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greenlightzine: Save paper, save animals

greenlightzine:

Save paper, save animals

Tags: photo art paper animals deforestation environment green Mother Earth

couldn’t resist.

Tags: video environment green bees bee honey bee dancing music help the honey bees

Brilliant. Say no to plastic bags and as many other plastic goods as possible.  Find alternatives or, better yet, get along without so much new stuff altogether.  The world will thank you for it.
And remember, if all you’re getting is deodorant and a card for your mother’s birthday, you do not need a bag.

Tags: environment green eco plastic plastic bags bags reusable video Heal The Bay oceans wildlife animals trash recycling California waste
wearetheearth: There’s more energy in wasted food than there is in the Gulf of Mexico Recently, while doing some research on the carbon footprint of food, I ran across some studies that reported Americans ate, on average, 3774 calories of food each day. Something about that smelled funny to me. Sure, Americans eat a lot. But 3774 calories a day? I have family members who subsist almost solely off fried meat and various sorts of potatoes and I’m not convinced that even they hit that number on a regular basis. When I took my questions to the researchers, I found out that my hunch was correct. Americans aren’t, technically, eating an average of 3774 calories per day. This figure is calculated by looking at food produced, divided by the number of Americans. It assumes we’re eating all that, but, in reality, according to environmental scientist Gidon Eshel we really only eat about 2800 calories per day. That whopping 3774 includes both what we eat—and what we waste. And what we waste—not just at home, but from the farm field, to the grocery store, to our Tupperware containers full of moldy leftovers—is a big deal. We use a lot of energy producing, transporting, processing, storing and cooking food we don’t eat. About 2150 trillion kilojoules worth a year, according to a recent study. That’s more kilojoules than the United States could produce in biofuels. And it’s more than we already produce in all the oil and gas extracted annually from the Gulf of Mexico. Reducing that waste requires both changes in the way we eat at home, and systematic changes that address waste at every part of the food cycle. Right now, I’ve talked to a lot of researchers who can identify the problem, but don’t have a lot of suggestions for concrete solutions. I’m sure they’re out there, though, and I’ll report back as I track them down. Image: Some rights reserved by Flickr user Nutloaf Boing Boing

wearetheearth:

There’s more energy in wasted food than there is in the Gulf of Mexico

Recently, while doing some research on the carbon footprint of food, I ran across some studies that reported Americans ate, on average, 3774 calories of food each day.

Something about that smelled funny to me.

Sure, Americans eat a lot. But 3774 calories a day? I have family members who subsist almost solely off fried meat and various sorts of potatoes and I’m not convinced that even they hit that number on a regular basis. When I took my questions to the researchers, I found out that my hunch was correct. Americans aren’t, technically, eating an average of 3774 calories per day. This figure is calculated by looking at food produced, divided by the number of Americans. It assumes we’re eating all that, but, in reality, according to environmental scientist Gidon Eshel we really only eat about 2800 calories per day. That whopping 3774 includes both what we eat—and what we waste.

And what we waste—not just at home, but from the farm field, to the grocery store, to our Tupperware containers full of moldy leftovers—is a big deal.

We use a lot of energy producing, transporting, processing, storing and cooking food we don’t eat. About 2150 trillion kilojoules worth a year, according to a recent study. That’s more kilojoules than the United States could produce in biofuels. And it’s more than we already produce in all the oil and gas extracted annually from the Gulf of Mexico.

Reducing that waste requires both changes in the way we eat at home, and systematic changes that address waste at every part of the food cycle. Right now, I’ve talked to a lot of researchers who can identify the problem, but don’t have a lot of suggestions for concrete solutions. I’m sure they’re out there, though, and I’ll report back as I track them down.

Image: Some rights reserved by Flickr user Nutloaf

Boing Boing

Tags: environment Earth food hunger Gulf Of Mexico oil spill waste United States of America U.S.A. picture wasted food research
» Children & Families Living In Landfills In Managua, Nicaragua

An interesting (and all-too-short) piece on families who live on “La Chureca”, a landfill on the south shore of Lake Managua in the country of Nicaragua.  Two January’s ago, I had the distinct pleasure of being able to visit this country and learn much about its culture, economy, and history and, while we went nowhere near La Chureca, we were able to see its ominous fumes rising above the city from the top of Loma de Tiscapa.  It seemed daunting, dangerous, and foreboding at the time and seems even more so now that I am more aware of the situation of people in that area.  According to wikipedia (hey, at least i’m telling you), La Chureca is the largest open-air dump in Central America and, while there are obvious environmental, health, and safety concerns with this sort of issue, the fact that it exists in the second poorest country in the western hemisphere increases these concerns almost infinitely.
For more information and resources for how you can get involved, visit LaChureca.org or ProNica.

Tags: Nicaragua Managua landfill La Chureca Loma de Tiscapa article environment poverty Central America Latin America The Guardian Immersion Trip children human dignity health safety

The Story of Bottled Water, presented by Free Range Studios

Keep an eye out for JUSTICE’s involvement in attempting to remove bottled water from JCU’s campus this coming fall.

Wish us luck!  For more information, visit Story Of Bottled Water and Think Outside The Bottle

Tags: water bottled water fall 2010 story of bottled water environment generation green free range studios



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