Sustainability and Built Systems

Spring 2014

Category: food

Naked Juice Can No Longer Advertise As “All Natural”

May 7, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Naked Juice (owned by PepsiCo) has agreed to remove the “All Natural” label from their juice containers and advertisements in the aftermath of a recent class action lawsuit. The juice was found to contain several artificial ingredients, GMOs, and even an ingredient synthetically produced from formaldehyde.

Possibly even more disturbing than Naked’s deceptive advertising is that the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the settlement agreed that they would not freely communicate with the press.

From the LiveingMaxWell.com blog post:

If lawyers who are supposed to represent the interests of the class action group cannot freely talk to the press about the settlement and cannot have complete freedom to spread information about how consumers can make a claim to the $9 million dollars, it begs the question: whose interests are the plaintiffs’ lawyers truly representing?

 

Wasting Less, Feeding More

April 23, 2014 / / 0 Comments

In this article, published in the New York times, author Beth Gardiner addresses the various policies that have been adopted by a number of countries to curb wasting.  South Korea “is charging for garbage removal by weight” while Massachusetts “is barring large businesses from sending kitchen waste to landfills” and supermarkets in Britain “are improving labels and packaging so that customers throw out less of what they buy” (Gardiner, 1).

The idea is to waste less, especially given the rising global population and with it the number of starving persons in the world.  The UN “estimates that a third of all the food produced in the world is never consumed” and that the food wasted by all of the developed countries in the world combined “would be more than enough to feed the world’s 870 million hungry people” (Gardiner, 3-4).

The United States alone tosses away “about 40 percent of all food, worth an estimated $165 billion” (Gardiner, 3).

If we only invested in as much as we could consume and simplified packaging, with the utilization of the correct channels, it might be plausible that we could redistribute the wealth, so to speak, and slow down the mass dumping that we contribute to every year.

If you’re going to drink, drink sustainably

April 21, 2014 / / 1 Comment

If you know the first thing about beer, you know that beer is made from grains. Grains are used for everything, whether it’s food for people or livestock. Spent grains go straight to the dump or used as animal feed, but they can also make great compost, baking ingredients, and cultivators to grow mushrooms. Brewing companies across the country are currently turning their trash into useful materials, and even ethanol at a Coors site in Colorado. Read this “sustainable blog” for an in depth explanation of the process. Cheers!

http://www.sustainableamerica.org/blog/sustainable-suds/?fb_action_ids=10202297793979593&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582

Sustainable Camping

April 7, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Last weekend I was looking into some hiking gear when I came across the Biolite CampStove. This little gadget is a pretty revolutionary outdoor cooking accessory. Not only does the Biolite contain a wood-burning cooking fire, but also features a small fan, which accelerates the energy release from the fuel.  Reliance on wood is a key feature that promotes sustainability. Most long distance hikers on tend to use portable, gas stoves to do their cooking because they are reliable. However with availability of a stove that efficiently turns firewood into energy, consumer tastes will compensate a little.

In a addition to relying on a more sustainable source of energy than traditional gas stoves, the Biolite CampStove has the ability to transfer heat into electric power. It uses a Thermoelectric Generator to power its external fan, as well as provide 2W of power output at 5V through a USB port. Although this technology is preferable to gas heat which tends to have a greater environmental impact, it still has more of an environmental impact than portable sources of solar electricity.

What do you think?  In a hypothetical situation where you had to hike a great distance like the Appalachian trial, would you consider carrying this item? How could the Biolite corporation implement this thermoelectric technology to benefit people in developing nations?

http://www.biolitestove.com

Climate Change: Economics, Politics and Human Rights

April 3, 2014 / / 0 Comments

In this article, published in the New York Times, author Justin Gillis touches on the recent report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a branch of the United Nations “that periodically summarizes climate science.”  The main point of the report was that the worst is yet to come.  Given that climate change is a present issue, occurring everyday, the effects of it are difficult to slow down without taking the serious steps to cut back on carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.

On the front of human rights, the report “emphasized that the world’s food supply is at considerable risk – a threat that could have serious consequences for the poorest nations” (emphasis mine).

Furthermore, on the sociological and political fronts, the report “cited the risk of death or injury on a wide scale, probable damage to public health, displacement of people and potential mass migrations.”

Finally, on the economic side, “climate-change impacts are projected to slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and prolong existing and create new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hot spots of hunger.”

Climate change is not only about the earth and the resources that are exhausted through mass consumption, though these are two ends in and of themselves.  Climate change has implications in the realms of economics, politics and even human rights.

Bees: One Ethic, Many Techniques

April 3, 2014 / / 0 Comments

In this article, published in the New York Times, author John Schwartz tackles the subject of the federal government’s program supporting the planting of various plants meant to sustain bees and also produce economic benefits through a reduced need for pesticides and greater plant pollination.

According to Schwartz, “researchers are trying to find assortments of bee-friendly plants that local farmers and ranchers can easily grow, whether in unusable corners and borders of their land or on acreage set aside with government support.”

So far, the Midwest has been included in a $3 million government plan to support growth in the bee population, though Schwartz also mentions that, while the variety of plants supporting this growth may be different from place to place, there is great potential.  For example, in drought-ridden California, drought-resistant plants can play a major role in the desired bee population growth.

Furthermore, the most important aspect to note from this article, is the principle, according to Laurie Davis Adams, “executive director of Pollinator Partnership,” that “This is not one size fits all.  This is one ethic fits all.”

Water, Money and the EPA

March 14, 2014 / / 0 Comments

I came across this article in the New York Times regarding a potential expansion of the reach of the Clean Water Act, which may have potentially harmful consequences on farmers with small ditches or streams that have water in them during certain parts of the year.

While arguments for and against this expansion of jurisdiction are made, the consequences aren’t exactly clear.  Since assessments of the small ditches and other such water-holding streams would need to be made before the EPA could determine whether a permit is needed, some argue that this would cause farmers to miss out on planting time, which could ultimately lead to great losses of income.

Environmental Meat Vs. Ethical Meat Vs. No Meat

February 26, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Yesterday I came across an article in NPR’s The Salt blog which I found to be somewhat disheartening. In Why Farmers Can Prevent Global Warming Just As Well As Vegetarians, factory farming-like practices are touted as the best solution for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock industry.

In no way am I questioning the logic behind the article’s source. As the demand for animal products rises globally, so will the already vast emissions from the livestock industry due to feeding, raising, transporting, and the creation of new grazing lands. Thus, per the findings of the study, animals should be raised in an industrial facility on grain, and the creation of new grazing land for livestock should be avoided. (It should be noted that “grain” may not mean what you think it means.) It makes sense that deforestation is not good, and that “…transitions toward more productive livestock production systems…” should be more efficient and economical, but at what cost ethically? Neither the article nor the abstract of its (pay walled) primary source explicitly mention the practices that factory farms are notorious for; however, it’s fairly easy to make that connection when their recommendations rely heavily on limiting land use and altering livestock diets. Is this really a solution that we should be suggesting to developing nations?

Through all of this, I am still having trouble understanding how the factory farming of meat can somehow be just as eco-friendly as non-consumption, and it saddens me to realize that the escalation of these farming practices are the likely outcome when compared to simple restraint.

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