What's wrong with Fiji bottled water?

Let's just keep this one easy. It comes from a military dictatorship that steals water from its own people. Mother Jones has a great story up on it.

THE INTERNET CAFÉ in the Fijian capital, Suva, was usually open all night long. Dimly lit, with rows of sleek, modern terminals, the place was packed at all hours with teenage boys playing boisterous rounds of video games. But one day soon after I arrived, the staff told me they now had to shut down by 5 p.m. Police orders, they shrugged: The country's military junta had declared martial law a few days before, and things were a bit tense.

I sat down and sent out a few emails—filling friends in on my visit to the Fiji Water bottling plant, forwarding a story about foreign journalists being kicked off the island. Then my connection died. "It will just be a few minutes," one of the clerks said.

Moments later, a pair of police officers walked in. They headed for a woman at another terminal; I turned to my screen to compose a note about how cops were even showing up in the Internet cafés. Then I saw them coming toward me. "We're going to take you in for questioning about the emails you've been writing," they said.

And that's just the beginning.

For reasons too long to enumerate and explain here, we too often think of our economic decisions as separate from our moral decisions. In the United States we often think in terms of things like "freedoms" and "inalienable rights" and the like. But when it comes issues tied to our pocketbooks, what we eat, and what we drink, we too easily outsource moral decision making to people whose vested interest is solely economic - profit-oriented or interested in job creation for example - and do not think in terms of social and/or environmental interests. And those decision makers - read Fiji water "producers" - deliberately hide those moral questions from us because if people knew what was happening, they would, or at least could, "vote" differently with their wallets.

And here we have a great example of the sham of the "choice" involved in part of the disposable plastic water bottle industry. Not only does it waste enormous amounts of petroleum in its fabrication and shipping; not only does it take water from the place where it has helped create and sustain an ecosystem; not only does it steal water from the people whose culture has been built on, around, by, and in conjunction with that water; it also does all of that with the threat of the gun and yours and my money. When we buy this water, it makes hypocrites out of those of us who believe in and say we practice rights and liberties because we steal the rights and liberties of all of those Fijians who have no sovereignty. It makes a public hypocrite of Barack Obama for sure.

More disturbing news about plastic

The quest to rid the world of single-use plastic water bottles brings with it an awful lot of bad news. We know that plastics seemingly last forever. They never break down. Right?

Wrong. And it might be worse than you think.

National Geographic has a new story out discussing how plastics break down in ocean water. The plastics in the 7 million ton garbage raft in the Pacific gyre (see video below, this NG link, and pic at right from Algalita Marine Research Foundation) is actually breaking down and its side effects are remarkably awful.

The Japan-based team collected samples in waters from the U.S., Europe, India, Japan, and elsewhere, lead researcher Katsuhiko Saido, a chemist with the College of Pharmacy at Nihon University in Japan, said via email.

All the water samples were found to contain derivatives of polystyrene, a common plastic used in disposable cutlery, Styrofoam, and DVD cases, among other things, said Saido, who presented the findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C., today.

Plastic, he said, should be considered a new source of chemical pollution in the ocean.

As the plastic breaks down, it releases BPA (among other things) into the water, a substance know to damage animals' endocrine systems. In humans, BPA exposure "may be connected to abnormal penis development in males, early sexual maturation in females, an increase in neurobehavioral problems such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism, an increase in childhood and adult obesity and type 2 diabetes, and an increase in hormonally mediated cancers, such as prostate and breast cancers." Hundreds of rodent studies have shown that "BPA-exposed animals have altered development of the male and female reproductive tracts, mammary tissues, the immune system, the fat tissue, and the thyroid...[and] altered brain development, increased aggression in adulthood, abnormal play and sexual behaviors, and decreased maternal behaviors."

But now that we know that the plastics are breaking down, we understand that it isn't just a surface water problem, but rather that the the chemicals are sinking down affecting lower water as well and also moving outward with currents. For example,

Once Styrofoam, for example, breaks down, the tiny polystyrene components start to sink, because they're heavier than water, Moore said. "So it's likely that this styrene pollutant is prevalent throughout the water column and not just at the surface."

Additionally, the unknown level of chemical contaminants that some plastic containers originally contained (pesticides, herbicides, oil, etc.) compounds an already bad problem. Animals ingesting plastic become sick and "plasticized." If another animal eats that animal and others like it, the concentration goes up. The more predatory/higher on the food chain we go, the more "plasticized" the animal can become. As one of the scientists in the article suggests, that's bad news for us. We are, in effect, poisoning ourselves through an incredibly labyrinthine process not unlike the way that we poisoned ourselves and innumerable raptors with DDT as Rachel Carson pointed out in her classic tract Silent Spring.

We might think, "I don't live near the Pacific Ocean. So who cares?" The "who cares" part is exactly the issue though. This isn't just a localized plastic problem for the Pacific when we know that plastic recycling rates in the U.S. are only about 20%. As a mass-consumer society, we are a part of this system. And the way to effect that change is to change it here and now. So dump the single-use plastic bottles and bags.

Sierra Club rates universities...guess what?

Penn State isn't even on the Sierra Club list. I have to admit that this is rather flabbergasting. But be that we've been simply left off the list, it's nice to see what the criteria for evaluation are. I mean, we do have one of the biggest composting programs in the country, several LEED certified buildings, community garden plots, the Center for Sustainability, some of the best environmental science programs in the country through several colleges and departments (except we do have major shills in those same colleges for unsustainable practices), a proactive Office of Physical Plant, and more.

None of that is to say that we don't need to improve. But we aren't even on the list. Who was this evaluator?

Sustainability degrees increasing in popularity

Wow. We are on a rising tide.

USA Today reports today that "college students are flocking to sustainability degrees." The article spotlights (very briefly) how MBAs at U Penn can pick up a degree that incorporates environmental studies, Harvard's design program is emphasizing sustainability, Arizona State has a School of Sustainability that has just graduated its first class, and Bucknell has incorporated a requirement "that explores the human connection to the environment."

Every couple of weeks I get email from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education informing me of the incredible goings on in sustainability and higher education. Things are changing really fast and, I sincerely hope, for the better. From the Ponderosa Project and Piedmont Project, from our own Center for Sustainability, Rock Ethics Institute, and Penn State's membership in the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium, to the plethora of other projects around the country, we are seeing so much happening. And now, finally, big media has noticed.

Now let's move our school!

Green Careers through the Center for Sustainability

The Penn State Center for Sustainability is launching a new way to get connected to the emerging "green economy": Green Careers.

And guess who's invited? Us! As participants in an engaged student organization, we'll be included in the goings on and have a way for people within and without Penn State to see what we've been doing. The big site launch will come this fall and we are also invited to host a table on Wednesday September 2nd. See you there.

When Learning Comes Naturally

Maybe we'll get a chance to see this this fall.

Gardens are popping up everywhere

I've heard and read some awesome and disparate reports about green spaces, community gardens, and school gardens popping up all over the place. Just two that I've encountered in the last couple of weeks come from Flint, Michigan and Talledega, Alabama.

Flint's auto industry ties slowly corroded the whole city. Politicians and residents are looking into tearing down abandoned lots, relocating some residents, and making the bulldozed lots into places where people can grow flowers and veggies and beautify their town by helping nature reclaim large spaces. In essence, the town will flourish by shrinking. NPR reports:

One way residents are filling the city is with community gardens. One of them is managed by Harry Ryan, a retired electrician and real estate agent who lives in Flint's old east side. Just across the street from his home, where five houses used to stand, the land bank has helped him plant a sprawling community garden, which provides free fruit and vegetables to this part of the city.

Ryan says growing food one of the benefits of a plan to shrink Flint. "I look at it like this: Something has to be done with this abandoned land. So, I think, [in] every transition there are going to be negatives, but look at the positives. This was a junk pile," Ryan recalls.

"Now people are eating from it. I know there are complaints, but we do not have the 230,000 people [anymore]." (picture reprinted from NPR)

Pretty neat stuff. Where the human industrial economy has failed, nature's economy can reclaim.

And children can obviously benefit as I'm sure Zach can tell us from this summer's work. But in the deep South in Talledega, Alabama, a minister has seen fit to develop community gardens to help children learn self-sufficiency. The Daily Home reports that Reverend Sherman Green has set up a garden in cooperation with the "Cooperative Extension Service and Coosa Rural Development office" to teach children "how to grow a fruitful garden using new, innovative methods [and] the basics of business and entrepreneurship."

Perhaps we are seeing a recalibration occurring and its time to pitch a real proposal to our College.

Teachers + Children + Gardens = Self-sufficient Communities

Where does our trash go?

The Boston Globe just published a story about how pieces of trash have been tracked to their final destination in the Greater Boston area and will soon be tracked in other cities. The tracking project, initiated by MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory, has been developed in the "hope that tracking the trash through the disposal system - and making it viewable in real time on a blog - will cause consumers to give more thought to what they are tossing out."

How cool! I've often wondered if one of the reasons why some people do not recycle had anything to do with the fact that what they throw out magically "disappears." Of course, we know that it doesn't magically disappear, as demonstrated by the giant plastic dump in the Pacific Ocean; however, for the vast majority of Americans, what we throw away is out of sight and out of mind. I hope this MIT project serves as a means for people to feel more responsible about what they throw at the Earth.

Ecotowns. What about the eco-schools?

I think we could use some of these ecotowns (see here too). No doubt we'd face these same controversies in the United States. The British government is planning to build eleven towns by 2020 that drastically reduce their carbon footprints by reducing energy consumption in the home, changing transportation, and (I think I have this right) encouraging super-local food growth.

Question for me: What are the schools in these towns going to do?

Meatless days and water bottle bans?

A town in Australia has voted to 400-2 to outlaw disposable water bottles and install water fountains while the Flemmish town of Ghent has opted to make one day a week meatless. Why? Carbon reduction. Read the story at Green Inc.

What do you say we get Penn State in on this? I guess OPP will have to step it up and the College of Agriculture and our big business deals through housing and food services might have to change just a little bit. It's nice to dream a bit.