Environmental Scorecard

My first post of the year, is it really the 15th already, is going to help me shed some light on how my family does the green thing.

A lot of big talk and good intentions are in the air about the need to save the planet from, well, us basically, so I figured I would throw out a few of the ways in which my family is helping to do our part.

Being environmentally responsible is a lot more than just recycling. It touches almost every aspect of our daily lives, from what we choose to eat, how the products we buy are packaged, how we clean our homes and how we get from point A to point B.

I grow some of the food we eat and put some of that up for the winter via the miracle of canning. I must admit that we could can more but we give a lot of it away to neighbors and family while it is still fresh.

We shred all of our junk mail, except the slick glossy stuff, who knows what goes into the inks on these things. I even shred my bills! Ha! In my dreams. I do pay most of them online but elect to receive the paper bill just in case I lose the use of the computer for whatever reason, like a seriously bad economic down turn. It is terribly satisfying to shred a credit card bill though.

The shredded paper, along with our newspapers get added to the compost pile.

Whatever bit of cardboard that does not find its way into a new planting bed goes into the recycle bin along with cans. But mostly I rip it up and place it on the compost as well.

Our neighborhood stopped collecting glass stating it was becoming too expensive to process it and even without that load our recycling bin is nearly over-flowing when they pick it up every two weeks.

I have canceled magazine subscriptions for insisting on stuffing way too many subscription forms in them as well as all manner of loose leaf ads. The really bad ones put the magazine in a plastic bag so they can throw more ads at us. I have written to these offending companies and told them how unhappy I am with the amount of landfill material they send out with each magazine. If I get a response at all it is nothing more than thanking me for writing. So I just cancel the subscription.

In the matter of those monthly bills that stuff fliers advertising their products and services, I stuff these back into the bill envelope with a note telling them to throw away their own trash.

We throw food scraps on the compost pile.

I collect compost from the city to use in the garden.

We adhere to shopping lists and go to the market once a week and then combine other destinations on the same trip so as not to waste gas.

I see to it that both of our cars are properly maintained in order to get the most fuel efficiency.

My wife works outside the home, I work at home and I have taken up cooking from recipes that use whole foods as opposed to processed foods.

One of the most difficult things to free ourselves of is plastic. We find it in a number of food packing, consumer packaging, even the bags we carry our consumer goods home in. We re-use almost all of the plastic food containers and plastic shopping bags. Anything that can be re-used is.

We take quick showers (baths are so wasteful) and do laundry only one day a week.

We have cut down a lot on eating beef. We mostly eat chicken.

We have installed compact fluorescent lights in every room and lamp in our house for energy efficiency and turn off lights when not in the room. My computer is on all day because that’s is my work tool.

Plastic milk jugs get re-used for a lot of purposes. I use them to start plants in until they are big enough to set out in the garden. I use them as cloches over the tender plants I set out until they are able to take nature on its own.

We feed our lawn and all garden plants (including houseplants) with organic material, i.e., the compost pile and supplement it with seaweed, fish emulsion, cottonseed meal, bone meal, blood meal, etc, instead of using synthetic fertilizer.

We turn the thermostat down to 64 at night and pile extra blankets on the bed. The thermostat itself has four time settings so that the house temperature can be customized for when we are in the house or away from home.

I do still use my gasoline powered lawn mower but use an electric edge trimmer. I prune everything else by hand.

I shovel snow with an actual snow shovel while many people around my neighborhood use a gas powered snow blower.

I am embarrassed to say that we still clean our home with chemical cleaners but I am trying to get my wife converted to using natural products such as vinegar, salt, lemon juice, baking soda, etc. It is a tough uphill battle.

One of the requirements to living a sustainable life is learning how others do it, because there always seems to be an easier or more ingenious way of doing something.

I find that the majority of the people I talk to about it say they would like to or actually do something with the environment in mind. But when I visit their houses I sometimes find recyclable items thrown in the trash can or see someway they do something that could be a little more earth friendly. I am mindful that I cannot be the self-appointed ‘environment police’ and just continually bark at everyone about the error of their ways, so I just have to realize that we are dealing with a lifestyle that cannot be easily unlearned.

I would be tickled pink if a grow-your-own-food/gardening revolution would take place that would knock food prices down, discontinue the use of chemical based fertilizers and pesticides, finally win the war against obesity, and lower our healthcare costs because we would all be eating healthier and visiting the doctor les often. What a slice of paradise that would be.

But the major change is going to have to happen at the corporate level. We are going to have to be forced to stop using plastic bags only when companies stop making them. We are going to have to be taken by the hand to drive vehicles that get 50 mpg or more when the automobile industry stops making cars that get less.

Mass transit is only going to work when we are taxed out of driving our personal vehicles into corporate/commercial zones to work and shop everyday.

Coal-powered power plants are gong to stop fouling our air and water only when alternative energy sources are proven to be more cost effective and these fossil-fuel sucking behemoths are finally put to rest.

We as individuals can only do so much. And as long as we are given the less expensive more environmentally-damaging alternative to live our lives we will sadly do it.

If maybe I can inspire someone through this blog to change a little something about their behavior to stop taking this planet for granted then I feel my time spent has been worthwhile.

How green can we be with water?

Do we really, truly care about conserving gasoline, water, electricity? How serious are we about recycling? Are we as green as we want to be? Are we as green as we think we are? Can we even be green as we want with our water?

"Water is the driving force of all nature."
Leonardo da Vinci

This is a continuing series into the exploration of just how concerned we are about caring for our environment when it comes to our personal comforts.

In the previous issue I explored the recycling game and how we abuse the redistribution of useable items. This issue covers the necessary use of water vs. the wasteful use of water and just how safe our water really is.

We toss a few items into the recycle bin, our conscience is tested at the grocery store when asked “paper or plastic?”, we trade our incandescent light bulbs for energy efficient compact fluorescent lightbulbs or LED’s, yet we buy our water in non-degradable plastic bottles by the caseload. Are we just environmentally confused or are we fooling ourselves into thinking we are environmentally friendly? We take energy conservation seriously only around the time we pay our monthly bills. Or do we? Water usage is another resource that we continually use more of than we need to. Gasoline is the other. The difference with water is that it is a renewable resource and gasoline is not.

Water is necessary for the life of every living thing on this planet. We need it to keep our lawns green, to flush toxins out of our bodies, to rid our homes of our bodily waste, to cleanse ourselves, to keep our cars and nuclear power plants running cool, and for recreation.

This resource is finite, in that we cannot create more of it. It has been used over and over in countless billions of cycles, from ocean to clouds to rain to lakes to man-made water filtering systems to our homes to sewer drains to man-made sewage treatment systems and eventually back to the ocean. When man took his first drink of water and then peed it back out onto the ground, he became a part of that cycle and we have been striving to improve the system ever since. Only after our demand for usage of water increased to the point where Earth’s natural filtration system, earth itself, was not cleaning it up well enough before it got back to us to drink again did we realize the necessity to clean it up ourselves and to not pollute it.

Yet we continually find evidence that not all of us are doing our part in keeping it clean.

A recent Associated Press investigation found a vast array of pharmaceuticals contaminate the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans.

Last month, March 2008, Los Angeles shared the honor, with Clearbrook, British Columbia, as having the best tasting water in an annual international contest and yet Los Angeles is on the list of cities where the pharmaceuticals were found. With contradictions like this how can we trust what anyone tells us about our drinking water?

Clean and tasteful are relative terms.

Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.

From this admission it can be concluded that they think the general public is too undereducated to handle the truth and therefore we should remain ignorant.

We live in the information age and yet not all information is readily available to us until a news story spins the facts to appear more sensational than they should be. Then we panic. But only briefly, because after realizing there is very little we can do, we do nothing. Life goes on and we buy more bottled water and lose a little more faith in those who are paid to protect us and those who are supposed to report facts to us.

How much water is available to us?

Water parks, golf courses, residential use, food production, and the booming bottled water industry are putting a very large demand on our water resources. And every year we spend billions of dollars to clean it, to transport it, and to distribute it to where we can use it.

Of all the water this Earth has to offer, an estimated 13.6 billion cubic kilometers (including the oceans and polar ice caps), only 3% is useable freshwater. And rainfall runs off too quickly for efficient use.

Water pollution is a persistent, barely manageable problem, more so in third world countries, but it occurs in every country. Pollution of rivers and lakes reduces accessible freshwater supplies. Each year roughly 450 cubic kilometers of wastewater are discharged into rivers, streams and lakes. To dilute and transport this dirty water before it can be used again, another 6,000 cubic kilometers of clean water are needed - an amount equal to about two-thirds of the world's total annual useable fresh water runoff.

How much do we need?

The amount of water that people use depends on basic needs and how much water is available. Withdrawals of water have grown to meet demand for all types of use - for irrigated agriculture, industry, and municipal (household) purposes. As the world continues to urbanize at rapid rates, the demand for potable water for municipal use is expected to soar, out pacing the capacity of most cities to provide it.

Population growth, globally, is nearly 80 million per year which translates to an increased demand for freshwater of about 64 billion cubic meters a year - an amount equivalent to the entire annual flow rate of the Rhine River.

In 1995, 31 countries, home to nearly half a billion people, regularly faced either water stress or water scarcity. In 2025, 48 countries containing about 3 billion people will face water shortages. By 2050 the figures will be 54 countries containing 4 billion people, or 40 per cent of the projected world population of 9.4 billion.

A substantial portion of the total freshwater supply is needed to sustain marshes, rivers, coastal wetlands, and the millions of species they shelter. As humanity withdraws a growing share of all available freshwater, less is available to maintain these vital wetland ecosystems. Already, over 20 per cent of the approximately 10,000 freshwater fish species in the world are either endangered, threatened or going extinct.

Are we wasteful with our water?

Freshwater mismanagement has created deserts, poisoned millions of acres of land with salt and killed entire lakes (see the Aral Sea disaster).

We are experiencing floods where there never used to be floods. We are experiencing droughts where there never use to be droughts. Are these ‘unnatural’ occurrences due to how we use our water? Building a dam cannot help but alter the environment both upstream and downstream. But are we destroying the environment by doing so?

The way in which we use water to distribute fertilizer and pesticide to our food crop is not necessarily wasting water. After all using the water to produce food cannot be considered wasteful. In fact, since water is a renewable resource, meaning it all gets recycled and we use it over and over countless times, are we truly ‘wasting’ water when we use it?

You can argue that we overspend for the use of water when we look closely at how much water we use in our daily lives. Maybe we don’t need to leave the water running while we brush our teeth, or maybe we take a little longer than necessary in the shower. But are we truly wasting water? It is more accurate to say that we are wasting money.

We abuse water when we throw garbage in our rivers instead of disposing of it in a proper manner. It can be considered wasteful when we take into account the amount of water used to keep a golf course green compared to the number of people who use that golf course and then take into account the amount of water needed to keep a city park clean compared to the number of people who use that park. But in the end, all of the water we use to support golf courses and parks returns to the Earth and is then returned to us to use as we see fit.

I have to confess to allowing tap water run a little too long when I am hand washing pots and pans and when I brush my teeth, etc. These are habits that I am ashamed of but am consciously trying to change.

I don’t use automatic car washes anymore, opting to wash my cars by hand and not as often as I used to. I throw the soapy water on the lawn so the water soaks into the ground instead of down storm drains where it has to be filtered and cleaned. The soap does not harm the grass. Rinsing the car off does send soapy water down the street gutter but I don’t feel I am using as much as an automatic car wash.

How many of us have a dripping faucet that we plan on getting around to fixing some day? Did you know that a faucet dripping just 2 drops per minute can amount to almost nine gallons a month! How many drops of water is coming out of that dripping faucet per minute? In most cases it is a matter of replacing a washer that costs less than one dollar!

Cost of bottled water

I buy bottled water from Costco. I am only mildly ashamed of this fact. My city government has, in the past twelve months, issued three notices about our drinking water. Each notice informed us, 4 months after the contamination, that routine testing had revealed coliform bacteria contamination. Lovely. So, for two very obvious reasons, one being that the bacteria was found, and two, that it took so long for us to be notified, I drink bottled water. FYI, coliform bacteria is used as an indicator of the presence of other pathogenic organisms of fecal origin. Fecal pathogens include bacteria, viruses, protozoa or parasites. In those notices, we were never told what those other pathogens were.

In my family’s case, it is far cheaper for me to purchase bottled water than to take the chance of getting sick.

I learned of another expense of recycling plastic that, while not exactly money out of pocket, still costs tons in wasted water used in cleaning the plastic. During the process of recycling plastic, a variety of harmful acids and detergents are added to the water to separate the labels and glue from the plastic. Deflocculants are then added to pull the solids out of the wastewater. Finally, the wastewater is treated with chemicals to balance the pH level of the water. This process leaves the plastic sanitized and ready to be recycled. Annually, approximately 40 million gallons of wastewater, complete with harmful detergents, chemicals, acids, bases, deflocculants, and contaminants are flushed down the drain and back into our fresh water supply. This system is considered a lesser evil than creating plastic from scratch.

After decades of countless billions of gallons of contaminated water being introduced to our water tables, a new process of preparing plastic to be recycled has been discovered by ECO2 Plastics. Using a biodegradable organic solvent made of sugar beets and corn (in conjunction with liquid CO2). In the entire process now uses no water or harmful chemicals, and the liquid CO2 is distilled and used over and over again, as is the solvent.

Is there more we can do keep our water clean? Is there more we can do to use our water more efficiently? The answer is yes to both of these questions.

We use water to make money, we use it to make other products that make us money, we use it to keep ourselves healthy, doesn’t it make sense to take better care of it?

Since we cannot stop using water let’s think more intelligently about what we put in it.

This is part of a continuing series that explores just how dedicated we are to saving our planet and ourselves from our polluting and energy-wasting ways.

Come back for the next installment when I explore our use of electricity.

And, as always, please feel free to leave comments.

Sources:

Peopleandplanet.net

Bnet business network

EPA Ground Water & Drinking Water frequently asked questions

Forests are becoming a memory

In the U.S., many people value our National Parks system for the relaxation and the chance to commune with nature that these great, legally protected, expanses provide. It’s the solitude that make these destinations so desirable. The ability to escape the concrete and asphalt creep that claims so much of our natural surroundings, more and more every year, is priceless.

Trees, with their almost magical ability to immediately sooth the wary soul with their presence and grandeur, is what most people mention as their reason for traveling to our national parks.

The world’s rainforests, and the life-sustaining qualities they impart onto the world as the single most important buffer between clean air (providing 20% of our oxygen) and the destruction of our atmosphere, are disappearing at alarming rates. Not from what nature itself has wrought against them, but from mankind’s quest for survival.

Deforestation, by ranchers, farmers and timbermen, is occurring at the rate of 60 acres per minute! Take a moment to let that figure sink in. Every second, one acre of this world’s tropical forest is destroyed. For perspective, this amounts to an area the size of Mississippi being cleared every year!

Twenty years ago, tropical forests were cut down at the rate of 50 acres per minute, now it’s 60 acres per minute.

Warnings go unheeded
Warnings from scientists, conservation groups, religious leaders and others were repeated at December's climate conference in Bali, Indonesia and remain unheeded while the world’s consumers continue to support the very reason that these forests are being cut down.

It may surprise you to learn, it certainly surprised me, that Africa is now the leader in deforestation. Almost 1 percent (10 million acres) of the forests of Sudan, Zambia and Tanzania are lost every year to small-scale farming.

South American forests are replaced for cattle ranching and growing soybeans.

Southeast Asians cut down or burn forests for giant plantations of palm trees for the palm oil they produce. This palm oil is used in food processing, cosmetics and other products.

Clearing these forests for profit has led to the extinction of animal and plant life, soil erosion, changes in weather patterns, loss of forest peoples’ livelihoods, and the increasing threat of climate change. None of these considerations have any effect to motivate those responsible for deforestation.


Deforestation creates pollution
Not all trees that are cut down make it to the lumber industry, some are not suitable, some are in areas that make it unprofitable to haul them out, so they are burned where they fall, or they are left to rot. The pollution from burning these trees accounts for 20 percent of manmade emissions. This number blows me away. Only the burning of fossil fuels creates more pollution than the burning of these trees.

To exacerbate the problem of pollution, hauling ‘profitable’ trees away by truck, cutting trees down with chainsaws (much larger ones than you see at your neighborhood home improvement store) and tearing trees down with tractors, all add to the fossil fuels pollution numbers.


What is the alternative?
The more trees we lose to individual profiteers the fewer there are to absorb the global warming carbon that is emitted by cutting them down. The effect of pollution increases with every tree that is removed. Growing new trees is not the answer, they grow too slowly and they are not planted where they are needed most. You simply cannot replace tropical rain forests by planting trees elsewhere. Rain forests have grown where they have because that is the best environment for them.

If we are going to allow the continued destruction of earth’s ability to absorb our pollution then we need to find a replacement for these trees. We must have ways to absorb the huge amounts of carbon we create or we are going to destroy ourselves either from the increasing temperature of the earth or by suffocating ourselves due to lack of usable oxygen.

In light of this, is deforestation necessary to continue to feed the world’s ever increasing demand for beef, biofuels and other products? Is deforestation necessary to provide livelihoods for the farmers and ranchers to support their families, their communities and the rest of the world?

If moving industries to third world countries in order to give those populations jobs so they stop replacing our forests with farms, then that is what we need to do.

Food supplies are decreasing due to global warming and a shift to farming for biofuel and cattle feed. Deforestation is the cause of the former and the result of the latter.

The world has large-scale farming operations and industrial concerns that grow food crops to help feed the world’s human population. A larger percentage of this production is being redirected towards feeding beef and for biofuel, both of which add to deforestation.

If improving the production of these farms, through bio-engineering or whatever other means, will stop deforestation, then this is what we need to do.

Meat producers spends millions in advertising trying to sell us on the health benefits of eating more meat. The resulting debate between the pro and con issues of eating more or eating less meat will go on forever. The bottom line is that it is a personal choice. But, here is another issue that needs to be considered, the drive to produce more beef is destroying our forests. And this falls heavily on the side against eating more beef. We are destroying ourselves by trying to ‘eat healthier’, if you buy into what the meat producers are saying.

Do we really need more cattle for beef? Do we really need the extra farm land for biofuels? The argument for diverting our trend from a meat-based diet and towards a grain-based diet has never been as keenly felt as it is right now.

If we have to become vegetarians in order to save ourselves, then that is what we need to do.

If we have to turn these rainforests into living museums and promote ecotourism to protect them, then this is what we need to do.

If we have to declare rainforests as medical research labs in order to protect them, then we need to do it.

Why should so few, take away so much, for so little, that which means so much to the world’s future?

Mankind has gotten very proficient at destruction. It seems we dedicate more time, energy and money at improving ways of destruction than what we spend on anything else. Many people have tried to change this course to one of preservation but not enough is being done. The importance of maintaining these forests for what they represent as well as how they actually serve us is not being taken seriously enough.

In the opening to this post I mentioned that our national parks are legally protected. But, how long will it be before the profit mongers are able to convince a financially strapped administration to allow them access to our forests and begin the destruction of that which the rest of us prize most?

Do you think the law will protect our national parks? The U.S. Forest Service, one of those financially strapped administrations, granted a foreign mining company the rights to drill for uranium just miles from a popular lookout point in Grand Canyon National Park!

Will survival of the whole outweigh the profits to the few? Has it ever happened in the past?


For more research on rainforests:
Rainforest facts


Research shows dollars and sense in protecting rainforests

Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Foundation

Rainforests books for children