Eye Opener: CSPI

For this eye opener, I decided to take a tour of our food supply. Here's what I found out...

Shocking Statistics

• Growing grain for beef and dairy cattle requires a total of 8.5 BILLION POUNDS of fertilizer per year.

• Livestock manure releases many dangerous gases such as methane, ammonia, and nitrous oxide, and hydrogen sulfide. In fact, the methane released from livestock and their manure is equivalent in environmental destruction to the annual release of carbon dioxide from about 33 million automobiles. Talk about air pollution!

• Healthy farm animals are routinely fed antibiotics to promote healthy growth and balance out filthy living conditions. Personally, I am very wary of our overuse of antibiotics because it can lead to resistant strains. This really scares me! European nations have begun to move away from the use of administering antibiotics in healthy animals, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has done nothing of the sort.

• Small amounts of 21 different antibiotics were found in one survey of streams and rivers throughout the United States. In rural areas, those antibiotics are probably coming from factory farms.

• Livestock of all varieties are often forced to live in over crowded conditions, left to live in their own manure. Do you want to eat anything that was living in a pile of poop?

• Slaughterhouse workers have an injury rate three times higher than that of the average factory worker.

• Factory farms feed animals everything from industrial sludge to discarded restaurant oil to ground-up newspapers. This is extremely disturbing, considering these toxins and carcinogenic agents are then passed into humans who consume these animal products.

• The water used to irrigate just alfalfa – 4.7 trillion gallons per year – exceeds the irrigation needs of all the vegetables, berries, and fruit orchards combined!

• It takes about 18,000 gallons of rain and irrigation water to produce one pound of beef.

• The average American consumes about 11 more pounds of red meat, 54 more pounds of poultry, 5 more pounds of fish and shellfish, and 24 more pounds of cheese per year than he or she did in the early 1950s.

• Livestock manure is often the source of disease-causing bacteria on fruits and vegetables. Gross!

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that contaminated food causes about 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths each year.

• The overall cost of diet-related diseases is about $90 billion annually.

My Thoughts

Those are just a few of the new facts I learned. The more I read, the more I just felt sick to my stomach. How are factory farms allowed to operate like this? I mean, yes, I had heard horror stories, but for some reason I chose to believe that was the exception rather than the norm. Now I am not so sure...

In the last couple of years, I have greatly reduced the amount of meat in my diet, but I do still eat a lot of dairy products. From now on I will definitely think twice about the foods I am purchasing and eating. I had no idea how many resources it took to raise these animals! And all the pollution from the livestock? It's almost too much to process at one time.

The thing I find most frustrating about trying to change my diet is that some people just don't understand, and they consider others to be "food snobs" if they don't want to eat certain foods. For instance, my family would be very upset if I refused to eat what they were having for dinner the next time I visit them. I feel that since food is such a huge part of culture, it can be a very touchy subject and a difficult habit to change. I think the best way to go about it is to just take small steps and try to educate people about these issues without offending them.

Share and Voice: Schoolhouse Rock

Okay, so this post was inspired by Kathy's awesome Share and Voice with the Sesame Street video clip. It got me thinking about which cartoons or shows from my childhood had the the catchiest songs that have stuck with me for years, and I realized that a favorite series of mine has always been Schoolhouse Rock! I adore Schoolhouse Rock, and those cartoons helped me memorize everything from multiplication tables to the Preamble to the United States Constitution. In fact, my siblings and I used to rent the complete set from the library just so we could sing along and drive our parents crazy!
Anyway, I was wondering if they ever had songs that talked about the environment, and I couldn't think of any. Slightly disappointed, I searched around online for awhile, and then I came across an exciting discovery! The creators of Schoolhouse Rock have come up with 13 new songs specifically about our environment, and the DVD comes out on March 31st!

If there are any other Schoolhouse Rock fans out there, you should definitely check out Schoolhouse Rock! Earth. This website even lets you see clips of some of the songs. Personally, I really like "Caron Sasquatch" and "The Little Things We Do". (Does anyone remember Mr. Morton from the subject and predicate song? He's in this one, too!)
Enjoy!

Share and Voice: Role Models

Hey everyone!
I have a question for you:

Who has been/is your biggest role model for living an environmentally-friendly lifestyle?

After doing the eye opener activity the other day, I began wondering when I started becoming environmentally-conscious and who first taught me the importance of taking care of our planet,and I realized that it was my grandma and grandpa. They are the biggest nature lovers I know, and since I was fortunate enough to spend a huge amount of my childhood with them, they tried to pass their knowledge and their awareness on to me. They succeeded in doing this first and foremost by instilling in me an appreciation for all living things. My grandparents live by a state park and we would often go for walks through the woods. Whenever we heard a bird singing, they would stop and quiz me on what type of bird it was; when we saw any sort of tracks in the woods, we would talk about the animal that made them. My grandpa was always pointing out deer, eagles, and beaver dams, and my grandma was always picking up caterpillars for me to see or showing me some gorgeous wildflowers. Also, they taught me the importance of taking care of the environment: after almost every walk we went on, we ended up back at their house with a bag of trash that we collected from the woods. They showed me that even though I was a little kid, I could still help out.

Besides their nature enthusiast ways, my grandparents live a very thrifty lifestyle, always looking to conserve water, not waste food, not purchase unnecessary material items, etc. I realize that they were both raised in this manner out of necessity, but I think these are important skills to have nowadays, too, to reduce our impact on the environment. Skills such as gardening, which once may have been the only means for food, are now looked at in a new light - a way to lessen one's carbon footprint.

Now that I'm a little older, I realize how many important things my grandparents taught me, and I feel deeply indebted to them. Now, my goal with this post was not just to tell a heartfelt story, but to give a huge THANK YOU! to my grandparents and everyone else who has stressed the important of living an environmentally-conscious lifestyle.

And so here is my challenge for you:
Think about those people in your life who served as role models! I would love for you to acknowledge them in a comment to this post. After all, they deserve a big thank you, don't you think?

Reflection: Weeks 3 & 4

Readings
In week three of class, we read two separate articles from our textbook, Outlooks: Readings for Environmental Literacy, and discussed them in class. The first article was a little gloomy in that it briefly covered many current world problems such as lack of food and clean water and extinction of species. It made me realize how blessed - and how wasteful - our society is. The second reading was very enlightening and gave me a whole new take on environmental films: it was disappointing to face reality and think about how issues and settings can be skewed to get the filmmaker's point across, but I learned that I should just further analyze such media when I watch it.

An Inconvenient Truth
We also spent time in class watching the Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth. I had seen this movie a few times before so I was initially expecting to be bored, but then I realized it was good to watch it again. Now that I've gained a little more background knowledge, I got a lot more out of the film. During the viewing, my two main emotions were fear and guilt. Fear, because I just got really scared when all the pictures were shown about the melting glaciers and all the changing landscapes such as in Glacier National Park. It makes me sad that these gorgeous places may soon be eliminated - or at least permanently altered. I am wary of what may become of the earth and how it will be changed for coming generations. Also, Gore spoke quite bluntly about the problems of overpopulation. This is where my feelings of guilt came in. I come from a large family so I feel like I have directly contributed to this problem! Thankfully, the documentary ended on a positive, hopeful note, stressing that we already have the technology to combat climate change; we just need to work together and do our part.

Ecological Footprint
The Eye Opener assignment to find our individual ecological footprint was a huge shock for me! It made me very aware of my impact on the environment. The quizzes I took showed me that there is much room for improvement and gave me good suggestions on ways I can adjust my lifestyle to lessen my footprint. Also, I was reminded that some of my habits are very beneficial to the environment - things I do all the time without even thinking about it. Now that I'm aware these seemingly small things - such as buying food products without a lot of packaging - make a difference, I will try to do them even more often!

Blogging
I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually getting hooked on this whole blogging thing. In fact, I'll even say it's fun! I feel way more comfortable with it now, although it's still very time consuming. It seems like everyone is getting the hang of it, and it's been fun to see all the cool things people have added to their blogs. Also, there have been a lot of great Share and Voice posts. Good work everyone!

Overall, it was great to delve into some actual environment-related subject matter these last two weeks! I feel that I already have learned a ton, and even though there were many occasions where I just felt like an awful steward of our earth, I think it was the right thing to get me motivated to improve my habits. Interestingly enough, in my Aspects of Chemistry class here at UMD , we are currently talking about the destruction of ozone, and will be going in depth about global warming in upcoming class periods. I always enjoy when class topics overlap because it's fun to see the same topic approached from different angles. One final thought I took away from this week was how people are resistant to change because they are afraid. This seems silly to me, but I guess it is true. I think it's up to my generation to show people that we CAN make a difference by changing our lifestyles, and we should start by setting a good example now. We don't have to completely revamp our habits in one day, because I realize that's quite impractical, but by gradually incorporating changes into our lives and encouraging others to do the same, I think a lot of progress can be made.

(The picture is one I took last winter in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.)

Eye Opener: Ecological Footprint

The first quiz I took was an Ecological Footprint Quiz. Apparently, we would need 3.8 Earths if everyone lived like me! I was quite shocked by this result and it made me genuinely upset. The result said it takes 16.8 global acres of the Earth's productive area to support my lifestyle. I rarely eat meat, I try to recycle everything, and I purposely left my car with my parents this semester and these things seemed to be giving me an advantage while taking the quiz. Obviously, I was way wrong! Here is the breakdown of my footprint: services 46%, food 22%, shelter 12%, mobility 5%, and goods 15%. I was unsure of what fell into the "services" category, but then found out it is societal things such as health care, entertainment, restaurants, the military, real estate, legal services, and the government. These are things that are automatically allotted to my footprint because they are national services. This really opened my eyes to the many factors affecting my footprint!

The second quiz I took was called Score Your Diet. I scored a 115, and the scoring scale said an excellent score was 60+. This made me feel much better after taking the first quiz. :) I noticed, however, that this one didn't discern between locally grown and transported food, so that helped my score. I eat a lot of dairy products, but barely any meat so that kept my Animal Welfare and Environmental scores down. I make a daily effort to eat a healthy diet, and this quiz reassured me that I am on the right track, although there is always room for improvement!

My third quiz was a Carbon Footprint Quiz. According to this quiz, if everyone on the planet lived my lifestyle, we would need 4.03 Earths! Once again, so very disappointing! My Carbon Footprint was 49.5 compared to the national average of 91.4. My Food Footprint and Goods and Services Footprint were also lower than the national average, but my Housing Footprint was higher.

These quizzes were a great learning experience! What sorts of changes can I make in my life to lessen my carbon footprint? The answer is... many! First of all, multiple improvements could be made in my house. These generally involve things such as electricity and heating options that I currently have limited control over because I am in rental house. I know this is no excuse, however, and there are changes I can still make. Investing in energy efficient appliances would be a good start - our washer and dryer are so old they just make me cringe every time I use them. Also, my housemates have multiple video game systems that don't get turned off when they're not being used, running our electricity bill quite high. Some other factors that deal specifically with my own habits would be easier to adjust. For example, I can eat more foods that are locally grown, organic, and in-season. Frequenting farmer's markets should be a must, and planting a garden would be very beneficial. I could also put more thought into the products I buy, by purchasing more recycled products and cleaning products that are biodegradable.

Share and Voice: Tourism

While I was traveling in Europe last school year during my time spent studying abroad, I noticed that many of the hostels and hotels I stayed at were making an effort to "go green". I hadn't done a lot of traveling in the U.S. so this was a new and exciting experience for me as I began to appreciate those lodgings that were striving to be environmentally friendly. Here are a few of the changes that I repeatedly noticed:

1. Hostel showers that only turned on for about twenty seconds at a time.
2. Signs in hotel bathrooms that encouraged people to reuse their towels, saying only towels left on the floor would be washed during their stay.
3. Hotel room lights that only turned on when activated by the room key, eliminating the event of lights being left on when no one was in the room.
4. Real dishes and silverware being used at breakfast instead of paper products.

Once I returned back home, I began to keep my eyes open for hotels in the U.S. that were going green. Did you know that our very own The Inn on Lake Superior here in Duluth is the recent winner of the Minnesota Sustainable Tourism Award? This award "is presented to the person, company or institution that supports outstanding efforts to sustain, protect and enhance Minnesota's environment while promoting tourism markets."

Here are some of the improvements they have made:

1. Using Duluth Steam's waste hot water to heat water, the pools, spa, and front entrance.
2. Using worm juice instead of chemicals to treat the lawn.
3. Buying recycled paper products.
4. Buying locally whenever possible.
5. Using energy efficient CFL light bulbs.
6. No more Styrofoam products during breakfast!
7. Accessible recycling bins, including a food waste bin in the breakfast area.

These are just a few of the ways in which The Inn has gone green. Check out their web site to learn more!

Share and Voice: Steve's Photo Challenge

Steve challenged each of us to find a photo relating to class and I thought this one fit nicely.

A couple of years ago, my roommate and I participated in the Great Lakes Beach Sweep here in Duluth as part of The Ocean Conservatory's International Coastal Cleanup. It was a gorgeous day, and we helped clean up our shores by collecting many bags of garbage!