have the system we do?

You can watch the full PBS special here: Poisoned Waters

Chickening Out

2009-10-29T14:25:00.001-04:00

So yesterday I butchered a chicken.

Actually, I cleaned a few chickens- I didn’t do any killing because it requires a firm hand and a steady stroke, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get all the way through the jugular quickly enough to prevent the chicken from too much pain.

Are you grossed out yet? I hope not.

I’ve been a vegetarian for about 9 years. And this week I ate a piece of chicken. It’s been an ongoing internal debate for months now- or possibly years- ever since I started spending time with people who raise chickens. And with chickens. And then started thinking to myself- well, why not, really? If my primary reason for not eating meat is that I disagree with the conventional method of raising and slaughtering animals, and here I have found a community of people who raise chickens in a sustainable, humane way, what are my reasons for not eating meat?

I really didn’t have any. I’ve never been much for the “its cute, so you can’t eat it,” sort of argument, because while animals are very cute and deserve to live long happy lives, there’s a line in there somewhere. Lions certainly aren’t contemplating whether or not the zebras are too cute to eat.

But clearly part of what makes us human is our ability to reason about things, sometimes endlessly. And so I decided that if I was going to eat a chicken, I wanted to meet the chicken. And I wanted to witness every aspect of its life, from birth to death, and let the chicken tell me if it was really ok. I spent hours with these chickens- held them, pet them, watched them run around in their outdoor pen, eating bugs and watermelons and grains. I found that chickens aren’t very talkative creatures.

When the time came to watch the chickens die, I was afraid I’d be grossed out. I was afraid I would throw up or something- and I was very afraid that I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. But my friend told me something very wise: no one has to be good at everything. And that includes killing. I’m very good at making clothes. He is not. He’s very good at raising and killing chickens. I’d probably be ok with the raising- but there is no reason for me to be ashamed that when it came down to it I didn’t actually cut their throats.

I did, however, clean the carcasses, pulling out guts with my bare hands, plucking the last few feathers, cutting off the feet and the head- oh yeah, I did all that. And all while standing around chit chatting with neighbors and friends from my co-op and their kids, who were fascinated by watching us pull out perfect little hearts and lungs and livers, and wanted to pick them up and feel them and see how they worked. At first it was weird- but within a few minutes we were comparing techniques and laughing and joking, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to stand there yanking on chicken guts.

However, when it finally came to eating a piece of chicken, I still hesitated- I was kind of afraid I just wouldn’t like it, and all of this would be for nothing. My friends roasted a chicken, and I sat down with four adults and two children. Having sat down at the “kids” end of the table, the adults sort of forgot that I was having a significant moment, and left me to my thoughts while I stared at the piece of chicken on my fork, wondering if it was the chicken I had sat and held for a good half hour a few weeks ago. The six year old next to me finally asked what I was doing. “I’m thinking about this chicken, and how it lived, and whether it had a good life, and thanking it for giving its life so I could eat it,” I said.

“Of course it had a good life,” she said, “I got to pet it.” She then proceeded to devour an entire chicken wing.

And so I ate the chicken. I like the dark meat better, by the way.

Film Review: Not Evil Just Wrong

2009-10-21T09:33:00.009-04:00

I had the opportunity to attend a world premier public screening of Not Evil Just Wrong, a documentary about "global warming hysteria" hosted by the Republican Club at Washington College. The movie targets the belief that our planet is heating up, focusing on Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. It posits that Gore is the leader of an environmentalist movement intending to fulfill its doomsday prophecies by destroying the fossil fuel industry, subverting the global economy, killing millions of Africans, and shattering the American dream.

Co-directors Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney recollect exaggerated human risk scenarios such as Y2K and "mad cow" disease. They show the morbid fascination of schoolchildren who are affected by Gore's film and emphasize that An Inconvenient Truth has nine inaccuracies or distortions. They present intermittent misconceptions about global warming: we are living in an ice age and extra heat would be pleasant, the melted ice shelves are regenerating, polar bear populations are rising, and coal power plants are exhausting no pollutants.

Detour to Africa, where human populations have plummeted since environmentalists helped to ban DDT, resulting in increased vectors of malarial infection. McAleer and McElhinney explain this is the result of Rachel Carson's seminal ecological work Silent Spring, which Gore continues to champion. Cut to Vevay, Indiana, the heartland of America, where residents share their conviction that their way of life would deteriorate if the local coal power plant were to close. Environmentalists agree: the rapid transition to a non-fossil fuel energy infrastructure will be painful.

Now we can balance the liberal cadences of An Inconvenient Truth with a conservative rebuttal: the agenda among environmentalists to save the planet at the expense of humans—depriving nations of DDT to control population; scaring children with apocalyptic visions; attacking coal production in the spirit of bad science.

The selective scholarship can be dismantled as quickly as it was cobbled together.

Read Silent Spring to clarify that Carson advocated the use of DDT for insect control. Watch Everything's Cool for an alternative stance on global warming. Screen Kilowatt Ours to learn more about our relation to coal as an energy source. Peruse The Weather Makers to illuminate modern climate science. Watch I.O.U.S.A. to see the cost of taking more than we have; imagine more with what we have in Cradle to Cradle.

The film aims for an audience that sympathizes with its message. It does not invoke challenges to the thesis that we can continue living on non-renewable energy, which it shrouds in a fog of DDT and heartland pathos. It presupposes that its viewers will not ponder the agenda behind a film that promotes endless fossil fuel consumption.

Ultimately, Not Evil Just Wrong hopes to perpetuate a culture besotted with cheap fuel, and to that end, it's added more coal to the fire.

The Fun Theory

2009-10-14T11:02:00.002-04:00

Somebody should totally do this as a candid camera thing on the recycling bins at WC.

Any takers? I kind of want it to make ghoul noises or laugh evilly or possibly just make crunching noises whenever someone throws something in.

Now that's what I call RECYCLING

2009-10-13T15:26:00.002-04:00

Ok seriously. I spend every day of my work week collecting bottles and cans, and even though I know they are being trucked away to Delaware to be recycled and turned into who knows what, there is a big difference between watching them disappear and end up who knows where, and knowing exactly what they are being used for- and that it saves energy to boot.

Check this out:

The problem with conventional solar panels is that they are expensive to produce, and require the use of a lot of virgin materials, none of which are particularly green. And despite government efforts to provide tax breaks and things of that nature, they are still inaccessible. From what I can tell from these videos (watch some of the related videos as well), you could make this at home, if you were handy and had some knowledge of how to install the ductwork. You'd just need some kind of fan system and a decent hole drill.

Its DIY solar power! Combining all the best aspects of "green" into one! Recycling, reusing (or is that the same in this case?) and renewable energy...!

If anyone notices some of the ridiculous quantities of aluminum cans recycled every weekend on campus disappearing, you'll know why.

So what exactly is composting all about?

2009-09-30T14:59:00.004-04:00

I spend my afternoons knee-deep in rotting fruits and vegetables. I’m quite friendly with maggots, worms, and other creepy-crawlies that you’ve probably never even heard of. I chase off swarms of flies reminiscent of the Amityville Horror. It’s not that bad; I’d even go so far as to say that I have fun doing it.

…No, really.

I’m half of Washington College’s formidable composting duo. Every weekday afternoon, Donna and I head out to Buildings and Grounds to work on the compost pile. When we get there, there are two or three trash cans waiting for us in front of the compost pile. The bins are filled with food waste from the dining hall. We drag them over and dump them on top of the heap. Then, we use our shovels to break the food into smaller pieces so it will decompose faster. Doing this also helps mix the new waste into the compost. When we’re finished, we cover the pile with dead leaves and woodchips and rinse out the trash cans.

I’ve heard that a lot of students on campus aren’t even aware of the composting program. I’m going to give you updates on our progress about once a week so you can stay informed about the environmental efforts on campus. But first of all, what is compost, and why is it important?

Compost, once it is complete, is an excellent natural fertilizer. It’s brown, crumbly, and doesn’t seem all that different from fertile soil. Compost is easy to make at home. It’s largely food waste, with dry materials, such as leaves, added to improve the chemical ratio. It needs moisture and air to decompose properly. All kinds of creatures find compost piles to be lovely places to live. If you were to dig into our pile here, you would find maggots, worms, and all kinds of other bugs that help decompose the food and make the compost more fertile. The process eventually concludes with mature compost- the familiar soil-like substance you might use to fertilize your houseplants.

But why compost in the first place? Why deal with all the rotting food and bugs? Is it really worth it? The answer is yes. First of all, compost saves space in landfills. America is quickly running out of space for landfills, and with the amount of trash we produce, this is a pretty serious problem. While food is biodegradable, landfills are terrible places for decomposition. The conditions aren’t survivable for all the friendly critters that live in a backyard compost pile. Oxygen can’t get to the trash that sits in landfills. The minimal decomposition that does take place in landfills actually creates explosive methane gas- something that is far more undesirable than a few maggots.

A compost pile has access to oxygen and water, making it an ideal environment for the bugs that aid in decomposition. Mature compost is nutrient-rich and chemically balanced, making it an excellent fertilizer. Some scientists even believe that the heat produced by a compost pile could even one day be used to heat homes!

While it is clear that a compost pile is far superior to a landfill, don’t just throw all trash into a compost pile. There are very specific guidelines about what belongs in a compost pile and what doesn’t. Of course, anything that is non-biodegradable is out. No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to turn a plastic bag into compost. Food waste and paper, however, make excellent additions to a compost pile. Avoid composting animal products, such as meat, eggs, and dairy, because they will attract rats and smell really bad. Also avoid things that have been treated with pesticides because they will harm the bugs in the compost pile, and eventually the plants that receive the compost as fertilizer.

Now that you know the basics of composting, you might be interested to learn more about the program here at Washington College. Check back for weekly progress updates!

Food Inc

2009-09-25T11:15:00.002-04:00

I love this town.

No, I really do. Whenever there is a need, the entire town comes together to support that need. And the need last night was to support Colchester Farm, CSA, the place where so many of us get our food from June to October. The evening started with a cocktail hour, featuring delicious local foods (I went back for the roasted pepper ravioli several times), most of it made by local chefs, including Kent County High School, and several of the Colchester Farm board members. This was followed by a showing of Food, Inc., which, if you haven’t seen yet, you should. Soon.

I wanted to start by praising our town though- we’ve kind of taken food on as our issue, for whatever reason. Possibly its just because we have access to so many wonderful local foods, grown by so many wonderful people who are such a part of the community. We’re proud of our food, proud of the fact that we’re a town in the so called middle of nowhere, which in reality is the middle of a cornucopia of delicious things to eat. And so fortunately we don’t constantly have to look the full brunt of the realities of the industrial food system right in the eye. We at least have other options.

So in some ways Food, Inc. didn’t have much to do with Chestertown. But in others, it hit a point very close to home. Most of the farming done on the Eastern Shore is in commodity crops- corn, grain, soybeans- and most of it goes to feed chickens down on the lower shore. Actually, there are plenty of chickens up this way too. If you sit out on 213 late, late at night you can watch the empty trucks go north toward Galena, and if you wait long enough, you can watch them come back again, full of chickens on their way to the slaughterhouse.

The movie isn’t for the faint of heart. If you don’t want to see the inside of a chicken house (and I have to say, this was a pretty decent chicken house, as far as they go- there were no cages and it actually had windows), don’t watch this movie. If you want to continue to eat industrial food completely unawares of what you’re putting in your body, of the horrors you’re supporting by eating that cheap chicken, don’t watch this movie. But if you’re interested in what plagues our food system- what plagues us, right here, on the Eastern Shore, then watch this movie.

I’ve talked so much about what’s wrong with the food system on this blog that I don’t currently feel the need to reiterate. The movie didn’t reveal anything to me that I didn’t know- but I’ve also made it my life’s work to take on the industrial food system, so I’d be curious to hear the reaction of someone who actually (for some reason?) still eats fast food. But the movie made a good point- not only do most people not know what’s going on behind the scenes in the places their food comes from, they’re not allowed to know.

If you want to trace your food back to the source, good luck to you. I hope you have a lot of time and a lot of money. We aren’t allowed to see inside those chicken houses- we definitely aren’t allowed to see inside the slaughterhouses. If we were- as sustainable farmer Joel Salatin says in the movie- our food system would be something rather different. That’s why he slaughters his chickens in an open sided shed, and invites all the people who buy food from his farm to come and watch and participate.

There was also a strong theme of better regulations for food in the movie. But at the same time, a lot of us are struggling locally to be able to get access to local meats and dairy because of the overbearing regulations of the state of MD. The contradiction came up during the Q&A, but I personally don’t think it’s a contradiction at all. I believe they even said, in the movie, that when you’re selling to a place like WalMart you need those regulations, you need to have had your food inspected and carefully labeled and have the assurance that it doesn’t contain E. coli, because the consumer has no other way of knowing. The shopper at WalMart can’t go out to the farm and meet the farmer and take a look around, because likely the farm is on the other side of the world- and likely the process that food item took to get from that farm to the WalMart would be more than enough to stop the consumer buying the item, anyway.

But in the case of local foods, you have the option of seeing what you’re buying produced first hand. Not everyone wants to watch their chickens get slaughtered- but when I talked to the guy who I plan to get chicken from last night, he invited me right on out to the farm to meet the chickens, allowing me to feel a little bit better about consuming meat. Locally, it really is a case of buyer beware- if you choose to buy locally, you are responsible for checking out the person you are buying from, not USDA. A farmer last night pointed out that this is a big risk for farmers- they could easily get sued- but I’ve heard a great suggestion that would solve that problem all around. What if we were allowed to opt out of the conventional food system? What if, as we do in so many other areas of our life, we were allowed to sign a waiver that said, we don’t want to participate in the conventional food system, thanks so much, and we hereby take responsibility for our food choices upon ourselves, swearing never to sue our local farmers, because we’re part of a community, and its our responsibility as well as theirs to double check on the process and make sure our food is safe?

Can you imagine what WalMart would say to that?

The End of the Long Summer

2009-09-24T15:36:00.002-04:00

So last night the environmental author Dianne Dumanoski gave a talk at the college. If you missed it, and I bet you did, then you missed quite a discussion. You can read all about her book, The End of the Long Summer, over at her website, www.diannedumanoski.com.

Dumanoski started by pointing out a fundamental flaw of the environmental movement, and one I’ve pointed out several times on this blog. We aren’t particularly honest with ourselves when we discuss our goals, if we discuss them at all. We talk about saving the planet, but this is an act of pure hubris- the planet will get on just fine if there’s climate change. There has been climate change many times in the past, and species have died back and rebounded in new and astounding ways.

What we’re really doing is saving the planet so we can still live on it. We can talk about saving whales and trees and rare species of butterfly, but let’s face it, we’re really talking about saving ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing immoral about wanting to preserve your own species so your potential grandchildren can keep on trucking. Well, metaphorically- trucks may be extinct by then. But you get the idea.

In her book, and in her talk, she attempts to look beyond the symptoms of “planetary distress” to the actual cause. It was a refreshing talk in that she didn’t just ramble on about climate change- a frequent topic, among lecturers, and one she certainly brought up- but addressed the likelihood that we are in fact actually past the point of no return. Climate change, according to most research, is now inevitable. There’s no going back. We can mitigate the effects of climate change, certainly, and so there’s no reason to throw our hands up in despair and stop pursuing cleaner energy sources and things of that nature. But we also have to think beyond those mitigating efforts. If climate change is indeed upon (and it seems that it is- it is only the when and where and to what extent that are up for debate), our planning should be for how we handle the changes that will occur.

This isn’t a momentous idea. Most people, with only a cursory knowledge of human history, will agree that things change. Things aren’t the same now as they were 100 years ago. And yet we tend to act as if things are never going to change. Our economy is based on this notion of exponential growth, without taking into account that at some point there will be no more possibility of growth- we live in a limited environment (presuming we don’t expand into space, and the very thought makes me roll my eyes). Our food system is based on fossil fuels. Our communications (and most of our economy) are all based on a very fragile system that could fall apart with a few well placed keystrokes. And our heating and cooling is all based on electricity, as is our access to water. If these things are taken away- if something were to happen to disrupt public water systems, for example- would any of us know what to do?

These things are rarely taken into account. Dumanoski argues that we’re asking the wrong questions. We’re trying to “green the status quo”, a phrase that I love, because it so accurately describes efforts to find a technological fix for everything. On one of the green blogs I subscribe to, I am daily barraged with tips on “greening” everything from hair dryers to toothpicks to vacations to gym memberships. But there the question of whether we should continue to pursue all these avenues is never, not a once, brought into light.

The common law among environmentalists is that we can never, EVER, mention the dirty words “maybe we should just give that up.” No, we cannot question consumption. We can never, god forbid, question the mandate of constant economic growth, or the desire of people to own private jets. People will never subscribe to environmentalism if we’re so negative.

But Dumanoski’s call to action is not for us all to go around crying that the sky is falling. Rather, she simply suggests we be honest with ourselves, that we in fact must be honest with ourselves, if we hope to survive as a species. If we don’t prepare for climate change, how can we possibly face it? Wouldn’t the worst catastrophe be if climate change occurred, and very abruptly as scientists are predicting, and we all just stood there with a big “oh [insert four letter word here]” sketched on our faces?

She pointed out that the answers are in fact just in front of our faces. The planet organizes things in such a way as to be resilient to catastrophe. There are multiple species doing the same job, or similar, so that if one is killed off there are others to take their place. The college does this as an emergency planning measure- if one person is out, we are all required to have a second and third person trained to do our jobs so things don’t come to a grinding halt. Ecosystems are also modular- connected, somewhat, but not to the point where if one collapsed there would necessarily be a chain reaction wiping out all the others. But we in our global society are all very specialized- and all very connected- so that if oil reserves run out, for example, pretty much all of us are screwed. But that’s a topic I intend to write more about later.

During the Q&A the topic of hope came up- what is there to give us hope that we can face the momentous task of preparing for climate change, when we neither know when it’s going to occur or what form it’s going to take? Dumanoski responded that we can’t have hope unless it’s honest- unless we are willing to face the facts about what lies ahead, and realize that the “long summer” we’ve enjoyed will not and cannot last forever. She suggests large scale social reorganization as one of the only ways of becoming more adaptable to change- which is of course one of the things our society is most resistant to. She also pointed out that we’re currently educating for a future that doesn’t exist, and this is key. Even here at the college we’re still educating under the assumption that things will be more or less the same down the line when our students are facing the real world.

I think she’s partially right about the honesty- we absolutely have to be honest about what’s ahead. There is far too much unfounded optimism running around where “saving the environment” is concerned- and far too much despair. But I think we have something to be optimistic about. From what I’ve seen, when faced with the honest truth, most humans are able to step up to the challenge. When given a problem and asked to solve it, we have the creative capacity to find solutions- if only we are taught that we do have that capacity within ourselves, if only we are educated to approach problems with enthusiasm and an eye for the experimental, the untried path, the unconventional- and that it doesn’t take experts to save the planet for people, but people with the passion and dedication to be entirely honest with themselves and each other, and jump off that ledge into an unknown future armed with just their wits and one another.

Local Food Week!

2009-09-21T12:24:00.003-04:00

In ye old Dining Barn. Oops, I mean, the Dining Pavilion.

This week Dining Services does a toast to local foods, so many of the things on the menu will be brought to you straight from Kent County farms. At the moment the dining hall doesn't seem to be labeling the things that are local to distinguish them from those that are not, but trust me, they are there.

Have you noticed the quality of the food seems to be going up, as well? There were actually three things I could eat when I popped in for lunch last week and they were all delicious. The Dining Hall has not had a good history in making food for vegetarians, but that was a pleasant surprise. Today we were back to slightly above normal, however.

In other news, we are now over on facebook as well, so if you are a mysterious reader of George Goes Green and are somehow not friends with me on facebook, get yourself on over there and become a fan.

Linkage

2009-09-10T11:21:00.004-04:00

Some links to tide you over until the wave of busy-ness ends and I can write proper posts again.

Verizon Sponsors Anti-Energy Bill Event

Man Builds Beautiful Houses Out of Trash

France Introduces Carbon Tax

iPhone Apps that help you save the environment

Top Ten Eco-Friendly Things to Bring to College

Random Random

2009-08-26T13:09:00.004-04:00

Found out this fact today. Doesn't help me because I flat out refuse to buy grocery store vegetables (I'd have to be starving, I think), but for those of the world who aren't so fortunate to be blessed with a CSA and farmer's market, here's a tip on identifying genetically modified veggies at the store:

Look for the PLU codes on the labels stuck on your fruits and veggies.

* A four-digit number means it's conventionally grown.
* A five-digit number beginning with 9 means it's organic.
* A five-digit number beginning with 8 means it's genetically modified.

Who knew! Tip from idealbite.com.

And Another Head's Up

2009-08-25T16:57:00.004-04:00

There are some new recycling bins on campus. They look something like this:

Except slighter prettier I think.

Point being, starting next week the residence halls on the north half of campus will begin to be serviced by the dedicated recycling staff. Previously, they had to rely on the county service. Which works rather well except that it required students to remember to put their recycling bins on the curb. And, sad to say, students are not always so great about remembering to put their recycling bins on the curb.

Now, no one will have to remember to pick up the recycling! Except us, but that's our job, so its not so hard to remember. We will be picking up recycling from all of the Western Shore dorms, Harford, Chester, and Sassafras. Bottles and cans go in the pretty blue containers like that one (look up). Paper and cardboard go in the old green county bins. So long as they are DRY and NOT mixed with bottles and cans. Or food. Please refer to www.georgegoesgreen.com for further info.

As another head's up, in case you didn't know, you can also recycle things other than bottles and cans and paper on campus. Such as batteries, and some electronics. You can take these to the help desk in the basement of Wm Smith.

Keep checking back for more updates as the year progresses. This year we plan to make WC a recycling powerhouse.

Just a Head's Up

2009-08-25T16:53:00.002-04:00

So, the summer is winding down. There are students again on campus. (Hello, students!)

I just added up the summer recycling. I'm missing some of the county numbers- they weigh our cardboard when they take it away, and tell me how much it was at the end of the month- but aside from that, the total is in.

It's 13,933.5 lbs. Which translates to about 7 tons. I'd also like to point out that aside from occasional help from my roommate/coworker (thanks!!!!!) I collected all that by my lonesome.

I don't ever want to hear anyone say girls can't do heavy lifting. Take that, recycling. Take that.

How to Flatten a Cardboard Box

2009-08-19T13:58:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the extended absense, followers. We've been prepping for the return of the students, which means buying lots of shiny new recycling bins and getting them into place. To tide you over in the meantime, here is an amusing video a family member sent me when I complained that some people don't seem to understand the "please flatten your cardboard boxes" concept. You would think this would be fairly self explanatory, but for anyone unsure of how a cardboard box should be flattened for potential use as a doormat, here's how.

When you're done check out the video of the woman who survived two days in her recycling bin. Let's please never have this happen on campus.

Just a thought…

2009-07-28T12:47:00.000-04:00

A new 1/3-ounce, 18-karat gold ring creates about 20 tons of mine waste.
Source: IdealBite.com

So, just to do some quick math… there’s 32,000 ounces in a ton, and a ring is only 1/3 of an ounce… that’s about 1,920,000 times more waste than there is metal in the ring. Yes, about TWO MILLION TIMES more waste than metal in the ring.

Short story, buy vintage or recycled jewelry. Seriously. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how much better for the environment it is not to ever, ever, buy new jewelry- not to mention all the social atrocities associated with the mining industry. Just an estimate- and this is from a friend who’s visited and seen a mine in Africa, won’t mention which one, first hand- is that mining workers have a ten year lifespan, once they enter work at the mine.

If you think about it, we have to have enough metal above the ground- MORE than enough, considering how long we’ve been mining, to have more than enough to make jewelry for every person on earth. Not to mention the vast number of metal objects that make it into the trash (landfills)- aluminum and tin cans, pots and pans, even the little metal bits on pens that get thrown away. What I’d like to see is all the current manufacturers of all those products that use metal declare they will no longer use virgin (new) materials- but that they’re going to find ways to recycle all the millions of tons of metal that have already been mined. I’m sure if they started mining landfills they’d hit paydirt.

Kipple

2009-07-14T12:56:00.001-04:00

Having just moved (again), I find myself facing the same dilemma that faces me on a fairly regular basis. I have way too much junk.

Most of us don’t realize this until we go to move it- then suddenly it springs from unexpected corners- shoes we thought we lost years ago, miscellaneous boxes of papers and unwanted holiday gifts and things we put away thinking there would be need for them one day. And usually, because we’re rather in a hurry to move, we don’t take the time to sort through all these things, but just throw them all in a box and stash them in the closet at the next location.

This is what Philip K. Dick calls kipple. Well, he’s not specifically referring to the stuff that appears when you move, but the general accumulation of completely useless things. It seems to multiply. It seems to slowly creep ever onward until every last bit of space has been occupied by something.

So why do we have so much stuff? It is a question I ask myself on a regular basis. How did I end up with such a vast collection of candle holders, for example? What is all the stuff in my junk drawer? And is it possible that tupperware can actually breed (but not the lids)? I would blame a lot of this on obligatory gifting (the fact that people who barely even know you, including relatives who are only vaguely associated with your family) feel the need to buy you something for Christmas, but that doesn’t explain how so many random gadgets I never use and am not sure of the purpose of ended up in my junk drawer.

The real question, though, is what to do with all this stuff. Some things you can donate to Goodwill (or, here in Chestertown, WIN, Nearly New, or Hidden Treasures). But what about random bits of junk? What about the four or five extra screws that came with a piece of furniture but won’t fit in anything else? What about broken electronics, and extra cell phone chargers without the phone? Broken necklaces? Random plastic gag gifts? What about the things that its possible someone would want, somewhere, if only you could figure out how to connect the thing with the person?

And so we have landfills. None of us have enough time to somehow figure out how to get all the random things we have to the right places, and the right people. We do our best, certainly, we have yard sales and you get rid of some of it but at the end of the day there are just things that no one wants. No one knows where they came from. They can’t be recycled, because there are too many varied component parts and it’s too energy intensive to separate them.

What are we supposed to do with all of it, aside from throw it away? My vote is to stop producing it all in the first place. And make it commonplace for you to turn in old electronics when you buy new ones. And stop using so much packaging. I bought a set of speakers from amazon.com the other day, and when they arrived they were three boxes deep- as in they were in a box inside another box inside another box. And then held in place by Styrofoam, which is not recyclable unless you have the kind of quantity you can ship overseas (and even then, is that really environmentally friendly?).

It’s a conundrum, certainly.

Pick 5

2009-07-09T14:52:00.001-04:00

As they do over on facebook, I figured I would do a pick five for recycling. Only it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to post on facebook my five least favorite things to find in the recycling, so… here they are.

5 Least Favorite Things to Find in the Recycling
1. Pasta Salad
2. Coffee cups (with coffee)
3. Rotten fruit
4. Rita’s cups (with Rita’s)
5. Sandwiches

5 Least Favorite Recycling Smells
1. Stale beer
2. V8 juice
3. Rotten fruit
4. Milk, ice cream or yoghurt after several days
5. Cola (especially after it gets in your clothes)

5 Awesome Things to Find in the Recycling
In order of frequency, with 1 being the most frequent
1. Books you’ve always wanted
2. Things you’ve been looking for (milk crates, furniture, vases)
3. Money (it happens)
4. Empty and rinsed bottles and cans
5. Treasure maps

5 Dangers of Recycling
1. Broken glass
2. Falling in the dumpster
3. Getting hit in the head (by doors and recycling bin lids)
4. Mosquito bites and bee stings
5. Back strain (heavy bags of paper)

5 Awesome Numbers
1. 24,576.6 lbs (12.3 tons)- the amount of recycling collected at Washington College in the 2008-09 school year
2. 95%- the amount related air pollution cut by making cans from recycled aluminum
3. 102- the number of trees saved by campus recycling during the 2008-09 school year
4. ¼- the amount of energy saved by recycling cardboard from the energy used to manufacture it
5. 1874- the year of the nation’s first curbside recycling- in Baltimore, MD

The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies

2009-06-30T12:40:00.003-04:00

Reality Sandwich: The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies

It reminds me of the much passed around Stephen Colbert segment titled, appropriately, “The Word.” Specifically the one on Wikipedia. In it he points out that if everyone goes online and changes something on Wikipedia- for example that numbers of African elephants are in fact rising, not declining- then technically, for all the vast majority of the people in the world know- it becomes true.

The same holds true for all environmentalists. Our arguments have literally NO power- because we can say anything we like. We can talk endlessly about climate change, we can show a million charts and graphs and statistics, and the funny thing is, so can the other side. Everyone knows, nearly from birth it seems, that statistics can be manipulated to say anything you want. And so they have no power. You can list the tonnes of carbon in the air, spout percentages of increase until you’re blue in the face, and then someone will come along and point out that no, if you calculate the numbers in another way the increase isn’t so much, that there have been increases in the past, and so on and so forth until no one has the faintest idea who to believe. Another, less volatile example would be nutrition facts- we are back and forth from one year to another about which nutrients are good for you or bad for you and which foods you should eat and which leave out- to the point where most people refuse to believe any nutrition claims they hear, because they know perfectly well that they will change in the next few months, depending on the current fad.

This is not to say that some people won’t believe it- there are many who, among the constant barrage of messages, will cling to almost anything that comes into the mainstream media. Many people panicked over swine flu. But as the author of this article points out, many more just yawned and went about their lives. There have been so many crises- so many pandemics- so many scares about this and that, that it’s the least we can do to even pretend to pay attention to it.

So, if we are to supposedly to save the environment by changing the consciousness of the populace (as most of environmentalists will say- we can’t have change without changing the general attitude toward the environment), and at the same time the general populace is tuning out everything we say, how exactly are we supposed to bring about change? It’s something of a pickle. I think this is a rather valid point:
“When environmentalists focus on cost-benefit analyses and study data rather than real, physical places, trees, ponds, and animals, they end up making all the sickening compromises of the Beltway…Visit a real "mountaintop removal" operation and you know that there is no compromise that is not betrayal.”

It’s quite true. Visit the reality- put it right up in your face- and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get someone to pay attention. It doesn’t always work. I always wondered how anyone who had watched someone die of lung cancer- this was while I was in fact watching my grandfather suffer from the disease, the result of years of smoking- could actually smoke cigarettes. But I met people again and again who, despite looking the prospect of that debilitating, most unpleasant of deaths straight in the eye, weren’t in the slightest swayed from their determination to smoke a pack a day.

As the author points out, we fear that authenticity. We don’t want to look it right in the eye, because once you do, the elaborate web of illusions built up for you from birth begins to crumble, and your life becomes one mess of attempting to untangle reality from the “ubiquitous matrix of lies.” It’s not an easy task, and most people would rather stay in the matrix, though it leaves us with a sense of loss that can never quite be identified, and which we drown in via any number of mind numbing devices.

But there are some who are ready to hear- and it is to these people, the people who are tired of the status quo, tired of spin, tired of images and brands and the false tripe that’s surrounding you, everywhere you look, that we (if we wish to be successful as environmentalists) need to speak to- and not with more spin, not with more hype, but with the naked, simple truth- as plain and straightforward as possible, which means, as much as possible, without words (ironic to be writing this on a blog), but in the real world, where we can touch, and smell, and taste, and feel- the few senses that have yet to be entirely co-opted by others than ourselves.

Local Co-op(ted)

2009-06-22T16:14:00.001-04:00

When Local Makes it Big

So I like to talk about local foods on this blog. When I use the term, I am thinking in my head of something like… oh, I don’t know, food that comes from Kent County. Maybe if I were to stretch it I would include food from the Western Shore- maybe all the way to Virginia, maybe as far as PA, but that’s really pushing it. I can get most of what I need from a pretty compact area.

But now the Frito-Lay company is marketing their foods as local. That’s right. The massive national conglomerate that brings you junk food galore is claiming that their potato chips are local- at least in the areas that are more or less adjacent to their processing plants.

Back up for just a second. My brain quite literally balks at this concept. Frito-Lay- a division of Pepsi, which is actually an international corporation- is making claims of locality?

It makes a certain amount of sense. People want to know where their food is from, especially as issues of food security become more prevalent in the news, as well as more and more press in regards to the numerous benefits of the local food movement. Big companies are going to want a piece of the market, just as they did with the organic label (as the article points out). But as a result, the organic label has been worn so thin it means next to nothing. Almost anything can be labeled organic. And now, it seems, the same will be done with local- a term that seems so straight-forward it’s hard to imagine any way in which it could be co-opted.

But let’s think this through. If, in some places in the country, Frito-Lay buys potatoes from farmer’s within a relatively local radius of their plant, this is at least preventing them buying potatoes from the other side of the country, shipping them to their plant, and then distributing them nationally. This article says nothing about whether the chips from a certain plant are also distributed locally, but regardless, matching local farmers to local plants is a step in the right direction, right?

Well…

Yes, it’s better than shipping potatoes back and forth all over the country, as frequently occurs with other products. Frito-Lay has also banned the use of genetically engineered corn and potatoes in their products, and that may be an even greater step toward sustainability. But can their products be rightfully called local? There are a few missing pieces- whether the chips are distributed locally, for example, or if the chips from one particular plant are still sent all over the country, whether the ads are only displayed locally or not. Not to mention the simple fact that Frito-Lay has plants all over the country, and most of them only produce a few of their many products, which then have to be shipped over terribly long distances…

It makes you wonder, certainly. As the article eventually articulates, local, in the minds of most people, not only means local (regional), but small-scale. “Local” seems to imply some sort of added value aside from the mere distance between the buyer and the grower. However, this isn’t inherent to the term, and I think when we’re talking about what we value in our food it’s important to be as specific as possible, and not presume that when we say “local” or even “organic” anyone will have the faintest idea what we mean. I know for me, the best part of buying local (from within Kent County) is that I’ve met the farmers face to face, and usually have a nice little chat every Saturday morning at the market. I doubt I could do this with any of the farmers who grow for Frito-Lay.

As a point of interest, according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frito_Lay) the Frito company started in 1932 producing 10 lbs of chips per day, in the owner’s kitchen. I’m going to take a stab and guess that these were, in fact, locally distributed.

Der Markt

2009-06-06T08:09:00.001-04:00

One thing, at least, Germany has in common with Chestertown. Well, again, sort of. Usually two or three times a week, every city or village has a farmer’s market.

The curious thing about the German farmer’s market is first, it’s size. Every one I’ve been to has been something of a crowded affair, with as many stalls as possible squeezed into a square that if you could see it empty would leave you with the impression a full out market could never actually fit into it later. And yet there are aisles of metzgerei (meat sellers), and gemuse and obst (vegetables and fruit) and always an apfelwein stand. You can usually, at least in the ones I’ve gone to, barely fit between the stands, between the narrow aisles and the many people with their oversized shopping bags and baskets and bikes.

The other thing, and this makes me miss my own farmer’s market despite the size and variety offered by the German markets, is that these are not my neighbors. Presumably they grow their vegetables in the vicinity of the city, but I wouldn’t know. For all I know they’re dragging their produce from the next state over. And, with my slow and careful German that apparently no one can understand, I have no way of asking. I prefer to shop from people I know by name, or at least by face, from having seen and spoken with them week after week.

I wonder where this bounty of German vegetables comes from. I suspect they are not all German, especially when we arrive at the market in early May to find zucchini, which in Germany’s climate really should not be ripe until at least August, and apples, which should not be ripe until at least October. Yet here they are, along with a wide array of other out of season vegetables that my friend’s mom tells me are probably from Greece. This is not the idea I have of farmer’s markets: the food is fresh, definitely, and maybe it is less pesticide laden or has traveled a shorter distance than the food in the grocery store (Greece is 2,100 km away, while New Zealand or Ecuador, where many grocery store vegetables come from, are more like 18,200 km). But I always come to Germany hoping to eat German vegetables, and other than spargel (asparagus- Germans love this stuff, especially the white kind, which we don’t have in the states), I am usually disappointed.

The same goes for other foods. Maybe I don’t notice it as much at home, where I’m not thinking about it as much, but looking for German cheese at the market came up with nothing (at least I found some from Holland, the next country over), and even the famous German bread, much to my disappointment, is baked from dough made somewhere else, in a big factory somewhere maybe, and only baked on the premises. It still tastes good, but with that in mind I start wondering about preservatives and artificial sugars, which at home I would avoid at all costs.

It makes me wonder. When I go with my friends to the store, they want to drink Italian wine, or Californian. I only want to drink German, because finally I have a selection of some of my favorite wines in the world, and they are grown and fermented only minutes away. But it really brings into perspective how seldom even someone who thinks most of the time about where her food comes from in actuality is eating locally. After all, I drink German wine when I’m at home.

And Some Things are Just Like Home

2009-06-01T07:51:00.001-04:00

During move out a few weeks ago, I had the fortune to participate in Give and Go, a program developed to collect the leftover items students did not want to take home and donate them to Women in Need. I say fortunate, because although I hauled all sorts of furniture and boxes of random items all over campus on one of the first truly hot days of the summer, I ended up with a number of random things I had in fact been looking for. A floor length mirror, for example. I had been wanting one, and in one hallway there was not one, but two. I had my choice.

I also glanced in the dumpster, and was alarmed to realize that despite our efforts, there was still an array of usable items, including a chair and a relatively new bike. Alas. But this is fairly normal- spending all my time in the vicinity of Buildings and Grounds, I am privileged enough to constantly monitor the items that end up in the dumpsters, and scavenge any useful items I find.

I really shouldn’t have been surprised then to come upon the Mainz University recycling and discover a mountain. Mainz has a much larger university than little old Washington College- about 35,000 students to be precise. The majority of these students don’t live on campus, reducing, I suppose, your average student waste stream- clothes, books, the bizarre little things students tend to accumulate (plastic inflatable hands, anyone?). But here I found a mountain of computers, fax machines, printers, even typewriters, all waiting, I sincerely hope, to be recycled. When I say mountain I am not exaggerating. I could have climbed up the side, as it towered over my head. There was a similar mountain of office chairs. Nothing, absolutely nothing, except office chairs. Most of which looked to still be in good condition.

This in particular blew my mind. Ok, fine, obsolete electronics tend to get thrown out and recycled. I can accept that, even if I don’t like it. But office chairs? What’s obsolete about an office chair? Office chairs in the Custom House are at a premium, so even the one with the broken arm gets used. But here, before my eyes, was a cornucopia of office chairs. Not to mention the four, count them, four, accompanying trailers (as in, the back part of a tractor trailer) full of everything else you can imagine getting thrown away at a college. Wall sized maps (of Romania), planters, desks, lamps, the entire contents of a kitchen (oven, utensils, pans, plates, cake mix, spices), and rows and rows of mini fridges. Not just one. Rows.

And it’s not just the university. Walking around the city, I consistently see piles of what we translate to “big trash,” which the Germans call sparemüll. Furniture by the scores, working tvs and dvd players and just today, an entire kitchen floor, the planks of hardwood stacked on top of one another in an enormous pile. I think somewhere in my mind I imagined Europeans were simply more thrifty than Americans, and would therefore waste far less in terms of usable items. They tend to hang on to their cars until they fall apart, for example. But clearly I was wrong. While I’m sure there are some exceptions, I can hereby state that Germans are just as wasteful when it comes to consumer products as Americans. The evidence lines the streets. It provides a veritable (free) shopping mall for anyone with the time and energy to haul it away. And believe me, many people do, which may be the one difference between here and America.

The Magic Pfand

2009-05-27T07:49:00.000-04:00

Viel Gruβes, loyal readers! I write to you from the far away land of Germany, where recycling is the norm and not the exception. Well. More or less.

Most German cities, and the majority of the small towns, have a unique waste management system when compared to our own American- well, let’s call them attempts at waste management. Germans recycle everything. In fact, not only do they recycle everything, but they get money back for it. Allow me to explain.

When you buy a bottle of soda in Germany, more likely than not it has a pfand attached to the price- meaning instead of 1,25 the soda costs 1,50. When you finish the soda, you take the bottle back to the store and you receive 25 cents in return. This doesn’t sound so awesome if you are lazy and never take your bottles back, but if you are an intrepid scavenger you not only can take your own bottles back but can find bottles with a pfand all over- in the trash, lying in the street, given away for free on street corners- and you can make five euros in only a few minutes. Because, of course, even though recycling is ridiculously easy here, still not everyone does it.

However, it’s certainly in your best interest. In major cities, you simply sort your trash into a variety of bins in your house- one for paper, one for food waste, one for packaging (plastic), and one for everything else (restmüll). This is of course after you’ve recycled all your bottles and cans. You are charged for how much restmüll you put out- everything else is taken for free. So in the interest of saving money, everyone automatically separates their garbage. It’s not a big deal. It’s not an amazing magical environment saving program. It’s just the way things are.

It’s fascinating, coming from America where I have to try really hard to recycle, to watch people unthinkingly sort their trash. When I found myself at the train station with a piece of cardboard and only an unmarked trash can in sight, I thought, aha! At last I have found a place in Germany where I can’t recycle, and prepared to stick the cardboard in my bag for later. But as I did so, my German friend took the cardboard from my hands and put it in the bin. “But it’s recyclable!” I cried. “I know,” she said, “they’ll sort it when they empty it.”

I thought she was kidding.

But no, it’s true, even public all-in-one waste bins are, by law, sorted into recyclables and other waste before anything is thrown away. And since almost everything can be recycled, almost nothing is thrown away.

In this vein, there is generally less stuff produced that would be thrown away in the first place. You don’t get a plastic bag unless you pay for it. It is perfectly common to see people walking down the street with reusable grocery bags (usually filled with pfand bottles)- and also note that I said “walking.” Everyone walks here. Or bikes. Or takes the bus. There are cars on the road, certainly. Small ones. But with petrol at a ridiculously high rate (and parking spots being nonexistent), there’s no sense in driving unless you’re going a long way and don’t feel like taking the train (I can’t imagine why, I love taking the train- all you have to do is sit down and go to sleep and someone else drives) or have a lot of stuff to haul. But I digress.

The one thing that boggles my mind is that, with all this emphasis on recycling and not wasting, things are wrapped that would never appear in plastic in the U.S. Vegetables, for example. Most people put their vegetables in plastic bags in the U.S. anyway, for ease of carrying, but here vegetables are almost always wrapped in shrink wrap on a little tray. And ridiculously small amounts of vegetables. Like a handful of arugula. Or, and I kid you not, seven slices of cheese. In one package. The concept of buying in bulk has not really occurred to Germans, who shop on a regular basis (sometimes every day!). So we’ve got that going for us, at least.

Walking Tour

2009-05-12T16:38:00.003-04:00

For your reading enjoyment, a poem I wrote back in college about the things found on trash pickups. Back in Savannah, GA we did a pick up every month, mostly on the barrier islands, reachable only by boat. This barely even touches on the weird things we've found while picking up trash.

Walking Tour

rusted bicycle, dragged up from the depths
ball basketball three Frisbees
toothbrush hat alligator one faded doll arm
the front half of Percy, cartoon dog
devoid of color and meaning and happy meals
wiffle ball bat tires crab, living in can (cut open to let out)
artificial flower, white, nearly imperceptible amongst real ones
bottlecaps cigarette butts bits of glass nails
two dollars
unopened can of beer, once, one of Coke
shoe shoe cowboy boot
box of empty gelatin capsules
beer can beer can beer can beer can
busted screenless tv full of interesting parts
dried black rose (put into Arbor Mist bottle)
beer bottle beer bottle beer bottle beer bottle
two pairs of underwear, same day- child’s
inflatable raft fishing poles tampons
neon strips- lightless- from cruise ships
the boat of Cuban refugees, unsinkable
crab traps coconuts conch shells
raccoon tracks
the biggest horseshoe crab shell ever seen (kept)
bits and bits and bits of Styrofoam
(will be here in 500 years)
the card to the door of the Econo Hotel
dry eyed withered stare
(avoid dead animals)
infinite straws plastic bags pieces of plastic bags
always a condom
ants
shark skull
palm frond rose
McDonalds Burger King Wendy’s Krystal
blow up kids pool another toothbrush
st patricks day windsock, half buried
buoys boatseats refrigerator Steamvac
Doritos Lays Cheetos Funyuns
cigarette packs filters butts lighters
pillow roofing siding nails car parts tires tires
the decaying body of a man
half a bottle of chardonnay

Home.

Take That, Recycling

2009-05-08T15:22:00.002-04:00

Thanks to the kick ass team of recyclers here at Washington College, I am proud to present you with the final totals of recycling collected in spring semester (from the end of January to this very day).

The five best interns a recycler could ask for managed to amass a grand total of:
5,249.9 lbs of mixed paper
11,389.2 lbs of bottles and cans
4,200 lbs of cardboard

These are astonishing numbers, let me tell you. Especially when you consider as of this time last year we were... well, we weren't really recycling much at all. Let's be honest.

I cannot thank these dedicated students more for their amazing hard work, especially in whole heartedly committing to a program in its fledging year... and especially for pulling together an extra 2700 lbs of recycling by challenging the sororities to a competition- an unheard of number considering it was collected in only 4 weeks. One day I'll post on here about the amount of work that goes into recycling- it's definitely a candidate for Dirty Jobs.

For now, let's just say the Recycling Fairy strikes again!

Green Girl Talk

2009-05-04T19:47:00.001-04:00

The revised text of the lecture, back for your edification.

All right. We’re here to talk about periods. Who hates getting their period? Who was told by their mother the first time they got their period that it was a curse, that it would be the bane of your existence, that you now had to suffer for the rest of your life, or until you got pregnant or menopause, those blessings of female existence.
But wait. This lecture is supposed to be about the environment! What does this have to do with it? Well, a lot. For one, if you aren’t even comfortable talking about your period, you’re going to have a problem with most of the alternatives I’m going to outline. The reason we even ended up with the products most women use today is that women were uncomfortable with their bodies, uncomfortable with talking about them, and uncomfortable with finding out the facts. Not to mention, willing to let themselves suffer when it came to their periods. We expect it to suck, and therefore it does.

So let’s talk “feminine hygiene.” Disposables have only been widespread since the 1930s. The only way they became popular was that they allowed women to drop money in a jar on the counter without speaking to the clerk. Kotex introduced the equivalent of the disposable pad in 1921, while the self-adhesive pad wasn’t introduced until the 1970s. Before that, women used rags, fabric, wads of cotton, sponges, whatever worked best, and usually washed and reused the same rags each month. There were belts, suspenders, or sanitary panties with hooks or tabs to hold pads in place, because tight fitting underwear is a recent trend. For thousands of years, women have used reusable pads that they likely made themselves, and no one seemed to mind.
So how did we get stuck on disposables? Well, for years, women have been made to feel ashamed and dirty about the natural functions of their body. Early advertisements told women that disposable pads could help them hide their problems by disposing of the evidence. The same theory seems to persist in today’s advertising, when we’ve even gotten to the point of pads with “silent” packaging so the other women in the bathroom won’t realize you’re opening a pad. Our society expects us to hide our periods and pretend nothing is happening- like we’ve got some kind of terrible disease. If we’re buying “sanitary” products, we must assume we are unsanitary. Whatever embarrassment you feel probably came from negative advertising. Periods aren’t discussed openly. Very few of us had positive first periods. The usual response is, “oh, now you get to spend the rest of your life “inconvenienced” once a month.” Likely this has an effect on our periods- how much of PMS is really irritation that for five days you have to continue to deal with the world when you’d rather stay in bed all day eating chocolate and sleeping?
Many other cultures celebrate a girl’s first period with a party and gifts. Others hold menstruation to be a time for meditation and reflection, when women can take a break from regular life. Our culture still seems to think menstruation is a punishment from God. Long ago, women’s cycles followed the cycles of the moon, often menstruating during the dark of the moon and ovulating during the full moon. Even now, women with irregular periods are sometimes advised to leave a light on while they sleep to emulate the light of the moon- which will regulate their periods. This is known as the Dewan effect.
Tell me- what’s unnatural about your own blood? Knowing your own body and being aware of your cycles gives you self-confidence, especially the first time you observe all aspects of your cycle and are not only able to predict the exact time you will get your period, but feel when you ovulate, and, amazingly enough, this can also improve your health and destroy some of those symptoms normally associated with periods- fear, pain, agitation, etc. A positive outlook can go a long way. It’s no big deal if someone knows you have a period. Are you afraid they’ll find out you’re a woman?
Disposable pads are made of wood fiber, polypropylene, and polyethylene (#5 and #4 plastic). Tampons are made of a cotton rayon blend with a polypropylene cover, unless you buy those which are all cotton or have a cardboard applicator. In a woman’s lifetime she can use over 15,000 sanitary pads or tampons, adding up to about 250 to 300lbs of waste. There are 85 million women of menstruating age in America, throwing away about 13.5 billion pads and 6.5 billion tampons per year (2001). Can you even picture 13.5 billion pads? These fill landfills and clog the sewer systems, and can take over 500 years to degrade. Over 170,000 tampon applicators were collected along US beaches in one year.
In addition, both tampons and pads can contain traces of dioxin, a carcinogen. This is left over from the bleaching process, and over time can accumulate in the system, causing, surprise, cancer. Have you ever noticed how the ingredients aren’t listed on a box of tampons? Tampons also put you at risk for Toxic Shock Syndrome, which occurs when bacteria build up in the vagina from the fluid absorbed by a high-absorbency tampon. The FDA uses research provided by tampon manufacturers to tell the public that tampons are completely safe- even though there are no federal standards of quality or absorbency that could determine which are less likely to cause toxic shock.
Now for some solutions. You could start with all organic non-chlorine bleached tampons, though that does nothing to solve the waste problem. The cost is about the same or a little more than regular tampons. There are also reusable options. If you feel the need to use a reusable coffee cup in the morning, there is no reason not to use reusable pads or a tampon alternative. These include cups like the Keeper or Diva Cup and natural sponges. The Diva Cup is a small silicone cup that collects blood and is emptied when full. It usually can stay in up to 12 hours, and will last 10 years if properly cared for. The come in different sizes, to accommodate a variety of vaginas. The initial cost is $35, which over ten years amounts to about 29 cents per month. Natural sponges are animals that live on the ocean floor, which are dried out and cleaned and can be reused for about six cycles. They are, however, dead animals and have to be scraped off the ocean floor, which is not exactly an environmentally friendly option.
Reusable pads come in an amazing variety of options. You can purchase them from one of many female run companies such as Glad Rags or Lunapads. A starter kit costs anywhere from $30 to $150. Or you can make your own out of scrap fabric. They are usually cotton with a terrycloth liner; some also have a piece of nylon for extra protection. They come in all shapes and sizes and colors and if you make your own you can of course customize for the best fit. They’re bigger than normal pads because they wrap around, but they’re also more breathable and are highly recommended to women that have problems with frequent irritation or infection, which can be caused by the plastic backing of disposable pads.
There are always issues with any choice. Just look at tampons- in some countries they’re sold with little plastic finger covers so that women don’t have to touch themselves. That sounds strange until you realize that some countries don’t sell tampons with applicators. You don’t have to make the switch all at once- people will start by using reusables at night or at home, which can cut over 1/3 of the waste. Yes, you have to clean them yourself; yes, you have to get over touching your own blood. People will see them and wonder. Reusable pads will get stains, but if you soak them in cold water and wash them the stains will be minimal, and stains do not mean they are dirty. They make special bags so you can carry them around during the day, though Ziplocs work just as well. You can generally wear them longer than disposables because the cotton is more absorbent (and also less likely to leak). You really only lose from 2tbsp to one cup of fluid during each cycle. Plus, you never get the adhesive stuck to your hair.

“To make the switch from disposables to reusable products requires an attitude change from being able to throw away the mess (or is it the evidence?) of our menses and perfume and deodorize at the same time, to accepting the reality of this natural part of our bodies.”

I also wanted to bring up, at least briefly, birth control. I never used to discuss this in my lecture because, well, for a long time I thought the benefits of not getting pregnant outweighed the downsides of birth control. But as there are alternatives, and birth control becomes more and more of an environmental issue, I wanted to at least mention it.
There are two reasons this topic is important for girls. One, like pads and tampons, there is an environmental concern in regards to birth control. There have been a lot of rumors circulating in regards to hormones ending up in our water supplies, and whether these are all true or if we really have to worry yet, no one seems entirely sure. It’s typically safe, when it comes to pollution, to err on the side of less pollution is better.
The second, and this has been subject to even less research, is that birth control in its many conventional methods has not been proven to be entirely safe for all women. Most methods haven’t been out for a long period of time, and several have been pulled from the market after they were discovered to have negative effects on our systems, such as Norplant, and suspicions have been raised about many of the other forms- though no one has bothered to figure out what exactly all the side effects are.
I’m not going to go extensively into alternatives, because this is an area where you have to choose for yourself. Some people don’t seem to have the same bad reactions to hormones as others, and some people have a harder time counting days and paying attention to their own bodies. And sometimes accidents just happen. Believe me, I have contemplated going back on regular birth control for the convenience more than once. But I am one of those people who can’t tolerate hormones in my system. Even aside from the risk factor, I do not personally like to be dependent on pills to take care of my body any more than I like being dependent on pads made of plastic that come from the drug store. If there is a more localized alternative, that gives us control over our own bodies, and puts the knowledge of how they work back into our own hands, then that’s the option I’m going to take.
When it comes right down to it, the real question is, do you love your body? One of the most radical things you can do, for yourself and for the environment, is to care about yourself, and to be attuned to what’s going on. I mentioned before that with practice you can literally feel yourself ovulating. That kind of power can change your life. And if you care about yourself, and your body, you’re going to treat it right- and that means not tormenting it by trying to shove your period to the side, and trying to hide from the simple fact that you are a girl and you menstruate and I am here to tell you this is beautiful and amazing.
And, to not lose sight of the theme of this lecture, I strongly believe you can’t love the planet while you’re hating yourself. Look at the damage we do to the environment and how much of it has to do with how much we just don’t care about its effects on ourselves- thousands of kids get asthma every year from power plants, but we let it slide- thousands of people get cancer from pollutants in the air, in the water, and we do nothing… because we don’t know how to love ourselves, dirty and chaotic and imperfect animals that we are. If you can change that, you’ll be surprised how quickly everything else falls into place.

Money Money Money

2009-05-01T14:21:00.002-04:00

Reality Sandwich: Money, A New Beginning

There are two important (related) points I want to address from this article:

We have a growth economy (in fact, an exponential growth economy) and a finite quantity of resources upon which that economy is supposed to be based. This is undeniable.

In a growth economy, we must constantly have more things if there is going to be more money in circulation- in other words, in order to grow, we must have more things to sell. If you look at our society, it is based almost entirely on the privatization of things which were once free (such as clean water), and the constant invention of new things to spend money on (for example, “upgraded” technologies, which renders the old versions obsolete).

This causes two problems: first, that in order to continue to grow, our economy encourages phenomenal amounts of waste. If you reuse something for ten years instead of buying a new one every few months, there is no profit to be made, as a long lasting reusable item subverts your need to constantly make a purchase. The same principle demands the constant use of more resources to produce the new items.

Second, it traps you into a constant cycle of accumulation. I’ve talked about this in terms of major environmental groups previously on this blog. When you constantly require additional funding to stay afloat (literally to stay in business- to maintain your employees and programming) a vast percentage of your time is spent on accumulating money in order to do this. Now imagine if we were secure, and accumulating money was unnecessary- that same amount of time spent on fundraising and grant writing could be spent on immediate, tangible applications, such as going out and quite literally cleaning up a stream.

It’s yet another way to look at sustainability. Let’s look at one of my favorite examples again, water. One way or another, we have to pay for water. Even if you refuse to buy bottled water, which is thus far the ultimate in privatization of water, you still have to get it from somewhere (a tap) because it certainly isn’t clean enough when it’s running in a stream or something similar. There are methods of collecting and purifying your own water, but these are typically discouraged, looked down upon, or made otherwise difficult, if not outright illegal. So we get our money from a tap, the cleaning of which is paid for typically by a municipality, which pays with our tax money and the like. If you have your own sink, typically you have a house or apartment or something around it (which you had to pay for), or even if you are getting water on the go, you need some kind of container to put it in (which you had to pay for). Water is by no means free. We must accumulate some sort of material good to grant us access- whether it be a whole house or a Nalgene bottle. Take a minute and imagine someone in a tribal society with a Nalgene bottle. What the hell would they do with it? They’d have to haul it around all over creation. If water were simply available, clean and without pollutants…

Well, possibly you can see what I’m driving at. The destruction of the commons, as it is typically called, has deep reaching consequences for our environment. If everything is privatized, it is no one’s responsibility- who is to blame for the polluted air in the vicinity of a power plant, as we’ve asked before? The plant, or the people who purchase power from them? And when it comes down to removing the pollution, who should pay? And who, ultimately, pays when the people living nearby (regardless of whether they purchase power from that plant or not) suffer from exposure to pollution?

Something to consider, certainly.

Links of the Day

2009-04-29T09:41:00.003-04:00

Visualizing the Grid

This is kind of fun to play with. I am mildly entertained by the fact that if you switch it to power plants, and then coal, you can find my hometown. There was a major plant right next to my elementary school. We liked to joke, growing up, that this was why there were (quite literally) mutant insects in everyone's basements. It was undoubtedly the source of the overwhelmingly bad smells that occasionally permeated that side of town. And it was without much doubt the source of the high asthma rate in the area.

Hurray for electric.

In other news, this is kind of fun (and kitsch): The Recycled Cardboard Computer Case

Not to mention...

the other entries for Inhabit's Greener Gadgets competition.

Though in the remarks on the Cardboard Computer Case they really hit the nail on the head- yes, electronics are designed to have a short lifespan. That's how electronics companies make money. So the real question is maybe which is more important- the profits of the electronics companies or the amount of waste produced by the constant "updates" of our electronic devices? I refer you back to Last Year's Model.

Of course, it probably depends on who you're asking.

Earth Day '09

2009-04-27T16:46:00.007-04:00

The winners for the 2009 George Gets Ingenious competition was also announced at Earth Day. Congratulations to Nicolas Bash '10! You can view his entry and all the other great ideas for sustainability here.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, gratuitous puppy photos from this year's Earth Day and Mutt Strut in Fountain Park. To see the rest of the photos, check out the CES website. Click to enlarge! And please excuse blogger's inability to line up pictures.

Last Year's Model

2009-04-23T16:56:00.002-04:00

A great cause, and an adorable website.

Last Year's Model

You can also join their cause on facebook. The idea is to pledge to keep your old electronics for as long as they're still working- instead of constantly updating to whatever the newest fad may be. Simple!

Happy Earth Day!

2009-04-22T16:58:00.002-04:00

Happy Earth Day everyone!

In celebration there will be local foods featured in the dining hall tonight, from our very own Homestead Farm, located in Millington, MD. This may be a small selection, but expect to see local foods more often in the dining hall, especially in the fall when we move back into Hodson.

Woo!

Thrifty Belle O' The Ball

2009-04-21T13:15:00.005-04:00

If you missed the Alpha Chi Omega dress drive on April 4th, you need not fret! There are plenty of other ways you can donate your old prom (or Birthday Ball, or formal, or homecoming) dresses and ensure that they're put to good use.

The Priceless Gown Project is a Baltimore organization dedicated to providing prom dresses for high school students who can't afford to buy their own. They accept clean, lightly-used gowns, and then set up an annual boutique for local girls to pick out free prom outfits. While this year's dress drive and boutique are now closed, the organization will soon be collecting more gowns for the 2010 prom season.

Other organizations across the country host similar projects. Here are a few along the East Coast:
Connecticut: Princess and the Prom
Massachusetts: Fairy GodMother Project of Massachusetts
New Jersey: Catherine's Closet, Inc.
New York: Gowns for Girls, Operation Fairy Dust, The Cinderella Project
Pennsylvania: Fairy Godmothers, Inc.

How Long Will it Last?

2009-04-20T10:14:00.001-04:00

How Long Will it Last?

This is just fascinating...

Green Elitism

2009-04-19T11:56:00.000-04:00

Is Rural Green Living an Elitist Illusion?

I didn’t just post this because they use a Monty Python picture in the article. I swear.

No, I was actually just talking about this recently with some friends (my friends are so nerdy that we typically sit around talking about things like the true definition of sustainability). Hybrid cars are great and all, but I can’t afford one. Most people I know can’t afford one. I typically use the word “inaccessible” for most “green” innovations. Many argue that new green technologies will eventually trickle down, but I honestly don’t think we’ve got that kind of time. Products trickle down as newer, better innovations come along, but that can take decades- and it means that there will be even more sustainable products on the market, leaving those with the least money using outdated, inefficient models.

Additionally, how green is it if the majority of the population simply can’t afford it? It means only a small percentage can go green, leaving the rest of us… well, not green.

This article presents a good point, and turns it about a bit. Not only can “green” products be labeled elitist, marketed as they are to people with money (Whole Foods is a great example of this. I dare you to find a Whole Foods in a depressed area), but those toting the green products tend to look down on those who are lacking. There’s certainly a “greener-than-thou” attitude among a lot of the environmental advocates, comparing notes on whose wardrobe is more organic, who has the newest, most efficient car, who has the fanciest fair trade furniture. And that’s great and all. It’s better than all of those same people driving gas guzzling sports cars. But what about the part of the population who doesn’t have the disposable income for that sort of shopping?

That’s where you encounter what this article calls “the rural poor,” and by extension, I’d imagine, the same group in urban areas. When people have less money (and I think college students, at least the ones I hung around, sometimes have a similar experience, even if it’s temporary), they become very innovative in their attempts to cut out expenses. For those in rural areas, especially in the UK, which this article refers to, they’ve likely been practicing sustainable methods for centuries. A hybrid car would be completely ridiculous in that situation- as would a reusable grocery bag, or organic cotton shoes, or any other of the trappings of middle class greenism.

It makes you, I think, really question what sustainability is. I personally don’t think it has anything to do with products whatsoever. Some may be “greener” than others, and may be improvements in terms of damage done to the environment- but if we’re really going to be sustainable, I think improvements are just not going to cut it. We need to rethink how we approach everything in our lives, and that, I believe, means cutting out the consumerism all together. What’s more sustainable, after all- solar panels, or not using any electric at all? Oh, I know how most people will react to this- I get labeled a luddite all the time- but I’m not suggesting we all go without electric, as I’ve said before. I’m just suggesting we take a long, hard look at the things we call “green” and ask if they’re really helping save the environment, or if they’re really just helping us feel better about ourselves- while we maintain the exact same lifestyle that got us into this mess originally.

Flashbacks to Freshman Year

2009-04-17T16:23:00.000-04:00

This is just fun:
Recycled Runway Collection

We used to do this in fashion school. Intro Fashion, your first class, involved making a dress out of anything other than fabric (these would not pass). The most beautiful I ever saw (and the most controversial) was a gorgeous full length evening gown out of Kotex pads (using the blue wrappers for trim). I wish I had a picture of it.

PS: If you haven't figured it out yet, I didn't go to Washington College. Just a sidenote.

New Soap, New Concept

2009-04-17T14:15:00.001-04:00

New Soap, Old Bottle

Now this in an interesting concept. Companies will on occasion sell refills to their products, in those big bottles that are always inexplicably on the top shelf so you risk knocking yourself over the head when you pull one down. (Superfresh also keeps the Kashi crackers on a shelf I can barely reach, and I really think this is explicitly to make my life more difficult).

Anyway, the concept of New Soap, Old Bottle is to cleanse and reuse old soda and beer bottles by filling them with new soap- from companies like Windex, 409, and Dawn. They also, as far as I can tell, have their own line of “Super Green” cleaning supplies, which you can also order on their website.

Now, I would generally prefer that the entire line was the “Super Green”, and they didn’t even fuss with nasty substances like Windex (which I personally can’t use- it sets off my asthma)- but I suppose this is part of their ploy to get people to buy into the concept. Many people (myself included) are suspicious of green lines of cleaning supplies, as there are a lot of brands that claim to be all natural or green, but who may or may not be able to substantiate those claims. (Clorox? Green? Come on.) So when introducing a new concept, especially something people might be a little suspect of (old bottles), it probably makes sense to break them in slowly, with products they’re familiar with.

So, kudos to them for innovation. The idea of reusing old bottles by putting new tops on them isn't exactly new, but the idea of putting new soap in them and packaging it up all nice is rather unique. I will continue to make my own cleaning products out of vinegar and baking soda, and put them in reusable bottles that I thieved from the trash (or my conventional cleaning product using parents), but for those of you who choose not to take the time, or simply prefer conventional cleaning products, check them out. They also sell spray tops and that sort of thing so you can make your own reusable bottles at home.

101st Post!

2009-04-16T09:00:00.008-04:00

Loyal Followers,

I've just realized we hit 100 posts! Somehow I have a hard time believing that, but I suppose, since I started this blog during George Goes Green last year (and it is that time again) it has been about one year- and 100 posts in one year is a pretty respectable number.

In celebration, here is a fun, non-rant link about bicycles, which I love dearly. Maybe we should start collecting the recycling on campus by bike. Extraordinary Loads on Ordinary Bikes

Also, please excuse some temporary messiness while I redesign the look of the blog.

Thanks for reading!

Green Georgia

Parrot Sweaters

2009-04-14T10:59:00.014-04:00

Let's admit it: There are very few things you can do with old socks. Sure, you can use them as tiny dust rags or donate them to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but wouldn't it be nice if you could put them to more useful use?

Best Friends Animal Society provides a solution to this conundrum. As America's largest no-kill domestic pet and wildlife sanctuary, the Kanab, Utah sanctuary has taken in more than a dozen parrots from neglectful and abusive owners. Many of them, according to the organization's web site, suffer from anxiety disorders that cause them to pluck their feathers, leaving them feather-less (bald?) and less able to regulate their body temperature. Parrot sweaters--either knitted or crocheted by hand or created from thick, used socks--protect the birds from fluctuations in temperature and distract them from causing harm to themselves. Specialists at the sanctuary also say they're intellectually stimulating.

Because Best Friends is a non-profit, they are always eager to accept donations from anyone kind enough to help them out. So any lightly-used adult mid-calf socks that you could spare would most likely be put to good use. Just contact chandra@bestfriends.org if you want more information.

The Bottled Water Debate

2009-04-13T13:52:00.004-04:00

I’ve recently been privy to a series of emails from various college dining services purchasers and the like, all debating the relative merits of banning bottled water from campus, as they call it. To be more accurate, they should say, to stop selling bottled water in campus retail locations. There’s no way they can “ban” bottled water from being brought onto campus from outside sources.

To me, this should be a no brainer. Bottled water is one of the most wasteful inventions in history. Americans throw away sixty million water bottles PER DAY in the U.S. Sixty MILLION. Take a moment to picture that. And arguments that recycling can eliminate this problem are a load of BS. Barely a quarter of the bottles produced in this country are recycled. The obvious and very simple alternative to this extraordinary quantity of waste is to stop selling bottled water. However, the industry, including a number of college retailers, argue that they wouldn’t stock bottled water if people weren’t buying it. However, this is another ridiculous argument, and one that you hear to justify everything from fast food to underpriced sweatshop clothing- “well, people are buying it.” People would probably buy crack if you started selling it in retail locations, but you don’t see anyone doing that, now do you?

To an extent, there is some validity to this argument. People ARE buying all the shit out there on the market, and the people selling it are making money off it- so they keep selling it. McDonald’s would not continue to exist if it weren’t raking in billions of dollars every year. But who’s to blame, really? You can blame consumers for being uninformed and not thinking about their decisions. You can blame the industries for aggressive marketing, especially to children. Hell, you can blame every aspect of this society for making people into consumers, and leaving them with no choice except to be slavishly dependent on what they can purchase- and for being driven to look for the lowest price out of necessity. If we still knew how to grow our own food, and still had access to clean water, things like fast food and bottled water wouldn’t even be issues.

But we are currently trapped within the confines of a consumer culture (for the time being), and that leaves the question: do we stop selling bottled water, or continue in this vein? Stopping selling water would clearly eliminate an enormous amount of waste. But if colleges stopped selling bottled water, they would be required to install more water fountains, so that students continue to have access to water- and that, and this is the key, costs money and does not make any profit for the college.

The various people at other colleges who have weighed in on this like to laundry list excuses like, “tap water isn’t as high quality as bottled,” which is patently not true in most cases (tap water is more strictly regulated than bottled, the problem comes with poor plumbing at the college itself, which is fixable), and rambling about how they only want to offer the highest quality products to their students. I honestly would not be so irritated if they would just come right out and say they don’t want to lose money.

No, if they really cared about students they would be more interested in providing the cleanest water possible- in a form far more accessible than expensive bottled water, ie public fountains at more regular intervals. And if they cared about the environment, it wouldn’t even be a question. But, like people everywhere, they refuse to acknowledge their real motivations- instead attacking the environmentalists for not also attacking bottled soda (uh?).

It comes down to the same thing that is ALWAYS an issue, and is at the heart of every environmental argument: if we all had access to clean water, would bottled water be in any way successful? Is it within our rights as human beings to continue to access one of the basic necessities of life without paying an arm and a leg for it? It hearkens back to the public bathroom issue. The trend right now is to make you pay for everything, basic necessity or not. The perfect consumer is one that doesn’t have any other options.

Green Blowjobs

2009-04-07T10:26:00.005-04:00

EcoGeek - Interview with Paolo Bacigalupi

This guy is just fantastic. I've largely stopped reading scifi in recent years, but scifi authors generally have the ability to look sharply at our own culture by exaggerating it and setting it just far apart that we can look at it from a perspective we can rarely turn on ourselves. Ursula LeGuin is a great example of that. I haven't read any of this guy's books, but from what he says in his interview, I think I'm going to have to. I'm going to be eternally indebted to him for inventing, to my knowledge, the term "green blowjob." That just about sums up my opinion of most of the green products being pandered to us on the market these days.

I just want to quote this section:

"One of the things I dislike intensely about technological fixes is that they often involve payment in order to replicate a natural service that once was provided free of charge by nature. Don't have clean water? One techno-fix is a water filter. Let's give a huge shout out to Brita filters, right? But then we all have to buy one.

"In India, middle-class households all have water filters... the poor go without. The other option would be to protect our water sources. But that's just not sexy. Using a technology almost automatically means we have to hire and pay a technology creator, which in turns creates an economic interest that does not actually care to remedy the core problem. If I sell water filters, I'm not going to be interested in clean water for all. That would kill my market of clean water for the ones who want to buy it from me. Once there's an economic interest, you end up with corporations lobbying tooth and nail to keep us from simply taking the most simple long-range planning steps.

"So no, basically, I think trying to find another tool to fix what we've already done with our tools, generally works out poorly. This has partly to do with the narrow way we approach environmental problems and our lack of foresight over cascade effects. And partly from seeing how talk of techno-fixes almost always defaults to a circle-jerk that's really focused on how we can keep enabling our ongoing stupidity. Another drink doesn't help an alcoholic, another toy doesn't fix our environmental problems. Either we deal with root causes, or we pay down the road. None of the ways we make, sell or trade objects are sustainable. The longer we deny it, the harder it will hit us."

-Paolo Bacigalupi

Amen to that. Nothing to add.

Burger King Attempts to Conquer the World

2009-04-02T12:14:00.005-04:00

Whopper Virgin Documentary

Usually I post things on here that I like. This is something that makes me want to go on a very, very angry rampage. If I were the sort of person who made moralistic judgments, I would be doing so right now- but instead I will go through it point by point. Watch the video first, or this won’t make any sense.

One- This is a very cleverly designed ad campaign. Notice how they select out the few people who, most likely out of context, seem to be friendly with the advertisers, inviting them back to their villages, etc. I imagine just as many people flat out told them no, or spit the burger right back out, or told them to get the hell out. But they chose not to show you that, of course.

Two- The whole premise- that there are very few people in the world who haven’t tried hamburgers, and that this is a wonderous thing, going around and introducing hamburgers to the “whopper virgins” of the world, is presumptuous and condescending. Thank the stars there are still people in the world who have never eaten a hamburger. The implication by Burger King that they are bringing enlightenment to the world in the form of the whopper is a disgusting example of our culture’s mindset that our way is the only way, and those who haven’t yet been exposed to it should be brought around to see the light.

Three- This is demonstrated in how they focus on the way most of the people filmed are unsure as to how to approach a burger- whether to take it apart or cut it up or what- as if this is quaint and adorable in the way a very small child tries to figure out how to use an unfamiliar object.

Four- The simple fact that they developed a portable Burger King grill to take on the road, and complained about not being able to plug it in at many of their stops- well, another example of condescension. I’m surprised a lot of people even had electric outlets to start with, and the fact that Burger King felt the need to go into their communities, disturbing their way of life, and plug in an “official” Burger King grill- I have no words.

Five- In the same vein, it’s interesting that they chose locations as close to Burger King restaurants as possible- clearly this has nothing to do with the fact that Burger King has so saturated the market that they have very little room for expansion, and are looking for ways to bring their products to the last reaches of the earth, because we have a growth economy and this is the only way to increase profit.

Six- Which is really what it comes down to: how can you increase profits when there are already more burgers in existence than people, in theory, could legitimately eat? The advertising expense for this ad campaign must have been tremendous, and you know Burger King wouldn’t put out that kind of money if they didn’t expect some kind of return.

Seven- Overall, I find the entire campaign distasteful and disrespectful to traditional cultures to an extreme. I cheered when they asked one man if he liked the whopper better than seal meat, and he answered that he preferred seal meat. Good for him. Homogeneity in food is one of the biggest causes of global issues- poverty, environmental destruction, destruction of indigenous ways of life, I’ve covered this on this blog many times over. Not to mention that the reason whoppers all taste the same is that the taste is manufactured in a plant, out of chemical ingredients, and basted over the meat to give it that familiar flavor. Nothing to do with the actual meat, which probably tastes like cardboard. At least that’s how I remember fast food burgers in my memory- but it’s been at least ten years since I quit eating them.

Deadline Extended - Please Enter Now! 60 Seconds or Less Video Festival

2009-04-01T15:22:00.004-04:00

Showcase the work you’ve already done in classes! Make a trailer for a longer video assignment, re-edit something that’s over a minute - we want to make sure your work gets seen because we know there are great projects out there on campus now!

(And - if you think you can turn something out quickly, why not make that idea into reality or turn in another quick project?)

You now have until Monday, April 6th at 12:00 pm to turn your videotapes in to Nancy Cross in the Miller Library (Lower Level.) Don’t miss this great opportunity to show your friends what you’ve created this year.

There’s still a chance to win a digital video camera or hundreds of dollars worth of prizes! If no one enters, no one wins and we’ve only got five entries total at this point. Still lots of chances to come away with something.

The Awards Presentation Reception and Ceremony will be April 7th and will kick off at 6:00 pm with wine, cheese, fruit and candies from around the world in Toll Atrium. The video presentation and awards ceremony will start at 7:00 pm in Litrenta.

Hope to see your entries soon (full rules at www.wcmc.tv) and see you in Toll!

George Goes Green! Again.

2009-04-01T12:53:00.002-04:00

Once again, it is time for our annual George Goes Green marathon! As George Goes Green is now practiced all year round, and not just in April, we've made this year's theme: An Action a Day Keeps Global Warming at Bay. On the George Goes Green website you can find a calendar with tips and suggestions to help make every day a green day. We'll also be posting tips, pictures and video here on the blog throughout the month of April.

This year we also are leaving behind the energy competitions of the past. As this is the fourth year of George Goes Green, we figure you've got the idea by now and should be saving energy ALL year round. Instead, we're focusing on individual actions and innovative solutions to sustainability, through a series of events (including our sustainability workshop, which I will blog about at some point) and the annual George Gets Ingenious competition. Here is your chance to win $250.

No, for real. YOU CAN WIN $250. I know I could use that much.

The rules and guidelines are posted here for your edification: click here

Photos, suggestions, and other submissions can be sent to tholste2@washcoll.edu. For Washington College students, faculty and staff ONLY please.

Spring Break '09

2009-04-01T10:43:00.002-04:00

I awoke to the sound of rain softly beating against the side of the tent. The sides of the canvas were damp, but I barely felt it, wrapped tightly in my sleeping bag. Somewhere outside I could hear a vulture rustling it’s wings, most likely eyeing the camp, trying to determine if it was safe to approach. I glanced up at the tent window, and saw that the sun had not yet risen. The sky was still a solid, deep gray.

Eventually the sun would crest the edge of the beach, washing the sky with a light pink haze, edged in brilliant red. By the time it had moved beyond the tops of the palms, we would all be awake, perched on the picnic tables eating bagels and slathering on sunscreen before the day’s activities. It’s not a normal college schedule, rising at dawn and falling asleep shortly after dark, but when the days are filled with volunteering, canoeing, swimming, and hiking, it’s best to get an early start, and by the time the sun sinks below the ocean and the moon has risen to bathe the campsite in pearly white, all we can think about is sleep.

Each day brought a new adventure: whether meeting a panther face to face (literally), and learning that panthers, cougars, and mountain lions are in fact the same species (who knew?), or clearing brush to keep a trail clear for other explorers, each day of volunteering exposed students to the ins and outs of the Everglades ecosystems, especially with an up close look at what doesn’t belong- the tigers, snakes, monkeys and other exotic animals at the Everglades Outpost, rescued after escaping from research facilities or being abandoned by people who thought keeping a Bengal tiger for a pet would be a good idea, or the invasive species that plague the parks and choke out native plants.

Students also entered the Everglades themselves, getting as close as possible to the water while canoeing through mangrove tunnels, feet away from alligators, wading birds, and the other denizens of the swamps and waterways that make up the 1.5 million acres of the Everglades National Park, where we spent most of our time. A night hike during the full moon brought us within range of a group of feeding alligators, animals which look like nothing so much as baking logs during the day, but which come out in numbers in the cool of night to thrash through the swamp, snapping their jaws on unfortunate fish with a sound like a trunk closing. It is a rare group that gets to see a “feeding frenzy”- and a sight not quickly forgotten.

On another day we were able to get even closer to the wildlife, spending an afternoon on a beach in Key Largo, resting before the long drive back to Maryland, soaking in the sun, and snorkeling in the protected bay, which sheltered numerous fish and crabs, which could be seen hiding among the roots of the mangrove trees. The sky remained a perfect, incandescent blue throughout our trip- the temperature a perfect 81∞ each day, and bliss to our group, having just come from the melting snows and blustering winds in Maryland. An afternoon spent lying under the shade of a palm, listening to the waves brush softly against the beach, and watching wisps of cloud skirt across the sky, drifting in and out of sleep, was a perfect conclusion to a week spent out-of-doors, as near to the land as possible, without cell phones (no reception) and only about two watches between the lot of us, telling time by the angle of the sun and our own growing familiarity with the Florida skies.

The Everglades are a lesson in ecology. The climate is somewhat different from what we have here in Maryland: only two seasons, wet and dry. We were fortunate to visit during the dry season, when there are fewer bugs, almost no rain, and a higher likelihood of seeing animals, as they are bunched together around the few remaining large pools of water. The Everglades itself is actually a very, very slow moving river- 60 miles wide and 100 miles long, twice as wide as the Bay but half as long. During the wet season, May through November, the area floods to form acres of wetlands and swamp, which serve an important role in buffering Florida from hurricanes and flooding. Much of the damage done to Florida by storm systems in past years has been the result of the destruction of many of the wetlands that once absorbed the flooding caused by storms. The park itself is protected under a number of preservation efforts- but this doesn’t account for the encroaching development that threatens coastal regions elsewhere in Florida and around the world.

On the last night before we returned to Maryland, we came back to our campsite tired and sunburned, to find the site surprisingly dark. All week the moon had been so bright we had rarely needed lanterns to find our way around, but on this night, the moon hadn’t yet risen, and we could barely see our tents as we stumbled out of the vans. A few steps out of the parking lot, however, and we all stopped dead in our tracks. Without the moon, the sky was overflowing with more stars than most of us had seen in years, or in some cases, ever. The Milky Way was clearly visible, as were thousands upon thousands of stars we could only imagine even in a place with as little light pollution as the Eastern Shore. A group of us, without any planning or discussion, sprawled out in the grass to look up at the breathtaking span, sharing stories about constellations we could identify, and making up our own when we ran out of ones we knew. One girl pointed out that the light coming to us so strongly had been traveling for thousands of years to get here- and in many cases, the stars that originally gave off the light had at this point burned out. Looking up at the sky, which wrapped around us in an enormous dome unobstructed by any building or even trees, it was easy to feel small, a tiny speck in a vast expanse, and at the same time immensely connected to it all: to the stars, and the palms, and the cry of a heron somewhere in the night; to the alligators, and the flowing river where it met the sea within view of our campsite, and to one another, lying on our backs in the grass.

View photos of our trip here.

Well, for sure

2009-03-31T12:45:00.003-04:00

A friend sent me this article, knowing my predilection for rambling on about disaster scenarios. And even though this article doesn't talk specifically about disaster, it does speak directly to something I'm always prattling about on this blog: the fact that we, as humans, are not exempt from the same laws that govern every other species and every ecosystem on the planet. Which means, when we overshoot our resources, we suffer a collapse. Simple as that.

If you relate it back to the earlier discussions on this blog about corn and monocropping, it fits with this article: corn is our attempt to become as efficient at growing food as possible, or at least to have as much minute control over the growing of food as possible. Of course, it doesn't always work out that way, as we've seen.

This guy puts it in fancier scientific terms than I'm normally inclined to use, but he hits it spot on.

Our Panarchic Future

I wonder if it would make sense to start calling myself a panarchist?

Just a friendly reminder to our many readers

2009-03-26T16:26:00.004-04:00

The third annual international Earth Hour is this weekend! On Saturday, March 28, at 8:30 pm, join millions of individuals and organizations throughout the world as they switch off the lights in their homes and businesses for one hour. The action is a symbolic stand against global warming.

Click here (and here) to see some amazing images of the impact Earth Hour has had.

Plasmic energy

2009-03-17T12:18:00.011-04:00

It's hard to not be skeptical of innovative "green" technologies, but this one actually seems pretty cool. Florida's St. Lucie County has announced plans to team up with Jacoby Energy (a self-proclaimed "environmentally friendly" corporation) to develop the United States' first plasma gasification plant. This would allow the county to not only produce energy via landfill waste, but to also- hopefully- reduce the need for landfills at all.

According to Scientific American, creating and maintaining such a system is a fairly complicated process. Electrical energy would be used to heat solid waste up to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and this waste would then be broken down into plasmic ore that can be used to generate electricity. The new, Floridian plant has been estimated to produce enough energy to power more than 50,000 homes.

But all of this is not an entirely new concept. Inhabitat explains that NASA invented the idea of gasification over forty years ago as a way to create proper re-entry temperatures for shuttles and satellites. And Taiwan, Japan, Canada, and England have all touted the establishment of their own plasma gasification plants. While these systems have not come without criticism, they have also been acclaimed by engineers, environmentalists, and chemists throughout the world.

Being the overly-skeptical cynic that I am, I had a few questions about the environmental safety and "greenness" of plasmic gasification. A few minutes of research, however, led me to find some scientifically-sound answers:

Question: Wouldn't gasification plants release harmful chemicals and metals into our atmosphere? Answer: Not necessarily. Landfill incinerators don't have to gasify every item in the trash. Some items, like those containing lead or mercury, would most likely be spared from incineration. No answer yet on the sulphur and chlorine contained in plastics.

Question: Is this process actually sustainable? Wouldn't we be wasting a ton of energy to keep the plant running? Answer: Some scientists argue that gasification is a highly sustainable process. The only energy really required is the power used to start the plant. After that, the gasification process is self-sustaining. It will be able to power itself.

I don't claim to be an expert at chemistry or physics, and I know just as much about energy and plasma as the next person. Plasma gasification, as wordy and initially-inconceivable as it is, has nevertheless managed to spark my interest in aspects of "going green" that I had really never considered. It will be interesting to see how this technology pans out in the future.

This Website Blows My Mind

2009-03-05T16:58:00.003-05:00

Spontaneous Vegatation

This woman, relative of someone right here at the college (not me) is doing all the things I've ever wanted to do with my life. And in Chicago of all places. Just check it out, my heart is crying out with joy and longing to do the same things here in Chestertown.

THIS is what sustainability is all about, in my mind. Helping people live their lives without being major suckers of resources. Not spending millions of dollars on solar panels. Doing what you can with what you have already. THAT is saving resources.

Electronic Recycling

2009-03-05T16:55:00.001-05:00

The New York Times: Recycling Gadgets When They Go Pffft...

Just an interesting article on electronic recycling... there are a couple places on the Western Shore who will take electronics, in addition to the companies listed in this article.

Just as a note of interest, its sort of kind of illegal to throw many electronics, like refridgerators and especially air conditioners in landfills. So, recycling is all around better!

Inconsistency

2009-02-27T15:09:00.001-05:00

Often in this job I find myself doing inconsistent things. It worries me, sometimes, that I’m not really sticking to my principles, that we are somehow compromising ourselves by attempting to work with companies or organizations I don’t hold with. For example, Coke. The Coca Cola company gives out a rather wide variety of grant funding to various institutions, and we have been known to apply for them. But- it’s Coca Cola. Coke is not an environmentally friendly product, let me tell you. Start with the fact that the main ingredients in Coke are derived from corn. Not to mention the number of questionable labor practices of the companies foreign arms…

But that you can research yourself. The point, really, is that very often we are susceptible to making major compromises to reach our ends- but is this the right way to go about it? Just because someone is offering grant funding, does that absolve the fact that they are otherwise one of the major polluters to the environment? A lot of major corporations, particularly the oil companies, try and improve their image by providing funding to alternative energy projects, planting trees, and all the rest of the highly marketable band-aid actions. And in the meantime, they march onward without changing their practices in the slightest.

This is another one of those what-do-you-really-value questions. Yes, tree plantings are generally a good idea, and they look especially good in a press release. But what’s planting twenty or so trees when the company that paid for them may be cutting down thousands more? We in the environmental advocacy business tend to get so caught up on funding that we fail to question where we get it from. Real community action, I suspect, is the kind that doesn’t require any money at all, except maybe to support the people doing it so they don’t have to work three other jobs in addition to community advocacy. No, funding, in the large part, honestly goes toward making things look good. Adverts, board dinners, and endless presentations and powerpoints and pages of plans. It’s the difference between doing a demonstration artificial wetland in a fancy wooden barrel as opposed to just using a bathtub- or whatever else may have been lying around.

I haven’t been convinced this is entirely necessary. And maybe this is why we overlook the failings of some of the funders we regularly beseech for more money: we know that we ourselves are failing to uphold the tenants at the heart of sustainability. What compromises are we really willing to make when it comes to the future of the world as we know it?

Recyclemania

2009-02-18T10:30:00.002-05:00

For the fourth year running, Washington College is participating in Recyclemania. This is a national competition among colleges to encourage campus recycling and waste minimization. We are participating in the Per Capita Classic competition, along with rival colleges from our athletic conference including Gettysburg, Dickinson, McDaniel and Hopkins- all of whom are currently beating us except Hopkins- so get recycling!

You can help by using the recycling bins around campus, and encouraging your hallmates to put out their green county bins every week. If you don't have one, ask your RA to contact the recycling coordinator at recycling_coordinator@washcoll.edu.

You can keep updated on the results here.

You can find out more information about campus recycling at George Goes Green

Public Space

2009-02-11T12:18:00.001-05:00

Over the holiday I went shopping with my little sister. Normally I do not do any shopping, unless I need something very specific, or am inspired to browse the dress section at Goodwill. I definitely do not go in malls, especially of the strip variety. But quite a few people gave me gift certificates for Christmas, and unfortunately they were for places I would never go of my own volition- Barnes and Noble and Borders. There’s actually a funny story there but that isn’t the point of this entry.

While in one of these places, I started thinking about bathrooms. If you are in the middle of a city, ninety percent of the time there is no place to pee. Think about it. All the bathrooms are locked up in people’s houses, or in restaurants that won’t let you pee unless you are a “patron”. We had this problem over the summer during Artscape, when the lines for the portable bathrooms were horrendous, and the heat made them impossible to get near anyway. Where in heavens name are you supposed to pee?

You may be wondering how this relates to the environment, but think about it for a minute. When did this become an issue? When did it become illegal to pee wherever you could, behind a bush, on a tree, what have you? (Also, why is it so satisfying to pee outside behind a bush when you’re camping?) In Europe, you even have to pay to use the public bathrooms (which leads to some inventive methods of getting around the system, let me tell you).

One of our biggest expenses, or at least for most of us, is for space. Simply to have space to live, we shell out several hundred dollars per month. Sometimes several thousand. For- space? (We call it rent.) This really seems illogical, if you start to think about it. When this country was first settled, you could tramp out to the Midwest and drop yourself down and call it your own. You wouldn’t imagine paying anyone for the land, so long as you could survive on it. (I am temporarily ignoring the fact that there were in fact people living there already.)

This has led us to become rather possessive of our space. This is my space. This is your space. Do not cross the line into my space. But what of the other spaces? Could this be the source of some of our inaction so far as environmental degradation to the ocean, or the air? It’s not “our” space, after all. We didn’t pay for it. Someone else will deal with it.

But our spaces intertwine- the air and water from neighboring spaces have an effect on what happens in your space, frequently invading in the form of rain and wind and temperature changes- the natural world disregards boundaries such as property lines, which are irrelevant when it comes to the natural course of a breeze. And why is it that we pay such attention to them? How is it that we’ve come to find it acceptable that we have to pay for space to live, and frequently find ourselves without a place to pee? It certainly doesn’t make much sense to me.

In Defense of Food

2009-02-09T16:08:00.001-05:00

I recently finished Michael Pollan’s latest book, In Defense of Food. In it he argues that eating well is actually relatively simple, once you cut through the combined forces of the food industry, food scientists, and the media (which is maybe not so easy to do). I thought at first this book was not going to be as good as his last few (how could you top Omnivore’s Dilemma?) and in a way it’s not. It lacks the narrative that drives Omnivore’s Dilemma, the actual human drama of searching for a meal- something that we can all, on a very intrinsic level, relate to.

Though In Defense of Food is based more on science than human interest, it remains profound in that it is really a culmination of Pollan’s work to date. Starting with the story of the deeply symbiotic relationship between humans and certain plants in The Botany of Desire and progressing through how we get those plants to our plate in Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan finally comes full circle in his latest book, looking again at our relationship with plants from the biological perspective of nutrition, and combining this with how the way we raise our plants affects the nutritional quality of our food. It is worth reading if only to see these pieces fall into place. A quote:

“Health is, among other things, the product of being in these sorts of relationships in a food chain… It follows that when the health of one part of the food chain is disturbed, it can affect all the other creatures in it. If the soil is sick or in some way deficient, so will be the grasses that grow in that soil and the cattle that eat the grasses and the people who drink the milk from them.”

In addition, the book provides up to date information about the fallacies of nutritional science that will have you throwing all your other “nutrition” books out the window- and rightfully so, as it has always seemed absurd to eat by attempting to figure out the nutritional content of food, when for thousands of years people have got on by eating based on food combinations their culture has worked out, over thousands of years. The olive oil/ tomato combination, for example: olive oil makes the lycopene in tomatoes more available, but when it comes down to it, who the hell cares? The two work well together, and people have survived for centuries eating those two foods in combination. As Pollan says:

“You would not have bought this book and read this far into it if your food culture was intact and healthy. And while it is true that most of us unthinkingly place the authority of science above culture in all matters having to do with our health, that prejudice should at least be examined. The question we need to ask is, Are we better off with these new authorities telling us how to eat than we were with the traditional authorities they supplanted?”

Really, as he concludes, you only need nutritional science if you are eating industrial, processed foods, which don’t have much in the way of nutrition- unless you extract it from something else and add it in. His rules for eating well are sensible and don’t require a calculator, or much in the way of label reading, because when it comes down to it, if it has a label, it’s probably not something you want to be eating. I most enjoyed the rule of thumb, don’t eat it if your great grandmother wouldn’t have recognized it as a food, as this is one of my personal rules of thumb. He means, of course, if you took your great grandmother to the grocery store and handed her a tube of Go-Gurt, or whatever the hell it’s called- would she recognize it as a food?

Probably not. And maybe, neither should you.

Hooks and needles

2009-02-06T11:51:00.006-05:00

I like to crochet. I find its repetitive weaving motions cathartic, and I tend to see it as my little own way of fighting the system. Until recently, however, I never took the time to question how my hobby has effected the environment.
It didn't take me long to stumble upon some studies showing how the wool industry is linked to pesticide and insecticide use. Such chemicals have not only been linked to harmful algae blooms, but also to neurological damage in both sheep and humans. I was alarmed.
Because I have never been one to advocate commercialism, I sought to find some cheap and ec0-friendly ways of producing my own crocheting fibers. Luckily, because of the wonderful invention of the internet, it didn't take me long. I had never thought of unraveling old knits (sweaters, hats) for their wool, but the idea seemed pretty awesome. I was able to ransack my basement for some outdated accessories and put them to good use. Even more amazing to me, though, is the use of old disposable plastic bags to make long-lasting totes. It's a fun project, and has freed me from green guilt.

Veggie Love

2009-01-29T16:39:00.003-05:00

There's nothing like banning something to guarantee five million people will watch it. I don't typically agree with PETA, because they over exaggerate, and level claims against ALL meat production that should rightfully be aimed only at factory farming. FACTORY FARMED meat will, yes, often cause heart disease and obesity, because it has a higher fat content than pasturized meat, due to the fact that the cows eat nothing but corn, a diet that is just as bad for them as it is for you. The real thing that probably causes health problems in meat eaters overall, however, is eating too much meat and not enough vegetables. So PETA's got the "veggie love" part right.

At any rate, I have to say, up until the wildly exaggerated claims about eating meat, this is a pretty great commercial.

Banned PETA Superbowl Ad

King Corn, Pt II

2009-01-28T14:34:00.001-05:00

Among the many, many things we discussed last night after watching King Corn- in what seems to be a constant and never ending discussion of the food system, and eating, and what to do about it all- one thing in particular stuck out. It’s all damnably complicated.

And that’s just it: a hundred years ago food came from the farm, to you, without a lot of steps in between, and food was, well, food. Not food plus 30 unidentifiable ingredients. Bewildering does not even begin to describe the number of food choices we have, not to mention the complexity of a system that moves food all over the globe to your plate, with a dizzying array of steps in between. This is why movies like King Corn focus on one thing, like corn- and even then can’t fit more than a small percentage of the issues into one film.

But I was struck last night by the context the filmmaker put this in. In many places, people have given up on trying to make sense of the overwhelming complexity of the food system, and taken matters into their own hands: joining coops, building gardens, right there in their backyards, even in cities, discovering alternative ways of growing and raising food that make sense for both us and our environment. Essentially, this is what all of us who protest “the system” are doing- taking things back into our own hands, making them into a manageable size, and handling them on a person or community sized scale, where we can make decisions that are best for the people in that area, and not- well, I’m not even sure who’s benefiting from the way we’re making decisions now.

That’s really the devilish thing about the mess we’re in, and, at least in my opinion, a large part of why there’s so much apathy toward doing anything to change it. When faced with something as complex as our current food system, it seems completely impossible to create any change. The web of cause and effect is too dense to untangle, and pulling one string leads to yet another knot of issues and tangles. You can’t blame farmers, who are just as trapped as we are, and are trying to keep their families fed just like the rest of us. You can try and blame the consumer, but it’s not like consumers stood up and said, yes! Give us refined sugar and nutritionless food! Destroy our environment and our health! Not only are consumers often not given much choice in the foods available for purchase, but they’re also bombarded on all sides by the mixed messages of the media, who can’t seem to decide from day to day what’s “best” to eat. And if you try and blame the corporations, someone will inevitably counter that they wouldn’t be making all these unhealthy food products if we weren’t buying them (though they spend an awful lot of money convincing us we want them).

It’s enough to make anyone throw up their hands in defeat. How can we ever get ourselves out of this mess if we can’t even look at the whole thing at once? Well, after our conversation last night, I’m prepared to offer at least one way out of the labyrinth. The beauty of this way out is that it is small, manageable, and widely variant depending on who and where you are: and that, in itself, is part of the solution, because diversity is what makes the world go round. It was trying to make everything the same that got us into this mess in the first place.

Step One: What do you value? What do you really, deep down, value, above all else? Your life? Your health? The lives of your loved ones? Once you know the answer to this question, you can answer every other question accordingly, and define your goals. Is cheap food, for example, still valuable if it compromises your health? Or is cheap food the ultimate goal?

Step Two: What are you going to do about it? You decide that you want high quality, nutritious food that will maintain the health of yourself and your loved ones. You know that this sort of food is whole food, not manufactured food products with their diverse array of unknown ingredients (which include any number of suspect chemicals), you know that food grown with consideration for the environment and the soil also happens to be higher in nutritional content (well, if you didn’t know that you do now), and you know that food grown this way is also less likely to be sprayed with toxic chemicals, and if it’s grown locally, will maintain more of its quality in freshness.

All right, you know all this, so what are you waiting for? You don’t know where to get it? Well, the food system isn’t offering it- and you could ask the supermarket owner, or the CEO of the food company, or the government for it, but that’s no guarantee- and more likely absolutely nothing will change. Or, you could go to the source: the land. Which is a little easier to do through the medium of the farmer. If there isn’t a farmer? Do it yourself. And before you start going on about time and money, I’ll ask you again: what do you value? What’s worth giving up, if the thing at stake is your life?

Of course, eating like this means large corporations can't make a profit off your hunger. If it turns out a more traditional diet is healthier after all, and they can no longer sell novelty food products, where does that leave them? Not to mention that whole foods come without packaging, and when grown locally don't have to be transported long distances, and when grown sustainability don't require massive inputs of petroleum based pesticides and fertilizers- but that's really just the icing on the cake.

King Corn

2009-01-28T12:00:00.002-05:00

Most likely I should have posted this before we showed the movie, but better late than never.

King Corn

A definite watch for anyone interested in how our food system truly functions (ie, poorly). It's on netflix, as well, though if you buy it these nice fellows will get some money out of it. They based their work on Michael Pollan's investigation of the corn economy in Omnivore's Dilemma, though they actually went out to grow an acre of corn and try to find out what happened to it. Watching the reactions of everyone last night, most people are disgusted to find out all the problems with corn: how hard it is on the farmers, most especially, how it, along with other commodity crops, has destroyed the family farm, how cheap corn has lead to confinement lots for cattle (and cheap, fatty grain fed beef), how cheap corn has lead to the availability of cheap sweeteners, including high fructose corn syrup, which provide empty calories, little to no nutritional value, and are proving to be more and more deleterious to our health... well, we've talked about all these things on this blog before. Watch the movie!

An Historic Day

2009-01-20T09:57:00.004-05:00

I debated for a while about posting on Inauguration Day. I have my own personal opinions regarding the new president, but in the interest of keeping this blog relatively politically neutral, I'm going to compromise by posting this BBC article on the outlook for Obama's environmental policy:

BBC News: Scientists optimistic over Obama

I think they are maybe being a little bit too optimistic, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see. The president, as much as I don't like to admit it, does have a major influence on the world, and especially where the money goes, so it may be we see a lot more investment in "green" jobs and technology, as Obama has promised. Certainly he'll be better than Bush in this category. But he will be influenced by lobbyists, like all politicians, and the biggest lobbyists are still by far the oil companies. So I'm not holding my breath.

I think the most important thing for us to do, on this rather historic day, is to remember that no matter who is in office the power is in the hands of PEOPLE, and it is our responsibility to remain vigilant, and call out the people in power on their actions, regardless of their promises for change. If we do not remain ready to act then we'll find the change may not be quite in the direction we hoped for. A new president is not an excuse for us to stop fighting for that which we hold dear.

Welcome back!

2009-01-20T09:51:00.002-05:00

Again.

And again, there are new recycling bins! Yes, while you were gone for holiday, the recycling fairy came in the night and waved her magic wand and bins appeared in the rest of the major academic buildings. Or possibly she and some helpers assembled bins for about 7 hours and ended up with a lot of blisters. Either way!

The small offices will have to wait just a little bit longer, but will also get bins by the end of the year. So! Use the bins! Recycle!

We are also participating in Recyclemania again this year, which is a national competition of colleges to see who can recycle the most! You can check out our ranking here.

Lastly, we are taking a trip to Florida again this Spring Break to volunteer in the Everglades. So if you are interested in going, come to a SEA meeting and look out for ads about the deadlines.

Fresh breath without feeling bad

2009-01-19T20:30:00.003-05:00

According to Ideal Bite, a web site that posts daily tips for green living, Americans toss away nearly fifty million pounds of toothbrushes each year. Regardless of the accuracy of this statement, it couldn't hurt to curb consumption during our daily hygienic routines.

Idea Bite (which also has a very nifty e-newsletter) offers some suggestions for being green without staying smelly:

Use recycled/recyclable toothbrushes. Radius offers a toothbrush made of 93% wood bio-plastic. Only its head needs replacement; the rest is reusable. Looking for something a little less bulky? Greenfeet offers a similarly-green item made from recycled yogurt cups.
Make sure you use all of your toothpaste before you toss out the tube. Not only do you prevent more waste from ending up in landfills, but you also save money (and that's a big deal for college students). Try cutting your toothpaste tube in half before tossing; most likely you'll end up with more toothpaste than you thought you had. Tube Wringers are also nifty gadgets that help you use every last drop.

Yay!

Totally Disgusted

2009-01-12T15:28:00.004-05:00

Seriously, that's the last time I buy something without reading the label.

So I was in the grocery store, and decided to get some nuts or something to keep in my desk drawer, because I'm a grazer and like to eat more or less constantly throughout the day, and what's better than some healthful, high protein nuts? Only when I was standing in the store I saw roasted, shelled sunflower seeds, which have always been a weakness, and I pounced.

Later on, sitting at my desk eating some seeds, I happened to look upon the label of the jar. Now, you'd think, the ingredients of roasted sunflowers seeds would be roasted sunflower seeds, and maybe salt and a little oil or something. But no. The ingredients of the sunflower seeds are as follows:

shelled sunflower seeds, salt, sugar, modified corn starch, monosodium glutamate, torula yeast, corn syrup solids, paprika, spices, hydrolyzed soy protein, natural flavor, onion & garlic powder.

Ok, I can handle onion and garlic powder. Corn syrup solids? Strange things I can neither pronounce or identify? Let's wiki some of these and figure out what they are:

monosodium glutamate = MSG

"USE Torula, in its inactive form (usually labeled as torula yeast), is widely used as a flavouring in processed foods and pet foods. It is produced from wood sugars, as a by-product of paper production. It is pasteurized and spray-dried to produce a fine, light grayish-brown powder with a slightly yeasty odor and gentle, slightly meaty taste." -wikipedia

"Hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP, is produced by boiling cereals or legumes, such as soy, corn, or wheat, in hydrochloric acid and then neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide. The acid hydrolyzes, or breaks down, the protein in vegetables into their component amino acids. The resulting brown powder contains, among other amino acids, glutamic acid, which consumers are more familiar with in the form of its sodium salt, monosodium glutamate, or MSG. It is used as a flavor enhancer in many processed foods." -wikipedia

Natural flavors, of course, can mean almost anything. Thanks, Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, purveyors of sunflower seeds.

This is another example of how we can't just eat whole foods anymore, they have to find all kinds of strange things to ADD to the foods, because otherwise the corn refiners association would go out of business. Well, they can stuff it. I'm not buying any more corn syrup coated sunflower seeds. Seriously.

Serves me right for not reading the label, I suppose. How do most people shop?

Running the Numbers, updated

2009-01-05T14:39:00.001-05:00

He keeps adding more new ones... which are all insane, if you ask me. We use way too much... stuff.

Chris Jordan

Deep Green Thoughts, Pt V

2009-01-03T13:51:00.001-05:00

I tend to digress on the subject of environmental “ethics” and how we should act as human beings, because it’s such a broad, complex topic. I’m therefore going to back up a little and return to this idea of clean air vs. polluted air and the relative concepts of good and bad.

Really, you could debate the existence of good and bad for centuries and not come to any conclusions. This is why we have philosophy. There’s nothing wrong with exploring the concepts, but when it comes to day to day actions, some simplification is necessary. Therefore, for the duration of this blog, I’m going to define good as promoting human survival (and by extension, the survival of most of the species we share the planet with) and bad as the opposite, something that contributes, on the large scale, to the demise of the human species. If we go back to the question of whether pollution is bad, then by these standards we can say it depends on the scale: pollution on the scale of one group out of hundreds occasionally burning fields is fine, while pollution on the scale of hundreds of much larger groups burning fields is probably bad.

We can take it a step further and go back to the original question, of whether or not it is wrong for the general human population (of this society) to live the way we do. If survival is our goal, then it follows we’re not in great shape. Take a power plant. We all, myself included, contribute to the construction and maintenance of power plants. We use electricity, after all. In return, those of us unfortunate enough to live next to a power plant suffer disease and poor health, which certainly hinders our chances of survival. I use “our” because I did in fact grow up next to a power plant- and ended up with a severe case of asthma, as did the majority of the kids I grew up with. Moving to the Eastern Shore has alleviated the problem to some extent, but I haven’t grown out of it, as one trip to the city, especially on a hot day, will set it off and have me sucking on my inhaler for the rest of the day.

Honestly, this makes me really, really angry. And why not? My health has been compromised. I will never be able to breath entirely freely, without fear of having an asthma attack set off by some unknown pollutant. And I’m not the only one, by any means, nor have I suffered much compared to the millions of other people on the planet compromised by human activities- look at the people of some parts of China, unable to go outside on certain days because of the acid rain. Or the devastation exposed by Katrina- thousands of people affected by living too near the industrial district, and thousands more put out of home and life because we, humans, destroyed the buffers (wetlands) that prevented tidal surges from destroying the coastland by building a city over them (not to mention the potential link between global warming and severe storms).

Why aren’t we ALL ragingly pissed off?

Well, it’s possible because we’re all the culprits. Who do you target when you get pissed about a power plant? Yourself? That not only won’t get you anywhere, but it’s counterproductive. There are plenty of direct targets, plenty of people who, whether entirely conscious of the consequences of their actions or not, still figuratively pulled the trigger. Or you could choose not to participate at all, which is hellishly difficult and usually doesn’t do much to change the fact that the majority of human activities are not only killing most of the other species on the planet, but are killing us in the process.

There are other ways. Really, though, the important thing- and the reason behind this long series of posts- is for you to work out for yourself what you hold dear. Define that, and then define good and bad, and what you are willing to risk to protect those things you hold dear. Look at the costs- not the monetary costs, but the true costs- and ask what electricity is really worth. What is beef worth? What is a housing development on top of a wetland worth? How many lives are worth a light that comes on at the flick of a switch?

Answer those questions, and you’ll be well on your way to your own system of ethics.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

I’m going to borrow some New Year’s resolutions from one of my favorite books. These are the things I try to live by all year, not just at New Year’s. I try, very hard, to define my life by the things I want and want to be, not by the things I don’t want. It’s sometimes a subtle distinction, but one that makes a world of difference. If you can only define yourself by what you don’t want, then really at the center you have nothing. I know I tend to rip on the conventional take on environmentalism in these blogs, and so for a while I’m going to have a go at being more positive, and see if maybe we can’t fill that empty space with the things we do want.

This year I will walk every day in between the trees, I will make some celebration, I will love without fear, I will create beautiful things, I will lay in the sun, I will share what I have, I will open my doors, I will sing whenever I can… I will eat jam and sit on my porch and remember all the tiny joys that make up our lives, and use them as a bastion against my fears, I will hold onto my dreams and realize everything around me is made up of dreams, and that means every step I take is making a dream reality, and if we all make room for our dreams, the world will be beautiful. The world is beautiful, and I am grateful every day for living.

Happy New Year, everyone.

On the eve of the new year... a Reality Check

2008-12-31T23:11:00.000-05:00

Does the fact that you turn off your light for an extra ten minutes really make that much difference?

Overall, no. We’re not going to lie to you and say that the 10 kWh you saved are really going to prevent global warming. They are, however, going to get you and those who will see what you do and follow your example in the right mindset, and that is that we need to start taking responsibility for our actions. That’s right, I’m about to be perfectly honest with you:

If we aren’t going to have a huge collapse, whether economic or ecologically or otherwise, we (as humans) can not go on living the way we have been, as if there are no consequences to our lifestyle and complete disregard for the balance in which every other living creature manages to function. If you use more resources than are required to support your population, you die. Period. No way around this one, no easy technological fix that is going to let us replace petroleum with solar panels (which are, by the way, made from petroleum), we simply can’t go on the way we are now if we want the human species to survive. It’s a simple matter of biological feedback. It doesn’t take a scientist to see we’re not only shooting ourselves in the foot, but we’re steadily drawing the barrel up to our figurative head.

This does not mean we are all bad people. This is what all those “Green Thoughts” are about. We are in fact an “invasive” species. But here’s where we differ from phragmites: we can make the conscious choice to get back in balance. We have the ability to realize we are on a one way path down catastrophe street, and that the answer isn’t so much as to turn the car around but to get out of the car and walk away. Time to find a new mode of transportation. Time to find a new street.

And here’s where I’m hopeful. Humans are innovative. We are immensely creative, when we aren’t fettered by our fears and the blindness induced by our culture. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, after all. Humans actually lived for millions of years without upsetting the natural balance- and if any particular group of people happened to do so, they died out. Pretty simple arrangement. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, I’m referring to the people we frequently call aborigines, or tribal peoples. Where they are still to be found, and by that I mean still found living the way they’ve always lived without interference from our culture, they manage to do the same thing that elephants and birds and fish have done all along: live without upsetting the balance that not only allows other species to continue to survive, but assures their own continued existence.
But we can’t live like that! We can’t live like elephants and birds and “primitives”!
Ok, fine. See you in the afterlife.

Living like elephants and birds does not mean we have to go back to living in the woods. For one, this is completely impractical. There isn’t enough space on the planet for nearly 7 billion people to go back to living in the woods. What we do need to do, instead, is figure out how to live without using more resources than our landbase can support. That means no more fossil fuels, for one. But it also means that everything we do, and I mean everything, needs to be examined from the perspective of its long term consequences not only on us (humans), but on our landbase and on the other species that live there. If we want to ensure our continued survival, we need to consider our actions in terms of not their economic viability or their efficiency (short term consequences) but of their ability to help us sustain human life for as long as possible (presuming this is the goal). To preserve human life, you need a planet to live on. Simple as that.

So let’s return to turning off the lights. I’m not asking you to stop having lights. I’m typing on a computer, clearly I am not running around in the wilderness without any electricity, nor am I suggesting you do so. I am, however, asking that you think what having a light bulb means. For a light bulb to exist, there must be a source of electricity to power it. This can come from any number of places, but aside from nuclear, solar, hydroelectric and wind, they more or less come from burning things to make steam which then powers lots of little machine bits and makes electricity. These things are not necessarily bad, unless you’re burning things that you don’t have an infinite, renewable supply of, like petrol. They also have the nasty side effect of filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, and we all know what that means. The effects of hydroelectric power- meaning damming rivers- we all should know is bad for the environment. The fate of salmon should be enough to remind us that dams kill rivers, and everything that relies on those rivers, including, eventually, humans. As for solar and wind- well, you have to build solar panels and wind turbines out of something, and usually those things are mined and manufactured using, you guessed it, petroleum. Not an elegant solution. And anyone who argues nuclear power is a solution to the problem isn’t thinking in the long term, or is ignoring the fact that we can’t live on a planet filled with leftover nuclear waste.

The light bulb itself isn’t much better. It had to be manufactured, with more stuff mined up from the ground, not to mention the energy required to convert raw materials into a light bulb, and then it had to be packaged, shipped, sent to a store (this is also not mentioning the resources required to build the manufacturing plant, and the equipment inside, and the equipment used to mine the materials in the first place, and the materials and energy that went into building the vehicles used for transporting raw materials and equipment and finished light bulbs), and finally, eventually, taken home to be put in your lamp (which went through a similar process). And this is STILL leaving an enormous number of steps out of the process. You have a house to put the light bulb in, presumably.

So when you turn out the light for ten minutes, does it make that much difference? Not compared to the process required for there to be a light for you to turn on in the first place. Does this mean you should just give up, and not care? No. It means every single one of us needs to rethink how we (as a species) are living, and whether this whole mess we call civilization is really working out for us in the long run. If, after looking around for a bit, you conclude, as I have, that its time to get out of the car and make a run for it, you will begin to think about things a little differently. It doesn’t mean you won’t turn out the lights when you leave the room- because no matter what, there’s no reason not to live responsibly- it just means you’ll see the bigger picture. You turning off your lights will not make so much of a difference as light bulb manufacturers coming up with a light bulb without so many unpleasant consequences for ourselves and the environment. And no, I’m not talking about CFLs.

On campus, this means turning out your light will not make so much difference as the college itself switching to a better source of power- and let’s pause to define better as one with fewer long term consequences for ourselves and our planet- and beginning to think about our practices in the long term. Individual actions DO make a difference, because all the so-called green power in the world will not make up for millions of people acting irresponsibly with their light switches- but we also have to see the bigger picture, and know that individual actions are not going to save the world unless we also make some changes to the heavy hitters. For example, residential water usage accounts for only about 13% of the total U.S. water use- the other 87% comes from agriculture and industry. Your shorter shower may save a few hundred gallons over the course of the year, but if we aren’t also working to reduce the amount of water used by industries, we’re missing the bigger picture.

It’s not impossible. We invented the light bulb, didn’t we? I have every faith possible that we are more than capable of uninventing it as well.

Deep Green Thoughts, Pt IV

2008-12-30T15:45:00.000-05:00

So, we had last established that humans are just as much a part of biological diversity as any other species. What does that mean in terms of the way we live?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize we have been squashing diversity for several hundred years now, if not longer. Take a look around the Eastern Shore. Massive plantings of corn do not lend themselves to much diversity- especially when other species are ruthlessly eradicated by means of herbicides. If you travel the country, you will find more of the same. Corn, corn, and more corn. At least half the food in the grocery store is corn based, if not more. We rely on it for everything. Now imagine for a moment a disease sprung up that targeted corn, and it all died. Uh oh. We’d be in big trouble.

This is the benefit of people all living in different ways. If some people depended on corn for their major food source, and some other people depended on potatoes, and a corn disease came along, not all the people would die out. The potato people might be able to help them out, or a new group of people would spring up in their place.

Now we’re back around to the question of what we do about all this. And the answer, at least in my humble opinion, is that there’s no one single answer. This is what I always tell other vegetarians when they come up with the idea that everyone in the country should go vegetarian. Clearly that wouldn’t work out any better than everyone in the country thriving off corn-fed beef. It would certainly help with the massive environmental damage caused by industrial cattle operations, as well as the numerous other concerns attached to factory farmed beef (this is such a well covered subject that I don’t feel the need to elaborate here). But if everyone went vegetarian- well, problem number one would be the dependency of most vegetarians on soy, which isn’t all that much better a crop than corn when grown in mass quantities- especially when grown as a monoculture. Same goes for most of the vegetables: massive fields of nothing but spinach aren’t going to solve the problem of needing to maintain biological diversity in order to survive.

By the same measure, there’s no silver bullet to the energy crisis. If everyone in the country installs solar panels, then yes, we will use less petroleum (ignoring the fact that solar panels, of course, require petroleum in their manufacture). But first, if we all started using solar panels the demand for the resources involved in the manufacture of solar panels would increase astronomically- threatening, I have no doubt, another slew of limited natural resources already taxed by our current means of energy production. Second, not every location makes sense for solar panels. Some places receive less sunlight (obviously). The same logic applies to windmills and biofuels and all the other “alternatives” they’ve come up with for energy production.

But there’s no one, single answer. Native Americans on the Eastern Shore of Maryland ate deer (among numerous other things). Native Americans in say, Arizona, did not eat deer. Because there were none. This may seem blatantly obvious, but then fast forward to modern America. People on the Eastern Shore eat beef. People in Arizona eat beef. They in fact eat the exact same type of beef, possibly from the same location, most likely distributed by the same corporation. When approached from the angle of biological diversity- and by extension, our own survival- does this make the faintest amount of sense? Keep in mind the possibility of a corn disease- and what happens when an area inhabited entirely by phragmites is suddenly deprived of sufficient nitrogen.

The pieces, if my narrative skills are at all functional, should at least be starting to form some semblance of a picture at this point. But let’s keep forging ahead, and see if we can’t make some sense out of the puzzle.

…to be continued.

Disclaimers

2008-12-26T12:52:00.000-05:00

Two clarifications in reference to the rather lengthy series of blogs under the title “Deep Green Thoughts.” One, when I say the planet can save itself, I mean the entire planet. Not life as we know it on the planet. If we fill the atmosphere with so much carbon that it kills off all life on the planet, the planet will still exist. If even some life remains, it will find a way to recuperate. An asteroid killed off all the dinosaurs and dramatically changed the climate, and life went on. The planet will be fine. We, however, require a certain climate to survive, and a certain set of conditions- temperatures that allow us to grow food, for example. Most of the other species on the planet share these needs for survival, so by saving the planet in a manner that allows us to survive, we are also saving it for the vast quantity of other species that depend on this particular type of climate to thrive.

Second, you will never, ever, hear me say humans are more important than the other species on the planet. I have never once in my life believed this. If this was in any way implied by my argument that it’s ok to save the planet so we can continue to live, it was unintentional. I believe all living creatures have a right to continue living. I also believe all living creatures will by nature compete, and some will live and some will die and that’s just how it is. The thrust of this argument, however, is not whether it’s right or wrong to deprive millions of other species the right to live, but whether it’s right or wrong for us to stay on a path that has us barreling headlong into our own destruction.

I don’t personally think it’s right to drive other species to extinction for our own gain. But more importantly, and this is where value loses meaning, I think it’s incredibly blind of us to drive other species to extinction. Take sharks, for example. Shark populations are plummeting, mostly due to over fishing. Considering most of them are slaughtered for their fins and thrown back in the water, this is a complete waste. But not only is it wrong because sharks have the right to live- but because if all the sharks die, we have taken out the top predator in the ocean. Which means all the fish that would have been eaten by sharks will breed out of proportion, and they in turn will devour their favorite foods, all the way down the chain to plankton, out of proportion. And do you know what happens if all the plankton in the ocean are devoured? They stop producing oxygen. And do you know where the vast majority of the oxygen we depend on to survive comes from? The ocean. So, from a human perspective, and we are human, it may be wrong to kill off all the sharks in the ocean- but more importantly, it’s incredibly stupid to do so.

We are all connected, and not just in the cosmic, spiritual sense, which is up for debate- but in very, very tangible and scientifically provable ways. Ignoring those questions just may cost us our survival.

Deep Green Thoughts, Pt III

2008-12-24T14:41:00.000-05:00

At the conclusion of the last segment, we had just established that saving the earth so humans can still live on it is in fact ok. We have also, if you missed it, established that we (humans) are not the enemy (and neither are phragmites). So it’s no use taking the extreme approach of laying the blame on the species as a whole. We are subject to the same laws as every other species on the planet, and that leaves us with a choice: a) keep going the way we’re going, and allow the species to die out in some form of massive catastrophe as our resources run out, or b) change our ways. There’s no particular ethical value to one choice or another, unless, of course, you place value on the preservation of the human species (I do).

So where do we even start, if we want to save our species? Well, it would make sense to start with the root of our ability to survive. What do we need that we absolutely must have not to die out? I’ll give you a minute to think about it.

Ok, if you said food, you’re close. But there’s something we need in order to even procure food. Have you guessed it yet? Air and water. And not just air and water- but clean air and clean water. Without air- well, we’d be dead, and without water, we’d have no means of growing food or catching food or whatever method you choose. I leave it up to you to come up with anything more basic that isn’t elemental (or just plain silly, like gravity. Obviously we rely on gravity not to fall off the planet. This is a given).

So presuming we need these two things to survive, and in a usable state, ie clean (because air laden with cancer causing chemicals doesn’t do much for the survival aspect), we can finally get into the ethics. Presuming again that our cause is to keep the human species going, in some form (and really, who could blame us?), something that is essential to our survival would fall under the “good” category- while the opposite would apply to something destined to kill us off. I realize, really I do, that this is absurdly simplified. But I’m writing a blog, not a treatise, so please forgive.

Step two. If clean air is good, and polluted air is bad, does that mean the act of polluting the air is bad? A-ha. Now we’re getting somewhere. But here’s where the grayscale comes in. Technically, you could argue that breathing pollutes the air. Carbon dioxide, in mass quantity, clearly causes us some problems on the survival front. By the same reasoning, most means of food production, staying warm, and moving about also cause ‘pollution’ of some degree. It seems we need at least one more piece before we can go further.

Let’s look for a moment at how others have gotten around this problem. Eastern Shore Native Americans burned fields when they started to become forest. Fairly often, actually. If you’ve ever seen a burning field, it gives off an enormous amount of what could be called pollution- ash and carbon dioxide and so on. They did this to maintain open grasslands to attract big game, for hunting. Incidentally they also encouraged biodiversity and caused hundreds of species to flourish that would have died out otherwise, but that was not their goal. And, even more amazingly, they didn’t cause global warming with these huge burns. Hmmm.

Where’s the difference between this and say, slash and burn in South America? Scale. The Eastern Shore Native Americans were burning fields, but to my knowledge, the Western Shore were not. By the same measure, if one group of people built a small coal burning power plant to create electricity, the air would more or less still be ok. But when an entire planetful of people do the same thing- aha. We have found our problem.

Let’s return momentarily to our friends the phragmites. If, under normal circumstances, there was a sudden influx of nitrogren, the phragmites would flourish. If the nitrogen then disappears, they die back. But this is presuming there are only phragmites in the area. Say there are also other water based plants- and some of these absorb nutrients that might kill the phragmites, and some of the others in fact fix nitrogen in the ground for phragmites to absorb- well, that will increase the phragmites chances of survival, and maintain the integrity of the wetland as a whole (rather than leaving it as an empty waste if all the phragmites die).

Do you see where I’m going? If one group of humans decides to clear cut to grow crops, while the one across the way decides to encourage the growth of forest to provide a lot of game, then it balances out, and you don’t end up with massive, endless clear cuts. In addition, if the group who clear cuts suddenly runs out of food and dies out, the group across the way can fill in the area and the overall integrity of the ecosystem as a whole is maintained.

We have, if you’ve been paying attention, just established one of the main principles of ecosystems: biological diversity. The important feature is that it doesn’t apply just to wetlands. We (humans) are a part of it too.

…to be continued.

Waste Not, Want Not

2008-12-22T12:55:00.000-05:00

An intriguing article: Click here.

Waste is a unique concept.

It really only came into use within the last century. Prior to that point, everything that wasn’t used more or less decomposed. Except, you know, pottery. And rocks and things.

But things are no longer so balanced. Even when we produce biodegradable materials, we produce them in such quantity that they can’t possibly be reabsorbed into the natural ecosystem. Take the so-called biodegradable plastics they’re producing now. Mostly they just break down into really tiny pieces, which is not actually biodegrading so much as- well, as getting really small. But all those tiny, tiny bits of plastic are still there- and what’s worse, they get eaten by tiny little creatures and then passed along up the food chain. Even to you.

Don’t believe me? Take mercury, for example. Mercury is a great example of why I get really irritated when people start the natural vs. artificial argument. “But mercury is natural!” they say. Yes, well, mercury is naturally occurring in the ground. It is not natural for it to be dragged up to the surface in massive quantity and pumped back out into the air. Yes, a stubborn person (and I know many) could even argue plastics are natural- they’re made out of petroleum, which is technically a natural substance. But plastics do not spontaneously occur in nature, we rearrange the molecules of petroleum to produce them. Therefore they are not natural, by dint of their rearranged chemical structure.

At any rate, mercury, in the small quantities that it exists in nature, is fine and dandy and does its thing. But when released in large quantities into the air- mostly from industrial sources- it falls back down to the earth in rain, where it flows into rivers and streams and eventually the ocean, and is absorbed by the plants in the water, which are in turn eaten by fish and other organisms, which are eaten by bigger fish, which are eaten by us. And on each step upward the quantity of mercury increases- because a big fish eats a lot of little fish, all of them contaminated. So when we eat a big fish- well, it's why you get those mercury warnings on seafood.

Plastic, at least for me, is even more horrifying. The numbers of how much plastic is currently in the environment are unbelievable. In the last fifty years humans have produced something on par with 1 billion tons. And it will never, ever, go away. At least not in any amount of time we can comprehend. And all of that will slowly move up the food chain, into our bodies, and remain there after we die. Pleasant thought.

So now we have all this waste, and nothing to do with it except wait for it to overcome us. But we (humans) are perpetrators of this mess we’re in (literally). We could stop producing plastic at any time. Oh, I realize this thought sounds horrifying to most people, and the typical response I get is a very mature, “Not-uh!” But we started making it, didn’t we? What’s keeping us from stopping?

Or we could keep going, and wait for the day when our own mountain of waste comes crushing down on top of us.

Pick Ups and Palm Fronds

2008-12-19T12:34:00.002-05:00

I spent three years living in Georgia (hence the name) and I must say, it changed me. Going in, I was young, naïve, fresh out of high school, and convinced that better emissions standards and universal recycling were the solution to the world’s environmental problems.

Boy was I wrong.

Savannah, where I lived, is occasionally called the “Little Easy”, the smaller, quainter version of New Orleans. Take everything you know about New Orleans and distill it (and take away most of the jazz and the Girls Gone Wild and insert Paula Dean) and you’ll end up with Savannah. There are still arguable differences (not much French spoken in Savannah) but the underlying concept remains. Centralized, historic downtown, built on a filled in swamp that doesn’t like to stay down. Sprawling, more or less modern suburbs that back up against an often disturbing industrial presence- in this case, dominated by the paper mills. And widespread, in your face poverty, typically divided on racial lines.

If you drive into Savannah the back way- not on 95- you will witness a startling introduction to what is otherwise a charming, slow, beautifully restored historic town. Row after row of government built housing, most of it in shambles, crumbling schools, abandoned vehicles, empty storefronts and lots everywhere you look- it still maintains a certain beauty, as does all of Georgia, but there’s no denying something is deeply wrong.

A few facts: “In the 2000 census, the rate [of poverty] was 22 percent for the city overall and significantly higher in five census tracts… Nearly 35 percent of the city’s households earn less than $20,000 per year.” (http://www.stepupsavannah.org/) The current federal poverty line, in other words the amount the federal government deems sufficient for a family to survive, “out of poverty,” is $21,200 per year for a family of four.

Imagine, for a moment, a place where over a third of the population lives in poverty. Possibly you have had this experience in your life, and possibly it changed you the way it changed me. It took a little while to sink in, and my constant volunteering exposed me to it more directly than the majority of the students who lived ensconced in the historic district.

There was one moment, early on, that set the wheels turning. I was with some friends, and was complaining that Georgia does not have emissions testing. In Maryland, where I am from, you must have your car tested every few years to determine if your emissions exceed the quantity set by the state government. If you fail to comply, you must have your car repaired to meet the standards, or you can’t drive. None of this exists in Georgia. After watching a particularly run down pick up drive down the road, spewing fumes, I asked how this could be- especially with so many trucks on the road clearly in need of repair. One of my friends, herself from Georgia, replied: “They can’t afford it.”

This didn’t make immediate sense. But then I thought about it- of course, if you fail an emissions test in Maryland, you are required to take your vehicle to be repaired. But the majority of people in Georgia who were likely to fail an emissions test wouldn’t be able to afford repairs. The poverty level is astronomical. The state, obviously, wasn’t willing to mandate a law that would take at least a quarter of their drivers off the road.

It was then I realized there are more immediate issues in the world than better emissions standards.

The Anti-Gift List

2008-12-18T14:37:00.003-05:00

I think this person and I would really get along. Here it is, the Anti-Gift list. The one thing I disagree on, is that he mentions gift cards, and how they are made of plastic that ends up in the landfill. This is mostly true. Especially when they are for useless, overpriced places I would never set foot in otherwise. Unless you get one for amazon.com or something, which is virtual! And sends wonderful books to your doorstep. I also look forward to two of my favorite gift cards every year: one to my massage therapist and one to my favorite restaurant- two things I would do anyway, but love even better when someone else pays.

The Anti-Gift List: 15 Things Everyone Gets and No One Needs

Also, I'd personally like to receive any of the items on this page for Christmas.

Deep Green Thoughts, Pt II

2008-12-16T16:27:00.000-05:00

Months ago I wrote a blog about environmental ethics… and I’m finally picking up where I left off. We ended by noting that we are not in fact saving the planet, but saving the planet in a state where we can still live on it. It’s important to have your goals defined when you start in on questions like, how should we live?

I should probably state my assumption that our current state of living is a mess. I don’t just mean the energy crisis, I mean anything and everything which contributes to the destruction of the environment, and I include in that the destruction of communities, families, and personal well-being. I will save how those tie in for another blog. But let’s take a moment and see how we got here. Long, long ago, everyone lived differently. People lived in tribal societies, and each one had their own way of living. Some were nomadic and relied completely on hunting and gathering. Some farmed. Some did both. All of them had to live in a relative state of equilibrium with their environment (by which I mean their surroundings). Otherwise, they would have died back, the same way any animal species will die back if it uses up all the resources in a particular area.

And then some groups of humans figured out that if you put in hours upon hours of extra effort, you could grow more food from the ground than you actually needed to feed your tribe. This, in effect, meant members of your tribe could travel at will, without having to stop and hunt, because they could take food with them. This was a revolutionary concept, because it led to, you guessed it, the ability to form armies. Which led to the necessity to build fortifications, which led to the creation of cities, which led- well, you get the point. We called this the agricultural revolution.

Fast forward several thousands years. We have expanded our population to such quantities, and concentrated them in such small areas, that there is in fact no alternative except intensive, industrial (or, to be PC, conventional) agriculture. We could not survive with this many people without mass production. Only, we have a problem in that there are more people on the planet than there are resources, especially since in our system of mass production we forgot to include the key concepts of any functioning ecosystem: not using resources faster than they can be replenished, giving back as much as you take, and not killing off all the other species competing with you (because an area filled with one species alone is far more susceptible to disease and pests).

Now, does this make us bad people? No, I don’t think so. We’re doing the same thing any species would do given the ability to adapt as quickly as we do. And we are subject to the same laws of nature that govern every other species, ie we can use as many resources as we can get, but eventually we will run out and suffer massive die back.

But there’s a key difference between us and say, phragmites. We can make choices. We can look around and think, uh-oh, we are heading for disaster, maybe we should do something about it. And we can. But we need to realize we are not saving the planet, at large. We are saving the planet so that we can continue to survive on it.

Why does this make a difference? In many ways, it doesn’t. When you come down to it, we’re still trying to keep whales alive. But there’s a difference between trying to save the whales, and realizing that the same things that threaten whales (pollution, overfishing, global warming) are also killing us, but more slowly. It’s also a difference between some abstract, noble quest- “saving the environment”- and trying to save our own asses from certain destruction. And that makes a big, big difference when it comes to helping others to see just why we’re fighting pollution and global warming.

Does that make us selfish? No. We’re doing what any species would do- try to survive. Only somewhere, somehow, we seem to have forgotten the key piece of the puzzle that allows us to do that: living in balance with our surroundings, not just because it’s “right”, but because it would be stupid to do otherwise.

… to be continued, again.

Ecofont

2008-12-15T11:33:00.002-05:00

Well, isn't this intriguing. Apparently, if you use this font it saves 20% of the ink you'd normally use in printing. That's because the letters actually have tiny holes cut in them, which your eye, in one of the magic tricks of optics, fills in because they're so small.

Mostly, I think its a beautiful website.

Ecofont