The Grand Finale

As I finish up my blog for this semester, I can already tell a difference in the way I think about my impact on the environment.

What do I think the biggest environmental issue is today? After all I learned, I think that our usage of STUFF is the biggest usage. The video we watched in class, "The story of stuff" hit home for me the most I think. The fact that after 6 months, we only have 1% of everything we've bought in that amount of time. That's appalling. Food packaging and disposable items (Even things like Ipods and Computers that become outdated so quickly) are just piling up with no where to go because we're producing these things at such a high rate.

I hate that what we do with our trash is such a double edged sword. We can either continue to bury everything, even though it's having a hard time breaking down, or we can send it to the ocean, where it's polluting the ocean life and a whole new ecosystem. It'll make you feel kinda hopeless. 

 

What can we do about this as a society? We all need to make smaller steps to reduce how much stuff we use and produce. It's going  to be hard, but there's lots of people out in the world that do it everyday, people who use recyclable bags, take advantage of public transportation, even things like buying foods and using your own containers from home to store them in is totally doable. The problem is that no one realizes how much stuff is around. When I look around my house I see lots of stuff I don't NEED. With the holidays coming up, we're all just going to accumulate more. I'm going to do my very best to keep more than 1% of my stuff in my house. Not as a hoarder, but to reuse things or to upcycle things.

What am I going to do? I'm going to start shopping differently. I already started by reducing the amount of online shopping I've done in hopes of reducing packing materials, gas for delivery trucks, and hopefully giving my community some of my money close to home. I've also started paying much more attention to what can be recycled or what I can use again and again. I've had the recyclable grocery bags, and have since added reusable produce bags to help with plastic usage.

The most interesting thing I learned in this class has been how dang sneaky our food production is. The fact that when people called for ingredients and information on where our food comes from and no one wanted to give up the facts, that was actually really interesting. Why are companies so unnecessarely secretive about our food?! It's our right to know! I also really enjoyed learning about the companies that are becoming more sustaiable. I think it's great that big companies are using their ability to make a change in the environment.

 

Something I got from this class that I actually wasn't expecting was a growing concern for our environment and planet. I've always known that there were issues that were happening, but I never knew how to fix things, or that so many options were around to help reduce impact. This class actually is changing the way I look at everything.

Climate Change

We all know that the worlds climate is changing. There a a few questions we all need answered. Here's my go at it.

 

Is the climate currently changing? Yes, yes it is and one of the most recent studies shows that humans are "Extremely likely" to be the cause. This means that we're 95% of the reason the world is heating up. The average temperature around the world has risen about 1.3oF in only a century.

 

What does the evidence say about the humans impact in the changing climate? Well, we're cause for all the greenhouse gasses, like Carbon Dioxide and methane, when we do things like destroy forests, burn fossil fuels, or industrial processes. The main reason these greenhouse gasses are being released is the burning of fossil fuels that make our energy. That's the big hitter in this equation. What happens is these gasses get trapped in our atmosphere creating a heat blanket around the world.

 

How is climate change going to affect our society and world? The sea level is rising because the ice caps are melting.The heat is causing the oceans to heat up, which is changing the life in the ocean. The temperature change can also affect the rainfall around the world, some areas are getting more or less rain than normal, which drastically changes the environment. Carbon dioxide does not go away easily, so even though the world is changing and trying to reduce greenhouse emissions, the carbon is going to stick around for years to come, meaning that the globe is going to continue to get warmer. Our summers in Riverside are pretty warm, and they're only going to get hotter with the climate changes. It's not just us, either. All around the world the heat is going to get worse, which makes living in these conditions less enjoyable.

 

Did you know this is actually a huge debate? That humans are (or are not) the major cause of global warming? I didn't either, so this is what I found.

 

The argument is, how do we know humans are to blame? How do we know that the climate change isn't natural? How do we predict how much global warming is actually GOING to happen?

 

What do I think will happen in 50 years? I think that the world will still be about the same as it is now, to be honest. Will it be easy? Probably not, and it's probably going to be terrible. I mean, I know I already hate the summers here. I also believe that if we continue with the changes with our greenhouse gas emission that have already been started, we have a much better chance of keeping things the way they are. It's taken a century for the world to raise 1 degree, in 50 years I don't think the change will affect us as much as we're lead to believe.

 

 

 

 

WASTE!!!

For two days, I tracked how much waste I made. In order to make it slightly simpler for myself, I included our accumulative household waste for the most part. We ended up filling up two trash bags in that amount of time. Yep- that's two 5 gallon trash bags of just trash. At work I only had a few things to throw away, the majority of my trash was made at home. The biggest amount of what we were using were food product packaging, plastic bags for produce and things like mushroom containers, meat wrappings (I'm the only vegetarian in the house), and boxes of empty food items. The other major trash items were things like paper towels and paper plates. We always go through recyclable items such as aluminum cans and glass bottles, and within these two days I could fill a plastic bag with the recyclables.

 

Then- I tried reducing how much waste was coming out of our household for another two days. The first day I tried to reduce our food trash by buying produce that I could put in recyclable bags. When I bought my produce I used reusable bags to minimise the plastic bag usage and packaging. We reduced the amount of soda and adult beverages in the household for these two days. We only produced 4 cans.

 

Unfortunately one of my days was very disrupted, as my puppy got out of the backyard and ran away. :( This was cause for almost no trash created as none of us were home or eating. The only trash that was created was the take out we ordered late that night because I had no energy to cook, nor did I even want to try. The waste that was created that day was tissues. I should have probably used a cloth towel or something of the sort, but my head was not in the game. With that being said, I would like to try this experiment again when I have a more stable testing period. I did notice that we only had one small bag of trash that was created in these two days. I'm not sure if it was due to the changes I attempted to make, or simply because our rhythm was so messed up within the house.

 

Going forward I'm going to make a much stronger attempt of always buying my produce unpacked and with my own bags. I would like to try to reduce meat containers, but being that I'm so picky about meat touching anything else- this will take more time and some trial and error methods to figure out what works for us.

 

 

 

 

 

P.S. I know this is decently unrelated, but this is my Bonnie girl. If anyone has seen her or if anyone does see her, please let me know. There is a reward available. I just want my puppy home. :(

Amy's Farm Field Trip

On Saturday I was lucky enough to enjoy a tour of Amy's farm in Ontario. This adorable farm was located next to multiple dairy farms and I would have never known it was there if it weren't for this field trip.
Amy's farm houses lots of different animals like show cows, pigs, chickens, geese, turkeys (Bread specifically for Thanksgiving), and horses. One of the things I liked the most was that kids in the 4H program in school can keep their show cows at the farm, and the staff there will help take care of the cows.
The farm also had a full garden that had lots of seasonal veggies like radish, kale, rhubarb and lots of herbs. The produce is either put in the store at the farm, or it is used in local restaurants, which I think is great! They have a great system of using all the plants that didn't make it back into the soil, so when they turn the soil it has more nutrients in it.
I learned a lot about farming that I didn't know about. I didn't know that there was going to be an option to pretty much raise your own turkey to eat at Thanksgiving, I thought that was really interesting.
A tour of the farm is highly recommended :)

Where did you come from?

I tend to wonder where everything comes from. One of my bosses said to me once in regards to recycling "It all came from somewhere- it didn't just appear out of thin air". This really got me thinking, because he's right. At some point, this computer I'm using was just a bunch of stuff lying around the earth. Pretty crazy to think about, right?

I made a list of all the things I came in contact with over a 24 hour time span to see how much stuff I deal with from the Earth that I don't even realize.

 

1) Foods/ Drinks :

Water

Cranberry Juice

Coffee- Beans, Creamer, Sugar and water

Milk

Oatmeal- Bananas and Cream-

Pasta and Marinara Sauce

Chili- Beans, Tofu, spices, water, oil & cheese

Hot Cheetos- Plastic Bag

Apple Beer- Glass Bottle and Aluminum Cap (?)

 

2) Housing and other buildings:

Work - Metal Desk- Plastic Phone-

Home - Couch, Brick Fireplace, Wood Shelving, Granite Counter tops, Glass Windows- Carpet- Tile Flooring- Paper Products (Toilet Paper, Paper Towels)- Plastic Cups, Plastic Straws, Paper Pictures,

Target- Metal Shelving- Tile Floors

Now- I would assume that these buildings are all made up of the basic things, like a concrete foundation, fiberglass insulation, wood or metal door frames, dry wall, Lights, Floor Tiles ETC...

 

3) Transportation/Roads:

My car:

Leather Seats (Cow)

Gas- Gas emissions

Oils

Fluids

Glass Windows

 

Buses

Other Cars

Trucks

Diesels

Motorcycles

 

Paint on the roads

The Asphalt

 

4) Clothing:

Cotton

Polyester

Satin

Microfiber

Sheer Material (Whatever that is, right?!)

 

5)School Supplies:

Pens - Plastic

Post It Notes- Paper/Trees

Paper- Trees

Books- Trees

Highlighters

White-Out

Binders- plastic

Tape

Computer

 

6) Personal Care:

Shampoo

Conditioner

Body Soap

Loofah

Toothpaste

Toothbrush

Hair Brush

Foundation- Minerals

Mascara

Eye Liner

Eye Shadow- Minerals

Blush- Minerals

Chap Stick

Makeup Remover- Oils

Face Wash- Oils

Lotion

 

7) Leisure Activities

Running

Smoking Hookah- Sheesha, Coals, Aluminum Foil

Watching Movies

 

8) Others:

Car Keys- Metal

Key Fob (Access Key) - Plastic

Key Ring - Plastic

Rubber Seals on things like faucets and door frames.

Diamonds in my ring

 

 

So, as you can see - I came in contact with LOTS of things over a 24 hour time frame. I tried to list what earth's resource I KNOW for a fact it came from, however some I really didn't know. Like Highlighters, I know that the outside is plastic, but what about that neon liquid?

 

I wanted to know more information about where Beer comes from- Specifically the Apple beer that I've really started to enjoy in these fall months. This is what I've found:

 

 

 

It looks like Angry Orchard is made in Cincinnati OH and is then shipped around the US. In reading the facts provided from the web page, it states that since Hard Cider sales have been almost doubled in the last year, that orchards in New York are reaping the benefits for the apple boom. Which is AWESOME!

Ingredients: Not listed: I'm assuming Apples, booze and liquid gold.

It's main purpose is to refresh the taste buds - and to get you slightly boozy.

I'm having extreme trouble in finding where they get their bottles from. It looks like there are a few major retailers in Europe, however there's no way to find out if that's where AO gets their bottles for distribution.

This product is definitely just a Want- as opposed to a Need, but dang is it delicious.

It was not available 100 years ago- at least not this brand. However, Ciders were previously drunk to get drunk.  

All I know, is that after I consume this delicious beverage, I toss the top into the blue recycle bin outside my house, and the bottle is recycled at the local recycle plant.

I saw an article not too long ago that stated that recyclable bottles and cans get dumped back into a landfill, even if it's the city picking up the glass products! I'm sorry- WHAT?! I did more digging. Luckily I was much happier to find that there were many more reports of companies receiving the bottles, melting them down and reforming the bottles. Hopefully, it's replaced with the same tasty liquid! :)  As long as they really to recycle the bottles (And the caps??) the eco-footprint for the beverage itself shouldn't be too badly. I have no idea how their plant is run, and if it's messing everything up for everyone, but the product itself is pretty Good-To-Go! :)

 

Happy Halloweentime Everyone!

 

 

 

 

Condors + DDT= Thin Eggs?

In reading the news today- I stumbled across this article about Condors being harmed by DDT. Two things about this caught my attention 1- what in the world is a condor? and 2- DDT? I just learned about DDT, what's going on with it now?

This article : http://news.msn.com/science-technology/rare-condors-harmed-by-ddt-study-finds was found on MSN's website and the writer is a Mr. Jason Dearen of the Associated Press.

 What Mr. Dearen states in his article is that in a 6 year study, the levels of DDT in condor birds (a huge bird residing in central California) has risen so much, that their egg shells are becoming too thin and only 20%- 30% of the birds are actually hatching and surviving. They're absorbing this DDT through the dead sea lions they're eating off the shore line.

I believe this to be an accurate source of information. I have heard of the associated press before and believe they typically know what they're talking about. I always get my news from MSN source, so I may be a little bias about that. This 6 year study mentioned specifically studied the DDT effects on the eggs, and this study was done by 10 condor experts, which makes this article seem pretty reliable.

In the article, it talks about how California sea lions spend a majority of their lives swimming in southern California waters, where a majority of DDT contaminated waters are, and then migrate north to spread the DDT up along the coast. I wonder, where are the numbers on this? I don't disagree that it's a total possibility that California has the highest DDT infected waters, but there is absolutely no mention of where this information comes from. Until you show me where this information is coming from regarding the DDT in costal California waters, I'm just going to assume you made that information up.

 In reading this information, I started off interested, and quickly was disappointed by the article itself. It doesn't seem to have enough proof of the information it's telling me. Now,  I still believe that DDT is probably the main cause of the egg shells being so thin because there are multiple experts on the case; however, I do not believe that California costal waters are where a majority of this toxin is coming from.

Chemicals taking over your home...

I've always wondered what happens to my cleaning chemicals when I'm done cleaning my bath tub, laundry or even washing my face. Where do all of those substances go? What happens to them? Oh, and what happens when I keep smelling these and am exposed to them. Well- I did a little research on some of those chemicals and this is what I've found.  

 

Alkylphenols- these were found in both of my hairsprays, and can also be found in detergents and plastics. This chemical is directly linked to Breast Cancer. Alkylphenols are Endocrine-Disrupting compounds- which pretty much block your hormones from getting where they need to be. This blockage or disrupting is what causes the cancer because you become completely imbalanced.

alkylphenol ethoxylate  (a compound of this chemical = APE) does not break down well in the environment. It sits in water ways and slowly breaks down while contaminating the water.

So- what can we do to take this chemical out of the water and everywhere? The problem is that it seems to be pretty important to the Laundry world. We would need to find them an alternative to stop this in its tracks. The replacement would be alcohol based, which would definitely reduce the amount in the oceans.  

 

 

 

Flame Retardants is the other thing I was interested in. Flame Retardants= Polybrominated DIphenyl Ethers (PBDEs). A PBDE retardant is anything that allows the temperature of a product to get hotter before it melts or burns. This includes electronics and textiles in your house. PBDE's are found all over the world and found in every human at this point. They can cause neural damage and have been linked to having serious effects on the thyroid and liver.

How can you prevent yourself from getting too sick from PBDE's (since they're literally unavoidable):

Maintain a healthy diet- if you're healthy you can help fight toxins. It's also shown that eating a low amount of animal fat can help prevent your PBDE levels from getting any higher. When it's time to purchase a new mattress- check to see if it's made with any PBDE's.

I know my mattress is very old and has PBDE's, so I would love to look into changing that out, along with my bedsheets.

OH HEY! What do you know?! Mattress companies are on the ball and have full lines of mattresses (And sheets) free of PBDE's!

They seem to be a little more expensive, (Ranging from $900- $6000 for top of the line) but in my eyes- it may very well be worth the extra cash for your liver's sake.

 

 

 

My Foot Print

Howdy!

OK, So I think of myself as pretty green. I drive a hybrid car, use reusable bags, I recycle as much as I can and I'm even a vegetarian! Which is why my jaw hit the ground when I saw my score on this Footprint Calculator. I guess I understand that I use entirely too much energy (But in 100 degree temps I won't be turning my air conditioning off), and I know that I should eat more local foods, even though I try my best.

If everyone were to live the way I do- it would take 4 1/2 planet earths to keep up with me and my living. Holy Crap!! I was not at all expecting it to be 4 1/2. I was hoping for 1/2  a planet!

I answered highest on services. The website suggests I attach solar panels to my house, which I hope to do in the near future, and that I should use public transportation more often. I completely agree. I never use public transportation and only carpool with my husband when we go places.

The only one I'm really going to have a hard time with is Traveling. I made a life choice a long time ago to see one new place every year. I always try to get direct flights as it uses less fuel in the planes, but with the economy now days almost every flight has at least one layover.

Anyway- I was completely surprised by my results. Did anyone else score as high as I did?

Just a bit about me

Hi Everyone!
My name is Theresa- I'm 23 years old and currently reside in Riverside, CA. I was born in Riverside, but moved to Nevada at a young age where I stayed until I was 18 years old. I now live here with my husband and two pit bulls (Bonnie and Klyde). I enjoy watching movies, discovering new music and catching up on the latest celebrity gossip.
My current job is deathly boring, which helped me in my decision to go back to school. In 2009 I graduated RCC's Culinary academy and worked in food establishments ever since. When I couldn't keep my feet in an institution that would stay in business, I made the choice to switch to a desk job, and I pretty much hate it.
My goal is to get my Bachelors degree in Psychology and become a clinical psychologist. It's a desk job, yes- but I'm pretty sure it's going to make me much happier than my current job. I am interested in Environmental science because I try to be as Eco-friendly as possible and am very interested in how people of the world are damaging the planet and I would like to learn how we can fix it.
My question that I would like to know about- is what is going on with the Bee's?! Is it really as bad as everyone is saying it is? And how do we fix it?


I look forward to meeting everyone in our class :).


- Theresa