Sustainability

Monthly Archives: March 2018

Wrapped in a Sea of Plastic

Half a century of this “uncontrolled experiment” is fast becoming as serious a problem as climate change.

Plastics everywhere was bad enough, but now multiple studies have found that 94 percent of our drinking water and 93 percent of sampled bottled water worldwide are full of plastic particles and chemicals, including BPA, heavy metals, phthalates, pesticides, PCBs and other chemicals, many of which are linked in animal studies as well as some human studies to cancer, premature puberty, reduced immunity, birth defects, endocrine disruption, insulin resistance, and other major diseases.  And we have no idea and neither does the FDA, EPA, or any other federal agency, whether this lethal cocktail, which binds together with other toxins, is having an even more profound impact on our health and that of our kids.  What we get now from those agencies is “conflicting findings” and “uncertainties” about the potential impact of plastics-related chemicals. What we do know is that governments only test or analyze the impacts of individual chemicals to determine the levels of potentially life-threatening exposure, making it impossible to figure out the combined total load of chemicals from plastics our babies can safely absorb.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/03/31/wrapped-sea-plastic

Ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup spray linked to shorter pregnancies

Women in Indiana’s “corn belt” had shorter pregnancies if they were regularly exposed to glyphosate, a new peer-reviewed study has found

“Glyphosate is the most heavily used herbicide worldwide but the extent of exposure in human pregnancy remains unknown,” Indiana University researchers write in the journal Environmental Health.

The chemical is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup spray, which accompanies the company’s genetically modified corn and soybean seeds so that farmers can freely kill weeds without destroying their seeds.

Glyphosate-intensive farming has taken over industrial agriculture in the United States, resulting in 300 million pounds of the spray applied annually. Some researchers, as well as public health advocates and environmental groups, have charged that little is known about the potential health effects of exposure to a spray prevalent in the environment and the food supply.

To study the effect of glyphosate on pregnancy, researchers with the Indiana University Fairbanks School of Public Health took urine samples from 71 pregnant women who live in central Indiana, which produces much of the world’s corn.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/ingredient-in-monsantos-roundup-spray-linked-to-shorter-pregnancies-032318.html

Try ‘Wildevore Diet’ For Healthy Living

We have all heard of vegetarian, vegan and flexitarian diets. But have you heard about wildevore diet? Surely, no! Nowadays, dieting is considered a national obsession among everyone. These types of diets mentioned above are definitely healthy and less fatty, but it might have a negative impact on one’s health and sense of well being. Concerns about climate change, environmental stress and animal welfare mean that “what we eat is an ethical as well as a health issue.”

The two women, who are promoting the all-new ‘wildevore diet’, said that the new approach will help people to show how they can eat to benefit their own health while making planet-friendly choices at the same time. The Wildevore diet incorporates some of the philosophies of veganism, vegetarianism, flexitarianism, ethical omnivorism, and clean eating, but it looks more closely at the pressures on the environment and the impact that has on human health, according to The Ecologist.

The new eating approach identifies on how to make the best choices both ‘nutritionally and ethically’ and aims at educating the people about where their food originates from. Health problems Caroline Grindrod, an environmental conservationist, writer, and Wildevore coach, and Georgia Winfield-Hayes, a nutritionist both agree that the new eating diet is not for the “faint-hearted, requiring some serious homework and a desire to change habits.”

The system can work for vegans and meat-eaters, but there is an underlying need to understand the consequences of food choices. In the Wildevore diet, meat reared on regenerative farms and fed on natural diets is allowed for its human health benefits. Georgia, who has written extensively on human nutrition, said that a vegan diet does not ‘always’ provide the best results.

‘From a health perspective a vegan diet, in the short term is an amazing way to cleanse the body and this feels great,” Georgia said. “However, long-term it can create serious health problems. Soya, the main protein source for many vegans, is a hormone-disrupting food and can cause our own reproductive systems to stop working correctly,” she added.

https://www.mid-day.com/articles/try-wildevore-diet-for-healthy-living/19235171

Coffee and Deforestation: Addressing Coffee’s Footprint

About one third of the world’s land, more than four billion hectares, is forest. Every year, this area decreases by an average of 13 million hectares, about the same size as 35 football fields per minute. The largest losses are observed in Africa and South America, mainly due to agriculture.

Coffee originates from the humid, tropical forests of Southern Ethiopia and South Sudan, and around the globe it is largely grown in many former forest landscapes,  some of which are located in biodiversity hotspots or protected areas, such as the Mata Atlântica and the Cerrado region in Brazil, the Mesoamerican Forests in Central America and the Eastern Afromontane Forests hosting the genetic diversity of Coffea Arabica in Ethiopia.

Yet the relationship between coffee and forest cover today is weakly addressed in our sector. We look at many other aspects related to sustainability in coffee: Where will future production come from if young people continue migrating from rural areas? How can productivity be increased to meet growing demand? How strongly will climate change impact production volumes, quality or specific coffee regions? Which varieties should be promoted to cope with rising temperatures and more irregular rainfall patterns? How can supply chains strengthen coffee producers in their operations?

Coffee and Deforestation: Addressing Coffee’s Footprint

‘Great Pacific garbage patch’ is 16 times bigger than we thought, scientists say

Scientists arrived at this figure, which is around 16 times higher than previous estimates, by assessing aerial images alongside data from ships dragging nets through the region.

Occupying the waters between California and Hawaii, the patch is the largest of five major offshore waste accumulation zones that result from converging ocean currents.

The research was conducted by scientists at the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, who are attempting to understand the true extent of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.

“Overall you would expect plastic pollution is getting worse in the oceans because we are producing and using more plastics, globally and annually,” Dr Laurent Lebreton told The Independent.

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastic-pollution-oceans-environment-fish-a8269951.html

Most plastic waste appears to come from five developing nations in Asia.

Around 8 million tons of plastic waste is dumped in the ocean annually. That equates to emptying a garbage truck of plastic into the sea every minute , most of it single-use products, such as plastic bags, candy wrappers, sachets and soda bottles.

This mismanagement not only pollutes oceans and harms marine wildlife, but also makes life harder for locals, whether they are residents of neighborhoods that regularly flood (owing to drains clogged with plastic), workers at coastal resorts that cater to tourists or fishermen facing dwindling fish stocks. The economic implications are startling. Marine debris cost the 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation member economies around $1.3 billion in 2008, and that number is only going up as the problem gets worse.

We’re encouraged that the world is waking up to the crisis of plastic waste in our ocean, and working together to resolve it. News outlets around the world highlighted the shocking video earlier this month of the British diver swimming through plastic waste off the coast of Bali. The recent World Ocean Summit, held in Mexico earlier this month, focused extensively on plastic waste. The sixth International Marine Debris conference convened last week in San Diego and highlighted new and emerging science that will help us tackle this growing problem. Earlier this year, Evian, Coca-Cola and other businesses announced efforts to address packaging waste and improve recyclability of their products. 

Ride shotgun on this game-changing farm in “One Hundred Thousand Beating Hearts,” streaming now on Salon Premium

Will Harris, a good ol’ boy Georgia rancher, may well be our nation’s best bet for a better, more sustainable future. He’s the subject of a documentary by Peter Byck, “One Hundred Thousand Beating Hearts.”

Tell us one story about the production.

When Will was taking me around the surrounding counties, to see the dying towns, small towns that had a strong agricultural base and that had been shriveling up due to poor economics for the local folks, we were filming along an old mill and rain was impending. I could see the coming squall down the road and it appeared to me to be about four minutes away. At about three minutes [out], when Will finished his answer to one of my questions, I grabbed the camera and tripod, told him we’d better run back to his truck, and as soon as we shut the doors, it started to really come down. He was impressed with my sense to read the rain. That made me feel good.

What’s been your past interest in sustainable animal agriculture?

I look to regenerative agriculture, and AMP [adaptive multi-paddock] grazing in specific, as a potential way to draw down significant amounts of carbon from the air and store it in the soils. Carbon is the currency for healthy soils — and healthy soils produce healthy foods and help farmers to make more food on their land. My experience is filming farmers and ranchers across the U.S., Canada and the UK. These innovative producers of food are my heroes.

General Mills is transitioning 53 square miles of South Dakota farmland to certified organic.

This headline from the smart website newfoodeconomy.org caught our attention: “General Mills is transitioning 53 square miles of South Dakota farmland to certified organic.” That’s 34,000 acres that will be converted to organic by planting a mix of hard red spring wheat (for pasta) hard red winter wheat, dry yellow peas, corn, soybeans, sunflowers and alfalfa. They call it Project Gunsmoke.

“The Gunsmoke project is an opportunity to use our scale to help convert large areas of acreage to organic as one of our tools to create a more stable supply chain,” General Mills said.

In short, demand for organic, or chemical-free, foods is growing exponentially and the major food suppliers can’t keep up.

http://www.stormlake.com/articles/2018/03/21/crops-are-changing

US Electricity: Natural Gas & Coal Fall, While Renewables Continue to Rise

Electricity generation from both natural gas and coal fell in 2017. At the same time, renewables – especially hydropower, wind, and solar – continued to rise according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/us-electricity-natural-gas-coal-fall-while-renewables-continue-to-rise/

The ‘nightmare’ California flood more dangerous than a huge earthquake

California’s drought-to-deluge cycle can mask the dangers Mother Nature can have in store.

During one of the driest March-through-February time periods ever recorded in Southern California, an intense storm dumped so much rain on Montecito in January that mudflows slammed into entire rows of homes. Hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed, and at least 21 people died.

It was a grim reminder that in a place so dry, sudden flooding can bring disaster.

Eighty years ago this month, epic storms over just six days caused widespread destruction across Southern California.

Rain fell as fast as 2 inches for a one-hour period. Wide swaths of the San Fernando Valley were inundated; floodwaters in the Los Angeles River mowed down bridges and pulled apart railroads.

Government officials responded with a major flood control campaign, building dams and deepening rivers and lining them with concrete to flush water out to sea before floodwaters could rise.

But even those protections have limits. And history shows there is precedent for even more devastation.

Several weeks of monumental storms would be all it would take to overwhelm California’s flood control system and cause widespread flooding and destruction.

http://www.latimes.com/la-me-california-flood-20180325-htmlstory.html

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