Filed under: Business + Politics, Society + Media | Tags: climate change, environmental migration, EU, genocide, global warming
Mention the word “migrants” and it usually conjures negative stereotypes – of desperate people fleeing dire poverty and genocide in some godforsaken country where the prospect of a better life in the West brings with it all the promise of congratulatory welcome by xenophobic zealots. Short shrift is given to aspects of economic growth brought about by economic migrants, their cultural diversity and a heritage that has spawned the founding of the New World by European migrants. Nowadays, migrants are largely treated with contempt – out to steal jobs meant for hardworking and upstanding citizens, responsible for escalating crime patterns and, heaven forbid, can’t even speak English.
And so reading the European Union report this week filled me with a sense of trepidation – that global warming is presenting a new set of problems for society – environmental migration. The report warns that Africa will be hard hit by the effects of climate change that is likely to witness the mass exodus of millions of people to Europe. Water shortages, diminishing food stocks and reduction of arable land are some of the consequences of climate change that are considered threat multipliers to climate change. Coupled with domestic instability and weak governance, countries may find it difficult to adapt to the changes, prompting a massive south-north migration unrivaled in history.
Just how will Europe cope and is it willing to absorb millions of environmental migrants, given that it’s the industrialized powerhouses that have principally contributed to global warming, further compounding the woes of poorer countries? Could migrants be considered under a broader definition of “refugees,” which encompasses grounds for international protection based on threats of persecution over identity? The UNHCR, says it’s a debate that’s taking place in a complex world of global migration, but one hopes that the issues don’t become clouded in semantics, but that meaningful solutions are forthcoming and eclipse the kind of responses shown to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Too many times the world has stood idly by as human rights abuses have been enacted upon defenseless citizens, from the brutality witnessed during the Chinese cultural revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution, the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust, Cambodia under Pol Pot, to the atrocities committed in Darfur, Rwanda and Bosnia. Global warming is a phenomenon created by humans and since we’ve not learned lessons from the past, at least the future, as gloomy as the fate of millions of the world poor sounds, should serve as a guide for immediate action.
– Denzyl
Filed under: Business + Politics, Waste + Recycling | Tags: carbon footprint, environment, made in china, recycle, shoe, shoes, simple, timberland
America has a shoe problem.
2,286,472,000 shoes were purchased in the U.S. in 2005 according to the American Apparel & Footwear Association. 297,821,175 Americans were alive at the end of 2005. That’s 7.67 shoes per person. Now I realize that I am a man and therefore do not understand the true glory of shoes, but this seems a little absurd. Think of all the different materials that go into making shoes and their packaging. Think of all the different places that those materials come from. Then think of where the shoes are made and how far they travel to get to your feet. In 2005, only 1.4% of consumed shoes were manufactured in America. 84.2% of American bought shoes that were:
Just take a gander at this trend throughout the past few decades.
Graph: The American Apparel & Footwear Association
And that’s not the half of it. Read this National Geographic Green Guide article to learn the true horrors behind the shoe industry.
Not only do your shoes affect your footprint, they significantly alter your carbon footprint as well. Oh dear, oh dear.
But many shoe brands are working to become more eco-friendly. Simple now uses sustainable materials such as organic cotton, water based glue, recycled car tires, and recycled plastic bottles when making their shoes.
Timberland is also making great strides to green their company along with the entire shoe industry. In addition to using organic and recycled materials in some of their shoes they also pay workers to complete 40 hours of community service each year. Also, all there shoe boxes now carry a “nutrition label” that tell the environmental impact of each shoe. The labels may not say where each of the materials came from or other important matters pertaining to each pair’s impact, but the intention is still admirable. Chief executive of Timberland, Jeffry B. Swartz says he hopes that other brands will adopt similar labels so that customers will compare eco-impact when shopping for shoes.
Huzzah to those who are trying to establish a firm footing in the fight for sustainability, but for the most part the movement to green the shoe industry is still lacking sole.
Maybe all the shoe biz needs is a little help from the hip-hop world. After all, RUN DMC did wonders for Adidas and The Pack’s song “Vans” boosted the sales of the already successful skateshoe brand.
I’m strutting down the street in my eco-friendly kicks
I don’t like toxic runoff cause it makes the fishies sick.
What do you think?
No?
Fine. I’ll stick to blogging.
Stay tuned for the next installment – Green Footing Part Deux: Local Shoe Subdue.
Happy strutting,
Travis Brown
Filed under: Food + Health, Society + Media | Tags: Jenna Jameson, PETA, Pleather, poly vinyl chloride, PVC, vegan
Pleather is Not Pleasure!, TMZ News
This PETA campaign has always killed me. You care about the animals, you don’t eat meat or wear leather shoes, you are a do-gooder. But hang on a minute! If your vegan solution is pleather, then you have some investigating to do. A lot of pleather is made of PVC. If you don’t know PVC, allow me to introduce you. It is the “poison plastic.” Poly vinyl chloride is in everything from shower curtains to (as we saw in George’s video) sex toys. There is no safe way to create it or destroy it. It is made with a host of softeners that are known carcinogens and it cannot be recycled because of all the stuff that’s put into it. According to Mike Shade from the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice, one PVC bottle can contaminate a recycling load of 100,000 bottles.
Please, show care for Mother Earth and all her creatures. But don’t let the answer to your problem be one that actually does more harm.
Filed under: Business + Politics, Food + Health, Waste + Recycling | Tags: Business, disposable, environment, paper, plastic, recycle, recycling, to go, waste, waste management
“First Watch on College, this is Sonya, what can I get for you today?”
…
“Alright, I have a To-Go order of a triple stack of blueberry pancakes, a three cheese omelette and an extra side of potatoes. Would we get you anything else?”
She didn’t even have to ask.
With that order will come disposable styrofoam boxes, disposable plastic silverware, a disposable paper menu, disposable single serving jellies, ketchups and syrups, and plenty of extra paper napkins. It’s all complementary. Complements of your ecosystem.
I know what you’re thinking: this is almost overwhelming.
But don’t you worry– it all comes in a convenient, giant plastic sack. Maybe even two if it’s necessary (and sometimes when it’s not!). We even give you a disposable 3 oz paper cup for your coffee while you wait.
To-Go practices is hardly the first thing that comes to mind when I think of wasteful practices at First Watch. And whether this strikes you as good news or bad news, I can tell you that the company is not evil and not unusual.
It is delicious. Our orange juice is unbeatable. We go through at least five jugs each Sunday. When we finish one off, we toss it in the trash. It joins the glass apple juice jugs, plastic milk cartons and countless other packaging materials that are tossed each and every day.
It will not join the cardboard boxes in which they are delivered.
No, of course. We recycle cardboard.
What??
I would love to see Chris Jordan do a piece on how much waste reduction could result from a nifty, space-saving tower of recycle bins being placed in each First Watch throughout the country. In fact, every restaurant I’ve worked for could use one. Could it become as standard a business practice as the employee hand-washing sign? That guy’s everywhere.
As far as To-Go’s, I would look to “Reduce” before “Recycle” in my triple-R toolbox. I mentioned in a previous post Jason’s Deli’s new practice to include extra resources only upon request. This easily be mimicked by restaurants all over the world and the impact would be colossal.
That covers the supply-side, but until that campaign goes through, here’s what we can do from the demand-side. When ordering To-Go’s, ask the server to skip the plasticware, napkins, condiments and menus.
I don’t know if this discredits me, but in the name of full disclosure, I can’t resist the complementary coffee. I get the feeling that bringing your own mug from home would earn a judging eye or two.
-Sonya English
Filed under: Food + Health, Society + Media | Tags: boston globe, bushel, children of the corn, corn, ethanol, food, food prices, groceries, high-fructose corn syrup, malachi, oil, stephen king
The evil spirit in the corn field has spoken…HE WANTS YOU, TOO, MALACHI. HE WANTS YOU, TOO!
Remember the corny (haha, get it?) 1980s Stephen King horror film, “Children of the Corn?” You know, that flick on TBS you sat through that one Sunday afternoon–when you ate an entire bag of Funyuns and stayed in your pajamas all day instead of writing the paper that was due on Monday…takes place in Nebraska…creepy Man-child preacher guided by the evil spirit in the corn fields; tells him to make the kids kill all of the adults…then, with the grown-ups out of the way, the cornfield spirit unleashes all hell on the little kids themselves.
You know, the one based on actual events.
See, what the Stephen King movie failed to tell viewers is that the Corn Monster survived that episode, relocated to Washington D.C., and took over a powerful lobbying firm that kept a tight grip on both the agricultural and energy industries. And now he wants you, too, MALACHI!
Because corn (in the form of ethanol) is being pushed on us as the answer to all of our oil woes, the demand for–and thus the price of–corn has more than doubled in the last two years, from roughly $2.28/bushel to $5.60/bushel.
Corn, of course, is the most popular feed delivered to cattle, so its price has a direct hand in dairy and meat prices; in the form of high fructose corn syrup, it’s also in practically every commercial food product on the market–from fruit punches to bread.
So, the meteoric rise in corn is great if you’re a corn farmer. Not so great if you’re a single mom with several mouths to feed.
In fact, just yesterday, the Boston Globe had a big story on the surging costs of groceries–fueled (literally) by rising corn and oil prices. Funny how corn, which was supposed to help reduce our dependence on oil, has shared such a similar trajectory with its supposed nemesis. In many ways, corn is the new oil. I guess that makes it “Yellow Gold”… but somehow that doesn’t sound very dramatic…
Those who argue that corn ethanol will reduce our dependence on oil are right to some extent, but they overlook the fact that it takes a great deal of energy and pollution to grow, harvest, refine, and distribute ethanol. So, while it might curb our dependence on foreign oil, it’s not the answer if we’re truly looking for eco-friendly energy sources. Moreover, current automobiles can only stomach blends of ethanol that contain no more than 20 percent corn, so it’s not going to replace oil-refined gasoline overnight–or anytime soon for that matter.
If there’s one good thing to come from all of this, it’s the hope that the super-inflated price of corn will make it less appealing for food manufacturers to pump high fructose corn syrup into practically every single product. Maybe it will mean that cheap junk food will soon become a luxury–a purchase that can’t be made on a daily basis without some pinch to the pocketbook.
Then again, a better solution might be that the strength of corn in the marketplace makes Congress realize that we no longer need to federally subsidize farmers who choose to grow corn for ethanol. It clearly isn’t an environmentally-friendly process, it’s only a supplemental energy source at best, and over-emphasis will only make food more expensive for all of us.
Oh, by the way, remember those Funyuns you were scarfing down? Mostly corn… He wants you, too, Malachi! bwahahahahaha……
–Ranjit
Filed under: Society + Media, Waste + Recycling | Tags: glamour, green, powerstrip, save the planet
Instead of picking a business to “green,” I thought it might be more interesting and beneficial to me personally if I made up a laundry list of the things I need to start to do to green my own apartment…and possibly my ridiculously high electric bill.
Lately I have seen green articles popping up everywhere I am reading, and find myself getting rather excited about them. Whether it be online, in magazines, or newspapers, it’s cool to read a new article with a fresh perspective on being green. So when I curled up with the April issue of Glamour magazine yesterday, I found myself excited to use my many new ideas that came from 30 Little Ways to Save the Planet that will be so simple to implement into my lifestyle.
Photo: Glamour Web site
I know a lot of people in our class probably already are aware of these small changes you can make, but some of these are new information to me and I thought I would share of few of the best, and some that even surprised me:
-Sign up for online banking. If every American did this, 2.3 million tons of wood would be spared every year, and 3.9 billion pounds of greenhouse gases would be eliminated. This goes for the ATM receipts too (I’m one of those people that always gets one even though I never look at it again).
-Skip the screen saver. Apparently they are energy suckers! It’s better to switch to sleep mode during the day, shut down at night, and un-plug. Guess this means goodbye to my David Beckham screen saver 😦
-Two words: power strip. 75 percent of all household electricity is from standby power. When you turn the power strip off, then you shut down everything!
-Go ahead and use the dishwasher. Running full loads is actually less water-intensive than hand-washing (This is good news).
Photo: Jonlesser, Flickr
-Sarah Nelson
Filed under: Food + Health, Local Events + Action, Waste + Recycling | Tags: chipotle, food for integrity, KU Greek community, sustainable, The Gordon Parks Charter School
(Here I am about to reference being in a sorority again…)
As a member of a sorority, many philanthropic opportunities from other chapters in the KU Greek community are presented to us to participate in…to help and better our world. Last night, we were offered the opportunity to go to Chipotle and profits made from that evening would help benefit The Gordon Parks Charter School. We sorority girls whom you may not believe actually enjoy eating, but really do, thought, “hey, why not?” So we got on our cute leggings and Ugg boots (okay, that’s sort of a joke) and ended up at the Chipotle on 6th and Monterey.
I’ve always heard about Chipotle’s efforts to serve naturally raised meat that are vegetarian fed with no antibiotics, but I never knew how much effort Chipotle has put in in order to be ‘sustainable‘. Instead of bashing Chipotle on how they can increase their efforts of being green, I am going to applaud them instead because they have made more of an effort than many fast-food (but not fast food) chains in our nation.
I was surprised to hear Chipotle’s call for humane treatment of the animals (cows, chickens and pigs). For example, Chipotle even claims, “Since 2001, all the pork served in our restaurants has been from pig raised in this humane, ecologically sustainable way.” The farms in which the pork comes from even allow the pigs to roam around the pasture and socialize with one another. That really warms my heart.
Chipotle’s efforts towards being green are evident in their “Food for Integrity” mission, which includes doing all these things better from start to finish (especially returning to organic and sustainable farming). Food for Integrity doesn’t just include naturally raised meat, but many other ingredients that you are able to put into that fluffy burrito (or burrito bol in my case). Some of these other ingredients are: organically grown beans, sour cream free of the synthetic growth hormone rBGH, and romaine lettuce instead of iceberg lettuce.
Even though some of Chipotle’s products are shipped from sources across the country, I would still have to applaud them for their organic and sustainable efforts. Isn’t being sustainable about balancing things out, anyway? I know it will be worth it in the end.
So if I’m not in the mood for a natural burger at Local Burger, I know I can go Mexican and eat at Chipotle and still have that same satisfaction that I am helping make this world a better place…one burrito at a time.
-Dena Hart
J500 Media and the Environment 