Reflections on a Spill

"Spill is 'worst US eco-disaster.'"

This was a BBC headline gracing my iGoogle homepage when I logged onto the internet this morning.

Sure. I get it.

I have found it easy to reach new levels of despair and panic in the wake of the unrelenting flow of oil and gas entering the Gulf of Mexico from the now infamous BP Horizon oil rig. But is this incident the "worst" ecological disaster in United States history? And, if it is the worst, what does that tell us about how we identify an "eco-disaster"? And how do we respond?

The "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico well predates the BP oil spill, and could this not also be considered an eco-disaster of similar proportions? No doubt, the continuing flow of oil from the collapsed Horizon rig, at some 25,000 barrels a day, will no doubt contribute, if not well expand, the size of that dead zone in the Gulf, most noticeably along the coast of Gulf-bordering countries like the United States and Cuba.

Or take one of the leading contributors of greenhouse gases in the United States: industrial agriculture. Is this not an "eco-disaster" of similar proportions to the on-going BP oil spill?

Or take our own bodies, with diseases increasingly linked to the pollutants we encounter on a regular basis. Is this not a contender for the "worst 'US eco-disaster'" in history?

The current attention paid to the callous disregard for Life exemplified by BP and the federal government, the latter in the form of the Minerals Management Service, is little more than a high-profile acknowledgment of the pestiferous wake of an institutional juggernaut in which we are, for the most part, passengers.

As I and many others see it, the immediate challenge posed by the BP oil spill is its containment and the minimization of its negative environmental and economic impact. As of today, this challenge has been confronted with what appears to be a sad farce of human energy, imagination, and technology.

The next challenge is to reflect on what this oil spill shows us about how we live, and the societal and environmental conditions under which that life is possible. In short, our lifestyles, at least my own, depend largely on pollution and environmental and human exploitation. In response, action must be taken to increase the amount of mutually beneficial relationships between human beings as well as between humans and all that our activity relies upon and affects.

For some of us, this conclusion was made long before the BP oil spill occurred, and appropriate actions, both individual and collective, are underway. Some who have not yet drawn this conclusion, may still not draw it. But that should perhaps be of little concern to those of us who are committed to positive social change and real hope for the future.

No majority of the general population, as near as I can tell, has ever effectively struggled for democracy or has aspired toward "beloved community." Indeed, it has only been effectively organized and well-positioned minorities that have done, and continue to do, so. Therefore, keep the faith, and keep to the work.

On a personal level, perhaps the best immediate response to the present oil spill, in full awareness of its implications for human, animal, and plant life alike, may be to tell a dear friend that you love them, and to affirm, in thought or deed, that we are staying the course.

Greenhouse update...weeks later

The saga of our plastic bottle greenhouse continues...

Today, about 10 parents of children who attned the Corl Street Elementary School in State College worked with 2 members of 3E and a scad of third graders to get us to the next phase. We washed, cut, and sorted a few thousand more bottles while the physical plant guys for the district planted the posts and poured the concrete to set them in. Because the concrete has to set and part of the wall frame was used for it, we couldn't carry on with the frame and fix bottles to it.Kind of a bummer but so it goes. It started raining heavily anyway so it's not so bad that I've gotten to come back in.

That said, I am blown away by two things

1. Those third graders are awesome. They were enthusiastic while they washed and cut bottles, sorted them, and cut dowel rods. Our own Becky M. made this whole fun workstation thing and the children worked together on it so well. Some of them came back during recess to help us. I was personally pretty touched.

2. Holy giant amount of work that uses a giant amount of junk! I said in a previous post, "I am personally dumbfounded by the sheer volume of bottles we’ve gotten from the Office of Physical Plant’s bar pit. And these are the bottles that have been recycled. For every bottle that we’ve gotten from the recycling here, another one was probably thrown away." Putting that sheer volume into workable shape using just ordinary tools (water, soap, scissors, razors, dowel rods, nails/fencing staples, hammer, nails, screws, and power drill) is pretty crazy. I'm thinking that today's pure human work hours is somewhere around 50.

We should have some pictures pretty soon to show some more of this. Once the weather clears, I'll be heading over in the mornings to put the frame up piece by piece.

[To track back go here, here, and here.]

In case you ever wonder why school lunch is so bad for you...

...and fast food is so cheap you can just look at what our tax dollars subsidize. People who talk about the personal responsibility of our diets are right. We need to own what we eat and be responsible for it. Maybe we can start with what we subsidize as a nation.

Another great image of the bottle greenhouse door

Pic is courtesy of Garrett Eisenhour.

Plastic bottle greenhouse door: Update #3

So we have a door for this plastic bottle greenhouse now (see the explanation video here). Here it is on the ground of the HUB lawn. Monday, I'll be working on sides, crossbars, and the larger frame. Phew!

Look at how many bottles are in that picture alone...about 200-250. All told, we will end up reusing something like 2000 in this project which is somewhere near half of of the daily recycled bottles that Penn State University Park's Office of Physical Plant collects, which is itself just over 1/2 of the total that PSU University Park disposes of every day. This total rough estimate leads me to believe that we could make 600-700 of these 5'x5'x6' gabled plastic bottle greenhouses out of just PSU University Park's recycling. That's a lot of waste.

We met a few parents today who were really into this thing. A few were from the Corl Street Elementary School who had heard about it and thought that it at least looked cool. Moreover, they said that they thought it was a really interesting way for their kids to engage their schooling. They were also quite interested in sharing, and having their kids share, how they are engaging the natural environment at school via the garden, the 3 Rs of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle, and composting. One girl said that she wants one at her school - the Gray Wood's Elementary. That sounds great, but we might need this to be a full-time job with benefits if it gets to that point.

Stay tuned for more.

Pic courtesy of Garrett.

Kid's Earth Day

Come on out and bring kids for a fun and beautiful day. Like the flier says, there are some great activities in store for everyone, including an enactment of Dr. Seuss's The Lorax. We'll be there, putting a portion of the plastic bottle greenhouse together. More pictures will be on the way.

Bottle greenhouse update #2

Wow! This thing is incredible and it's taking SOOOO much time. We've cut and washed well over a thousand bottles and have more to go. The frame is still unfinished and won't be for a few days just because the sheer size of the project required more people than we were able to muster. But you know what? We're moving along and we'll keep plugging away for the rest of the semester.

We will post more pictures soon and possible video soon.

To hear a story on some Earth Day activities, listen to this story put together by the Ohio River Radio Consortium that includes two of our members, Garrett Eisenhour and Jason Usdin, as well as people in Indiana and Kentucky.

To see some more of it come alive, come to Kid's Earth Day tomorrow, April, 24th, at the HUB lawn.

Who knew that such malcontents would win Outstanding Student Organization?

We won the Outstanding Student Organization award last night for "Collaboration with other student organizations, faculty, and staff," "Programming a variety of purposeful events, "Positive promotion of mission/purpose of organization to University community," and "Building a sense of community." This is something that shows that if you are motivated, purposeful, a little organized, and full of good information that you can get some recognition. And we are a small group. Who knows what would happen if there were more of us?

I have to say that we owe this, in large part, to Alex for getting the ball rolling on this water bottle thing. She is the queen. This one's for you...even if it's Garrett, Peter, Jared, and Zach in the picture (left to right).

I also want to say that I think it's so cool that we won this award given the range of people in our group. Garrett is in his early 20s and a dad of two. I am in my 30s and a father of 1. We've had an atypical amount of graduate student involvement in the group. And we have a 40+ mom of three girl who comes out and bangs it home when it counts. I love you people.

The bottle house! Update one

Our greenhouse is really in full swing. We have THOUSANDS of bottles that we’ve been washing, cutting, and arraying into lines to form the house’s walls. We’ve done just some starts to fix them to the frame to start and it’s looking promising.

A few things are striking at this point:
1. People are impressed by this idea. Moms have walked by with kids and given us bottles to use.
2. Everyone who we tell that this is going to be used by a school has congratulated us. This is smart. A lot smarter than the intended use of the bottles themselves.
3. Wow! People at Penn State create a lot of waste. I am personally dumbfounded by the sheer volume of bottles we’ve gotten from the Office of Physical Plant’s bar pit. And these are the bottles that have been recycled. For every bottle that we’ve gotten from the recycling here, another one was probably thrown away.
4. This is fun and it’s community-building. We’re meeting people we haven’t met before. A Corl Street School mother and her 14-year-old son came by and helped. We have future teachers. We have passersby. The HUB lawn today has been a commons for people interested in furthering sustainability and education for sustainability.
5. Our group has rerouted something from upstream that would have gone downstream to further commodififcation or ugliness and turned it into something that can be potentially beautiful, useful, and good!

So come on by today and/or Saturday April 24th to the HUB lawn and help us reuse for a better tomorrow.

Our plastic bottle greenhouse in the works

Since we started this club we've wanted to develop a way that the whole group could help local schools integrate a garden or natural area into their curriculum. We've also been doing so much on the water bottle and sustainable water use issue. So why not combine them?

Let's help teachers, administrators, parents, and students learn about our relationship to the Earth by building a greenhouse out of plastic water bottles? Let's take what was going to be pure waste and turn it into a way to create a growing environment...something that bottle companies never intended and don't care about anyway. And let's see something grow in spite of pollution by reusing bottles, reducing waste, and recycling wood and some other materials. From all of this all involved see the waste cycle before them and the life cycle. Amazing!

Check out the preview video!



Join us on Earth Day, April 22, 2010 on PSU's HUB lawn to help us bring the cycles of life to schools.