Where Have I Been?!

Excellent question.  I have had a busy last month and a half.  I spent a few weeks in Florida trying not to be struck by lightning or washed away by the outskirts of Hurricane Irene while enduring abysmal internet access.  Family tragedies and personal pains accompanied with an evidently weak immune system have also hampered my updates.  School is getting ready to start up again and with it, the stresses of literature and administration.  Graduation is applied for; now all I need to do is apply for graduate school.

You don't care about any of this, I'm sure.  Let's get to the crux of the matter, shall we?  Let's talk about sustainability.

As I said, school has returned with vengeance and with it, long days spent on campus trying to avoid the snack machines and the questionable nutrition provided by the Student Union.  On my campus, there is a deli, chinese food, pizza, sushi, burgers, and sandwiches of varying sorts.  Notice a pattern?  All meaty.  This offers me few options outside of the vending machine.  What do I do?  I bring food from home.

I like to bring sugar snap peas, carrots, pretzels, chips, clementines, granola bars, and whatever else I can think of that I know will travel well.  With all of this, I put trust in my fearless reusable water bottle.  This one was courtesy of New Wave Enviro.  

It is my Pandabulous water bottle that I wrote about previously.  Along with water bottles, New Wave Enviro also has water filters to ensure that your drinking water is as pure as it could possibly be and they also carry storage containers for lunch travel.  My personal favorite is the stainless steel container.  Like with the stainless steel water bottle, it is the safest in storage because there is no leeching.  

By using reusable things like water bottles and tupperware, you use less plastic bags and packing thereby creating less waste and saving money.  Win win.

Our Planet Isn't Disposable, Why Should Our Society Be?

Reuseit Reusable Set

Unless you grow your own food or dumpster dive, grocery shopping is sort of a must.  A friend of mine has the habit of throwing everything -- including produce -- into her cart and then into her car; no bags of any kind.  I just can't wrap my brain around that.  The way I see it is that I just spent precious money on this food and I need to keep it safe and protected until it can be safely stowed away in my kitchen.  For me, this requires so sort of capsule to store it all in.

Yes, this entry is about reusable shopping bags.  Reusable shopping bags are a great way to cut down your plastic impact on the environment.  With the use of reusable bags, less plastic bags are ending up in landfills where they pollute the ground and never break down.  Also, if your concerns are a little bit closer to your own comfort than the environmental impact of plastic, look at it this way:  reusable bags are meant to last which means they are not going to rip and tear like plastic bags.  Less hassle.

Grocery stores carry reusable bags.  Trader Joe's, has one design that is only 99-cents per bag.  My roommate has about ten reusable bags from Walmart that she uses for her grocery shopping.  If you want something that fits your personality or style or perhaps you are looking for specific materials, whatever the case may be, I recommend Reuseit.  They even have a thermal bag to keep frozen items cold.  Genius.  Many of these bags are made out of recyclable materials and even come in sets for your convenience.  Reusable things are the easiest way to limit your negative impact on the environment. 

For our own convenience, we've created this disposable culture and now we're drowning in it.  I don't know about you, but I don't want to be disposable.

GMO: From Plants to Meat to People

Last quarter, for my women's studies class, we were split up into groups and each group was assigned a book to read and present on.  My group was assigned Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  The book chronicled her and her families journey through a year of food.  They vowed to eat only local foods in order to limit their impact on the environment and be pesticide free.

For my section of the project, I talked about genetic modification and how that relates to not only food -- as was discussed in the book -- but also people which related it back to the class; Women's Health.

Today's entry will be my section of our report.  Enjoy.
 
GENETIC MODIFICATION:  FROM PLANTS TO MEAT TO PEOPLE
      When Barbara Kingsolver, her husband Steven, and their family decided they wanted to embark on a year long journey to abstain from processed, out of season foods and only eat local and organic food -- much of which they grew themselves on their farm -- they agreed to forego genetically modified foods.  Genetic modification (GM) is the "direct manipulation of genes spliced into the chromosomes of plants, and vice versa" (47).  Genetically modified crops serve many purposes; they can grow faster and allow crops to grow out of season.  This allows people to eat the same produce all year round.  Apples, for instance, which are in season in Fall and Winter, are always available in grocery stores.  Strawberries, a summer berry, can also be purchased all year -- albeit at astronomical prices.  Bananas, which are not even grown in the United States, too, can be purchased any given day, all over the country.  Genetically modifying these crops allows the grower to grow them during times of the year when they are not in season and also expands their shelf life so the produce can travel long distances to get to the consumer -- bananas, for example, are trucked up from Mexico.  In her book, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Barbara explains the detrimental effects of transporting food over long distances: carbon emissions, gasoline, etc.
      Genetic modification, however, primarily benefits the large companies who own the patent to the genetic mutation:  "The ultimate unnatural product of genetic engineering is a 'terminator gene' that causes a crop to commit genetic suicide after one generation" (47).  This allows the company who owns the patent to the seeds to prevent the farmer from saving seeds and using them in another harvest; by forcing the farmers to buy more seeds every harvest, the companies make more money.  The terminator gene offers no nutritional benefit to the crop, and in turn, the consumer.  The opposite of genetically modified seeds/crops, are heirloom seeds/crops.  These are seeds that are in their natural form.  These open-pollinated heirlooms are collected by farmers like jewels.  They behave the same way natural selection does; the crops best attributes are reproduced in subsequent generations.  In the book, Barbara talks about heirloom vegetables and how important they are to farmers.  Unlike seeds with the terminator gene, these seeds can be saved from the fruit of one crop to be used in the next season and can continue indefinitely.
      Plants, however, are not the only genetically modified food being produced.  CAFO, or Factory Farms, account for a majority of the meat consumed in the United States.  CAFO stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and make up approximately 15% of all AFO's -- CAFO's are AFO's that meet certain EPA criteria.  The EPA.gov (for the actual link, check the References section) site defines AFO's as "agricultural operations where animals are kept and raised in confined situations.  AFO's congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area.  Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals seeing feed in pastures, fields, or on rangeland."  CAFO meat is dramatically different from free-range and grass finished meat.  The CAFO animals themselves are dramatically overweight and are pumped full of hormones and antibiotics.  These additives carry over into the meat that people consume, effecting human health.
In the informational essays Steven Hopp includes in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, he discusses the complaints of opponents of CAFO have:

1. The treatment of CAFO animals:  the animals are packed tightly -- often unable to turn around.  According to Steve, a six-foot-by-eight-foot room can house 1,152 chickens.
2. Pollution:  putting so many animals in a small space produces huge volumes of excrement, creating waste storage and water quality problems.  "CAFO animals in the United States produce about six times the volume of fecal matter of all humans on our planet.  Animals on pasture, by contrast, enrich the soil" (91).  The water and soil become toxic which affects the crops that come in contact with the contaminated soil and water.
3. Health:  confined animals are stressed and given antibiotics to ward off disease.  "Nearly three-quarters of all antibiotics in the United States are used in CAFO's" (91).  The problem with antibiotics is that the bacteria become resistant to the antibiotics -- the antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that grow in CAFO conditions are a significant new threat to humans (91).  In addition, the CAFO animals are all being fed corn -- even the fish -- which they are not evolved to eat, compromising their immune system and in turn creating strains of viruses that would not be present if the animals were being fed what they are evolved to eat. 

       Similarly to the way seeds have been genetically altered, animals too, have been bred certain ways in order to benefit the companies that produce the CAFO meat.  In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver raises a flock of turkeys in order to start a breeding flock.  In her experiment to start her flock, Barbara receives a first hand demonstration of the consequences of CAFO breeding.  Since the animals are so tightly packed, in factory farms, it is beneficial for production for them to be docile so that they can gain weight.  "Genes that make turkeys behave like animals are useless to a creature packed wing-to-wing with thousands of others, and might cause it to get uppity or suicidal, so those genes have been bred out of the pool" (90).  When Barbara is trying to get her turkeys to mate so that she can have her flock, she chronicles how difficult it was for the turkeys to figure out what they were supposed to do -- these weren't even the wide-breasted turkeys that the factory farms use.
      In order to keep the animals docile, traits like intelligence and the ability to reproduce naturally have been bred out -- Barbara notes that a friend told her that she has seen turkeys drown because they looked up when it was raining.  The animals are unable to reproduce naturally because their legs are not strong enough to hold up their unnaturally giant bodies and the instincts that would encourage them to mate have been suppressed.  All industrialized turkeys -- CAFO -- are artificially inseminated, given growth hormones and antibiotics, and do not live to be a year old.  Cows are sent from farmers to the factory farms when they are only a few months old and then immediately fattened up for slaughter.
     CAFO came into existence as part of the switch from naturally based farming to a highly mechanized production system that utilizes genetic modification as well as synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.  This is in stark contrast to the family run organic farms that Barbara and her family frequent.  U.S. farmers now produce 3,900 calories per citizen, per day (twice the amount the human body needs and 700 more calories than were being grown in 1980).
      In response to the increased amount of calories being produced, the food industry found ways to get those extra 700 calories in to the bodies of people who may not want them.  The most genetically modified crops -- and the ones that make up for most of those forced 700 calories -- are corn and soybeans.  Corn is especially prominent in everything from high-fructose corn syrup to packaging materials (contains cornstarch).  Soybeans, as well, have found their way to imitating animal flesh and/or fall under the category of "added fats." 
     Serving sizes and packaging have grown to accommodate the excess calories.  The Coke bottle, for example, went from 8 oz. to 20oz.  "U.S. consumption of 'added fats' has increased one-third since 1975, and our HFCS is up by 1000 percent" (14).  Due to evolving in "lean environments," humans have a genetic weakness for fats and sugars.  Although they may not be familiar with the science, the food companies hire strategists to figure out how to market the calorie surplus to people.  Kids are the primary demographic, "food companies spend over $10 billion a year selling food brands to kids, and it isn't broccoli they're pushing" (15).  This is similar to how cigarettes are often pushed on kids.  As a result, the waistlines of Americans are growing.  Diet trends are rampant as well as plastic surgery.  Just as we modify our food, we modify ourselves. 
Not only does the lower nutrition in GM food impact our health, -- obesity, heart disease, high cholesterol, etc. -- it also affects our body image.  Elayne A. Saltzberg and Joan C. Chrisler, in their article "Beauty Is the Beast:  Psychological Effects of the Pursuit of the Perfect Female Body," examine how body image has changed over the years and how people augment their bodies to fit the contemporary idea of beauty. 

• Dieting is a $30-billion-per-year industry.
• Cosmetic Surgery (women) $1.2 billion in 1990.
• Cosmetics $103 billion per month in 1990.

Not all plastic surgery is a result of vanity; often it is a result of poor lifestyle choices and diet.  As a society, we have fallen under the impression that natural is not good enough.  Plants the way they are in the wild are not good enough so we alter them genetically to be able to withstand climate changes, pesticides, and be able to travel long distances without spoiling.  Our animals are not good enough so we breed them to coincide more with our convenience rather than our nutrition; we prescribe to the idea that more is better so we fatten up our animals so that we can have giant chicken breasts and steaks -- even if that means raising disease ridden animals who are raised in confinement and unable to walk.  Our bodies are not good enough so we add and subtract things, surgically, to fit an unnatural idea of beauty.  From how we eat, to how we view ourselves, unnatural has become common place while natural is a rarity.  We genetically modify our bodies the way we genetically modify our food.  In her journey, Barbara Kingsolver explores the idea that natural is good and natural is what works best.  Through her year long journey of consuming only natural, local foods, Barbara and her family prove that natural is not only better, but it's doable.
"Woe is us, we over fed, undernourished U.S. citizens" (54).

I hope that was educational.  My interest in environmental issues and animal welfare issues can all be traced back to my eating habits and my concern for my health.  The way we eat and what we eat directly impacts the environment and the lives of others.

Think about it.  Oh, and sign the petition at the bottom of my blog.

Review: No Impact Man

Today, while I was recovering from "food poisoning" -- jalapenos I ate were cooked on the same pan as peppers wrapped in bacon which, as a vegetarian, my body did not approve of so I have spent the last 15 or so hours in pain -- I watched a documentary called No Impact Man.

This film followed the efforts of a New York family, the Beavans, attempting to live, for one year, without creating any kind of environmental impact.  No cars or motorized transportation, no buying anything new, no electricity, no coffee, no toilet paper.  Everything they consumed was local.  They didn't buy anything new at all; they only bought, borrowed, or were given used items.  They lived by candlelight and daylight, attempted a pot within a pot experiment for a refrigerator, and battled the backlash from non-environmentalists as well as environmentalists.  People hated them.

After their year long experiment, the Beavans evaluated their journey and decided what changes they had undergone that they wanted to maintain and which ones just weren't practical for them.  They kept the local foods and bicycling but decided to get rid of the worm bins they used for composting.

In the documentary, Colin Beavan teamed up with a man who owned a community gardening plot.  He taught Colin how to plant and harvest vegetables.  The one thing that really sort of bothered me about the whole film was something this man said to Colin.  They were sitting in a kitchen and Mayor, the man, said to Colin that it's basically naive (or something along those lines) for him to think he's making a difference because he uses the stairs instead of the elevator when his wife works for a news publication that is responsible for the demolition of millions of trees.  It's true; print news outlets are responsible for a hefty amount of deforestation.  Deforestation is bad.  Deforestation should stop.  I do not believe, however, that his wife's employment as a writer for a news magazine negates all of the good that this family is trying to accomplish through this project nor do I believe that the little things don't add up to make a difference.

I always encourage people to make those small changes because it is those small changes that add up and eventually may even add to bigger changes.  Using a reusable stainless steel water bottle instead of plastic/recycling/consuming less animal products/going to the farmers market/turning off the water when you brush your teeth/turning off the lights and other electronics when you leave a room/utilizing as much daylight as possible/using reusable cloth grocery bags instead of paper or plastic/planting a tree/etc., is the gateway drug to bigger acts of conservationism/environmentalism/sustainability/kindness.

Aside from that comment, though, I really enjoyed the message this documentary shared and I'm going to give it 3.75 out of 4 green eyes.  I recommend to you that you watch No Impact Man.  It is streaming instantly on Netflix.  Check out Colin Beavan's blog and see what else you can do to make a difference.

We all need to start somewhere.