~Live Green~

Ethanol Production Causes Food Prices To Go Up February 26, 2008 • No Comments (Edit)

It would seem that my concerns over ethanol as an alternative fuel source are coming to fruition.  Below is a paragraph from the article:

Wholesale inflation rate soars

 By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer

Food prices, which have been surging because of increased demand stemming from ethanol production, rose by 1.7 percent last month, the biggest monthly increase in three years. Prices for beef, bakery products and eggs were all up sharply.

What is a Soap Nut?

Soap Nuts are the dried fruit of the Chinese Soapberry tree (Sapindus mukorrosi), similar to the lychee. A long time ago, local folks in the South East Asia figured out that when the nuts get wet, they release saponin, a natural cleaner, making them great for washing clothes!  Soap Nuts are the only household cleaner made exclusively from Nature, by Nature.

A single soapberry tree produces hundreds of kilos of nuts per year!  Soap Nuts fall to the ground in Indian and Indonesian forests where they are collected by folks who have used the nuts for centuries.

Ayurveda, the primary form of healing and framework for wellness in India, is based in a holistic approach to healing. Rooted in early Vedic culture, Ayurveda translates to “the science of life” and deals with management of healthy living. Ayurveda provides a template for wellness in the body, as it relates to physical, mental, social and spiritual harmony of a person within their environment. 

The Soapberry tree (Sapindus spp.) sends its roots back as far as the time of Buddha. The fruit of the tree, called Soap “Nuts” are a model offering from the ancient healing modalities to our modern lifestyles in the realms of cleanliness, aesthetics and medicine. Although Soap Nuts have been used in India for generations and in Europe for decades, it’s uses are as new to the United States as MP3s. Prized for its handsomeness, the leaves of the Chinese Soapberry tree are paripinnate and crowd at the end of the branches. On the branch ends, the “drupes” or berries hang in pairs or triplets. The fruits are green and smooth when fresh, and when dried become a light brown with silky wrinkles. The trunk is straight and cylindrical; the bark is dark to pale yellow with vertical fissures spanning the length. They can rise to as tall as 25 meters and as wide as 5 meters, the leaves forming a thick umbrella shaped canopy embedded with green flowers. For this reason, they are often planted along boulevards in the way we plant magnolias in the US.

The fruits of this special soapy tree, when peeled from their inner seed, are primarily used as a cleanser. The leathery fruit skins release saponin and become a magnificent detergent when immersed in water. In ancient India these fruits, known in Hindi as reetha, were used for soap and hair wash powders, used by jewelers for shining ornaments of gold and silver and used in the laundering of fine silks and wools.

In Vedic culture reetha is indicated in dravya-suddhi (physical and spiritual purification) for cleansing blankets. As a measure of hygiene and purity, Indian Pilgrim Ships required passengers to carry Soap Nuts onboard.

Today, you can easily purify yourself by using Soap Nuts in your washing machine. Just close 2-4 Soap Nuts into a small cloth bag and add it to the clothes in your wash. Soap Nuts naturally soften and add body to your fabrics, are safe for wool and silk, and keep your colors looking bright. You can also make a concentrated liquid soap by boiling or soaking the fruits.

Soap Nut powder is indicated in Ayurveda as the third in the family of extremely beneficial fruits, along with shikakai and trifla. All three are used extensively in Ayurveda for the treatment of scalp issues such as hair loss, dandruff, and to alleviate parasites such as lice. (You can use a solution of Soap Nuts in the garden to repel pests as persistent as aphids.) In modern India, Soap Nuts are an essential ingredient in hair care products to increase luster and softness of hair. The Soapberry is among the most important trees for beautification in tropical Asia, aesthetics being an important factor in Ayurveda. Used topically, Soap Nuts are used to eliminate freckles, fine lines, chemical stains and cracks in the skin. They are also used traditionally to treat mild to moderate skin complaints such as eczema and psoriasis. Soap Nuts are safe for people with sensitive skin, even people who suffer allergic reactions to store bought “sensitive skin” cleansers.

Soap Nuts are even safe enough to use as toothpaste and as a fruit and vegetable wash. A ten-minute soak in a solution of Soap Nuts removes 95% of the surface pesticides and chemical residues on fresh produce. Soap Nuts are also useful in the kitchen as a food-safe cleaner for countertops, appliances, and sinks.

In India the list of uses for reetha is impressive, claiming over 20 medicinal preparations, which alter the fruit to make it either 100% digestible or emetic. Reetha fruit is so rich in iron it is considered a hemolytic and is used often to treat anemia. When prepared by an Ayurvedic doctor it can treat chlorosis and epilepsy. It is also used as an expectorant for severe lung congestion, and can help to promote blood circulation in patients with low blood pressure. Reetha is a sedative to the uterus and is used to ease childbirth. It can also be prepared as a digestive aid, an anti-venom, or to treat diarrhea, cholera and paralysis.

Clinical trials have just finished on the use of Sapindus mukorossi as a spermicide (replacing Nonoxynal-9, which has shown to lead to widespread sexually transmitted infections.) Recent studies by Chinese researchers show that the saponins in Soap Nuts inhibit tumor cell growth in humans. Indian researchers show that a solution made from the fruit of Sapindus trifoliaus decreases behaviors associated with migraines in mice. Early Vedic medical texts describe thick solutions made by crushing and adding water to reetha fruit that were used regularly to pacify folks suffering from chronic viral infections and headaches. There is also evidence it was used to treat hysteria.

Certainly, preparations need not be so complex.

For example, you can easily create this traditional Ayurvedic recipe for a relaxing bath:

1 c. raw honey

10 drops lavender oil

1/4 c. papaya leaves

1/4 c. neem leaves (Azadirachta indica)

3 T. reetha (soap nut) powder (cracked soap nut shells)

3 T. shikakai powder (Fruit for the Hair)

2 t. kastrui manjal (Curcuma aromatica)

2 t. sandalwood powder

Blend herbs by hand with mortar and pestle and pour into bath with honey and oil.

I have personally tried these & while it does need an extra boost for those roll in the mud kid clothes.  My ordinarily soiled laundry comes clean and is softer than it ever has been with the use of a fabric softener!

E. Coli Bacteria: A Future Source Of Energy?

ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2008) — For most people, the name “E. coli” is synonymous with food poisoning and product recalls, but a professor in Texas A&M University’s chemical engineering department envisions the bacteria as a future source of energy, helping to power our cars, homes and more.

By genetically modifying the bacteria, Thomas Wood, a professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, has “tweaked” a strain of E. coli so that it produces substantial amounts of hydrogen. Specifically, Wood’s strain produces 140 times more hydrogen than is created in a naturally occurring process, according to an article in “Microbial Biotechnology,” detailing his research.

Though Wood acknowledges that there is still much work to be done before his research translates into any kind of commercial application, his initial success could prove to be a significant stepping stone on the path to the hydrogen-based economy that many believe is in this country’s future.

Renewable, clean and efficient, hydrogen is the key ingredient in fuel-cell technology, which has the potential to power everything from portable electronics to automobiles and even entire power plants. Today, most of the hydrogen produced globally is created by a process known as “cracking water” through which hydrogen is separated from the oxygen. But the process is expensive and requires vast amounts of energy — one of the chief reasons why the technology has yet to catch on.

Wood’s work with E. coli could change that.

While the public may be used to hearing about the very specific strain that can cause food poisoning in humans, most strains are common and harmless, even helping their hosts by preventing other harmful bacteria from taking root in the human intestinal tract.

And the use of E. coli in science is nothing new, having been used in the production of human insulin and in the development of vaccines.

But as a potential energy source?

That’s new territory, and it’s being pioneered by Wood and his colleagues.

By selectively deleting six specific genes in E. coli’s DNA, Wood has basically transformed the bacterium into a mini hydrogen-producing factory that’s powered by sugar. Scientifically speaking, Wood has enhanced the bacteria’s naturally occurring glucose-conversion process on a massive scale.

“These bacteria have 5,000 genes that enable them to survive environmental changes,” Wood explained. “When we knock things out, the bacteria become less competitive. We haven’t given them an ability to do something. They don’t gain anything here; they lose. The bacteria that we’re making are less competitive and less harmful because of what’s been removed.”

With sugar as its main power source, this strain of E. coli can now take advantage of existing and ever-expanding scientific processes aimed at producing sugar from certain crops, such as corn, Wood said.

“A lot of people are working on converting something that you grow into some kind of sugar,” Wood explained. “We want to take that sugar and make it into hydrogen. We’re going to get sugar from some crop somewhere. We’re going to get some form of sugar-like molecule and use the bacteria to convert that into hydrogen.”

Biological methods such as this (E. coli produce hydrogen through a fermentative process) are likely to reduce energy costs since these processes don’t require extensive heating or electricity,” Wood said.

“One of the most difficult things about chemical engineering is how you get the product,” Wood explained. “In this case, it’s very easy because the hydrogen is a gas, and it just bubbles out of the solution. You just catch the gas as it comes out of the glass. That’s it. You have pure hydrogen.”

There also are other benefits.

As might be expected, the cost of building an entirely new pipeline to transport hydrogen is a significant deterrent in the utilization of hydrogen-based fuel cell technology. In addition, there is also increased risk when transporting hydrogen.

The solution, Wood believes, is converting hydrogen on site.

“The main thing we think is you can transport things like sugar, and if you spill the sugar there is not a huge catastrophe,” Wood said. “The idea is to make the hydrogen where you need it.”

Of course, all of this is down the road. Right now, Wood remains busy in the lab, working on refining a process that’s already hinted at its incredible potential. The goal, he said, is to continue to get more out of less.

“Take your house, for example,” Wood said. “The size of the reactor that we’d need today if we implemented this technology would be less than the size of a 250-gallon fuel tank found in the typical east-coast home. I’m not finished with this yet, but at this point if we implemented the technology right now, you or a machine would have to shovel in about the weight of a man every day so that the reactor could provide enough hydrogen to take care of the average American home for a 24-hour period.

“We’re trying to make bacteria so it’s doesn’t require 80 kilograms; it will be closer to 8 kilograms.”

Adapted from materials provided by Texas A&M University.

~ by digitalpoetry on January 31, 2008.

The Chemicals Within

Many common household products contain compounds that could be affecting our health.

As an Alaskan fisherman, Timothy June, 54, used to think that he was safe from industrial pollutants at his home in Haines—a town with a population of 2,400 people and 4,000 eagles, with 20 million acres of protected wilderness nearby. But in early 2007, June agreed to take part in a survey of 35 Americans from seven states. It was a biomonitoring project, in which people’s blood and urine were tested for traces of chemicals—in this case, three potentially hazardous classes of compounds found in common household products like shampoo, tin cans, shower curtains and upholstery. The results—released in November in a report called “Is It in Us?” by a coalition of environmental groups—were not reassuring. Every one of the participants, ranging from an Illinois state legislator to a Massachusetts minister, tested positive for all three classes of contaminants. And while the simple presence of these chemicals doesn’t necessarily indicate a health risk, the fact that typical Americans carry these chemicals at all shocked June and his fellow participants. As Stephanie Felten, 28, of Aurora, Ill., put it, “Why should chemical companies be allowed to roll the dice on my health?”

Clearly, there are chemicals in our bodies that don’t belong there. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducts a large, ongoing survey that has found 148 chemicals in Americans of all ages, including lead, mercury, dioxins and PCBs. Other scientists have detected antibacterial agents from liquid soaps in breast milk, infants’ cord blood and the urine of young girls. And in 2005, the Environmental Working Group found an average of 200 chemicals in the cord blood of 10 newborns, including known carcinogens and neurotoxins. “Our babies are being born pre-polluted,” says Sharyle Patton of Commonweal, which cosponsored “Is It in Us?” “This is going to be the next big environmental issue after climate change.”

The shocking thing to most Americans is that we really don’t know the health effects of many chemicals on the market today. Under the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, chemicals already in use were grandfathered in without scrutiny. These include the three classes of compounds targeted in “Is It in Us?”—a plastic strengthener called bisphenol A (BPA), brominated flame retardants known as PBDEs and plastic softeners called phthalates. The chemical industry says these compounds have been used safely for decades, and certainly they do not have the overtly toxic properties of mercury or lead. But in animal studies and human cell cultures, they mimic hormones, with effects even at minute levels, down to parts per billion. Scientists say we’re now awash in a chemical brew of hormone-mimicking compounds that didn’t exist 100 years ago. “We’ve changed the nature of nature,” says Devra Lee Davis, director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh.

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Take bisphenol A. It’s a basic constituent of the polycarbonate plastics found in many baby bottles, sippy cups and juice bottles. A highly versatile compound, it is also found in dental sealants, CDs, DVDs and the resin linings of food and beverage containers, including many cans and takeout cartons. But most scientists say small amounts can leach out—and ultimately find their way into our bodies—when the plastics start to break down under high heat or wear and tear. The CDC has found BPA in 92 percent of Americans age 6 and older who were tested. But the chemical industry says it’s safe—and the Food and Drug Administration agrees. “It’s not possible to contact harmful levels of it,” says Steven Hentges of the American Chemistry Council, which represents the major chemical companies.

Reproductive biologists aren’t so sure. Patricia Hunt of Washington State University was alerted to possible dangers of BPA in 1999 when her mouse study on an unrelated topic suddenly went haywire, with dozens of female mice unexpectedly developing chromosomal abnormalities in the eggs they carried in their ovaries. As it turned out, a lab worker had used the wrong detergent to clean the animals’ cages—one that caused BPA to leach out of the plastic cages and feeding bottles. Hunt tried washing brand-new cages with the same detergent to confirm the source of the problem. She then began studying BPA exposures in unborn rodents, which she followed into adulthood. The results were striking. Almost half the eggs of female mice exposed to low doses of BPA during gestation carried extra copies of chromosomes or were missing chromosomes. No one has replicated the findings.

There are other potential effects. Hundreds of animal and test-tube studies suggest that low-dose exposures, particularly during gestation, may later lead to breast and prostate cancer, abnormalities in the reproductive tract and behavioral problems, among other things. But there is disagreement about the implications for human health. Two groups convened by the National Institutes of Health have reached opposite conclusions. In 2007, advisers to the government’s National Toxicology Program found “minimal” cause for concern. Meanwhile, another scientific panel produced a consensus statement saying that, based on animal data, common levels of exposure could pose a problem and that further study was needed. “We can’t say there are conclusive data in humans,” says Frederick vom Saal of the University of Missouri, who headed the second panel. “But given the fact that we’re seeing irreparable damage in animals, for heaven’s sake, let’s get this out of products our babies are coming in contact with.”

No government in the world has seen the need to do that yet. But two weeks ago, Michigan Rep. John Dingell, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, sent letters to seven manufacturers of infant formula asking if their cans were lined with BPA and if they had tested their products for it. In 2006 Whole Foods stopped carrying baby bottles made from polycarbonate plastic, which contains BPA. The chain now sells only BPA-free bottles and sippy cups.

Phthalates have also raised concern. The compounds are used to soften the plastics in products ranging from rubber duckies and vinyl shower curtains to certain medical tubing and IV bags. They are also found in hundreds of personal-care products, including many fragrances, body lotions, nail polishes and shampoos. Again, 30 years of data from institutions like the NIH and EPA point to potential problems in animals stemming from prenatal exposure, including abnormalities in the reproductive tract and a decline of sperm quality. Now there is a smattering of human studies, too. In 2006 Danish researchers found that higher levels of a particular phthalate in mothers’ breast milk correlated with lower testosterone in male babies at 1 to 3 months of age. Similarly, Dr. Russ Hauser at Harvard studied roughly 500 men at a fertility clinic and found that those with higher levels of certain phthalates in their urine had lower sperm counts and sperm motility. A Swedish study of young military recruits, however, found no such correlation. These are all association studies—which by definition cannot prove cause and effect.

Other scientists are starting to look at what happens when these chemicals are combined. L. Earl Gray Jr., a research biologist at the EPA, has tested mixtures of two or more phthalates in animals. He deliberately selected doses of each that were too low to cause effects individually—yet found that as many as 50 percent of male rats who were exposed to the combination in utero developed abnormalities in the reproductive tract. In his latest study, he combined three phthalates with four pesticides and found that at the highest doses, the effects equaled those of a sevenfold dose of a single phthalate. “All the males were malformed,” he says.

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The toy industry contends that phthalates pose no danger, particularly a widely used one called DINP. This chemical “has been well studied here in the U.S. and in Europe and found to be safe specifically for kids’ products,” says Joan Lawrence, a vice president of the Toy Industry Association. She notes that companies cannot easily replace it because none of the potential substitutes “has its lengthy safety record.” Nonetheless, last October, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a ban on the use of six phthalates in children’s products sold in the state—though three of them, including DINP, are prohibited only in items that kids under 3 are likely to put in their mouths. In December, Toys “R” Us notified its vendors of its intention to comply with the California ban by Jan. 1, 2009, the date the law takes effect. Mattel is already in compliance.

Finally there are the flame retardants, PBDEs. They turn up in fabrics, upholstery, foam mattresses, circuit boards and the casings of computers and televisions—and apparently escape into indoor air and dust. Animal studies show they can have negative impacts on learning and memory, sperm counts and thyroid functioning in rats and mice. PBDEs tend to linger a long time in the body, and one mixture in particular seems “quite biologically active, especially during development, as we’ve seen in studies on rats, mice and fish,” says Linda Birnbaum, director of experimental toxicology at the EPA. “If I were nursing my baby, I wouldn’t stop because of PBDEs in breast milk, but many of us wish they weren’t there.” According to the EPA, 11 states—including California, Maine, Michigan and New York—have bans on two major types.

It could take decades to resolve doubts about the safety of all these chemicals, one way or the other. But Timothy June isn’t waiting. He’s stopped buying tomato sauce in tin cans to avoid the BPA, which scientists say tends to leach out of can linings when the contents are particularly acidic. He’s ditched his vinyl shower curtain in favor of a cloth one. And he’s considering getting rid of the foam mattress on his fishing boat. “I guess the survey had a bigger impact on me than I realized,” he says. Let’s all hope the chemicals aren’t having an even bigger impact on us.

With Anna Kuchment

© 2008 Newsweek, Inc.

What the Heck Does Fair Trade Mean?

 January 18, 2008 • No Comments (Edit)

According to Wikipedia fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based model of international trade which promotes the payment of a fair price as well as social and environmental standards in areas related to the production of a wide variety of goods. The movement focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine, fresh fruit, and so on. 

So what does that mean in everyday English?  

For one it has to do with giving the farmers or artisan a fair market price for their products.  For example with coffee, in certain countries, a farmer may be forced to sell his coffee beans at such an unfairly low rate that he can’t support his family.  Some of this undercutting of payment for goods is passed on to us; much of it is given to our governments & large corporations.  For the same price as most specialty coffee, we can help improve the living and working conditions for many people, get a better quality product and protect our planet. 

Sounds a bit too good to be true, but this is how it works:

·        We buy a product that is labeled as certified fair trade.

·        Farmers organizations receive the fair market value for their goods and premium for organic goods. 

·        Their workers are paid fairly and able to feed their families, their children can go to school instead of working in the farms.  Child labor is strictly prohibited.  They get safe living and working conditions.

·        They are empowered to pull themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms, communities and environment.  All this while developing business skills.

How?

·        Direct trade: With Fair Trade, importers purchase from Fair Trade producer groups as directly as possible, eliminating unnecessary middlemen and empowering farmers to develop the business capacity necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

·        Democratic and transparent organizations: Fair Trade farmers and farm workers decide democratically how to invest Fair Trade revenues.

·        Community development: Fair Trade farmers and farm workers invest Fair Trade premiums in social and business development projects like scholarship programs, quality improvement trainings, and organic certification.

• Environmental sustainability: Harmful agrochemicals and GMOs are strictly prohibited in favor of environmentally sustainable farming methods that protect farmers’ health and preserve valuable ecosystems for future generations.

 The key is in buying the certified fair trade products.  In order for farmers to be able to get certified labeling they must meet very stringent criteria. 

 For me if given the option fair trade sounds like the way to go.  It is a smart shopping choice for those who want to do good by their planet and by the people who live on it. 

If you’d still like to learn more, please visit:http://www.fairtrade.net/home.html   

Shifts In Pesticide Use

 January 11, 2008 • No Comments (Edit)

It’s amazing how time moves so much quicker as we age.  Then despite the faster moving clock we feel we need to extend ourselves with too many priorities.  I’m no exception to this odd phenomenon as I’m sure you’ve notice by the longer time spans between my articles.  This is one of those priorities, so though it may not be a frequent as I like, it will not fall to the wayside.  So…on with the show…In my last article I talked about Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring.  Many have criticized the quality of that work, but regardless she did point out the risks of pesticides more than anyone else before.  Research shifted to pesticides that are more pest-specific and farming methods to reduce the use of pesticides.  Today they design many pesticides after pesticides from nature.  Yes, I said pesticides from nature.  These pesticides they are made to mimic processes that actually occur in nature.  Plant derived poisons that have been used for hundreds of years called pyrethrins, spawned pyrethroid insecticides.  Insect growth regulators have been created to mimic natural hormones that affect the insects’ growth, having what they call “very little effect” on non-target animals.  Why they don’t use the actual natural processes they are trying to recreate is beyond me…maybe they haven’t learned that man does not know better than nature. They do use bacteria and viruses as a method of control and call those bio-rational pesticides.  I would imagine that even though bio-rational pesticides do use natural substances, using actual illnesses could be dangerous.  Isn’t illness a sign that things are off balance anyway?  I’m not an expert, but it seems that introducing an illness could potentially make things worse.  But then, so can pesticide use.In the 1960’s researchers did begin trying a type of “balance” as a method of pest control and named it, integrated pest management.  The goals were to keep pests at insignificant levels by using farming methods that discouraged pests by encouraging beneficial predators or parasites that attack what’s not beneficial to the crops.  They mixed this with pesticide applications that would coincide with the most susceptible period of the pest’s lifecycle therefore decreasing pesticide use.  Many farmers believe that pesticides are the only way to deal with a sudden pest outbreak.  This may be true, but I still don’t understand why the pesticides that nature has provided us cannot be then applied.  There are also many who, due to economic concerns, feel that there is no level of pest that is insignificant.  Their crops have less value if they are blemished from disease or insects.  Due to consumer bias’s, the farmers livelihood would be affected.  Out of fear they use pesticides at the first sign there could be a pest.  This argument was extremely heated in 90’s when the Clinton administration was getting more mainstreamers eco-minded.  There were forecasts of gloom and doom…we would collapse financially and our people would be starving due to a lack of unaffordable food.   Oddly, today food large manufacturers are coming out with an organic version of their non-organic counterparts.  The formerly odd smelly hippie health market is now a  place you see movie stars pushing a cart with their kids in tow.  These stores have beautiful, non blemished produce that we want to buy.  Somehow, despite no subsidies for organic farmers…organic has become trendy.

There is so much out there on pesticides and their affects, I could write about them exclusively for longer than I want to…not to mention I’ll get far too depressed…so it’s time for a topic change.  So my next article will be “What the Heck Does Fair Trade Mean Anyway?  And barring any of life’s little emergencies that might come up should be ready within a week.  Hope you’ll be here!

S

DDT…a bit of pesticide history

 December 29, 2007 • No Comments (Edit)

Briefly talking about genetically modified corn in my last article got me thinking about the pesticide issue and why I believe so strongly in organic food.  It’s frightening to think how the mistakes of the past will continue to so adversely affect future generations.  This is why I wanted to look into the past to find out what has taken place.  I don’t like what I found and have found myself saddened by this information.  If only we had realized how much every living thing is connected we may not have made such a huge mistake.  Here’s what I found:In 1939 Swiss chemist Paul Muller discovered the first widely used, synthetically created pesticide.  It was dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane or DDT.   Until the 1960’s it was considered a miracle because:

    It was toxic to wide range of insect pests, but seemed to have low toxicity to mammals.

    It didn’t break down quickly in the environment, so it didn’t have to be reapplied often.

    It was not water-soluble, it was persistent, so didn’t get washed off by rains.    It was inexpensive and easy to applyFor his discovery, in 1948, Muller was awarded a Nobel Prize.  Inexpensively killing pests to boost crop yields caught on like a wild fire that spread all over the planet.  We even began using it for non-agricultural reasons as well.  In WWII soldiers were deloused with it.  Mosquitoes were controlled in residential areas in the US bringing malaria under control (unfortunately it is on the increase now as these insects have developed a resistance to chemical pesticides) In 1962 a marine biologist named Rachel Carson brought the environmental problems caused by synthetic pesticides to the attention of the American public in her best selling book Silent Spring.  She focused on the chlorinated hydrocarbons, such as DDT, and pointed to evidence linking them to death of non-target creatures, such as birds. She argued that the death of these non-targets occurred via two basic ways:

(1) Direct toxicity. It was discovered that DDT was toxic to fish (especially juveniles) and crabs, not only to insects.

(2) Indirect toxicity, related to its insolubility.

She reported that insect and worm eating birds were dying in areas where pesticides had been aerially applied.

The pesticide manufacturers claimed that the minute amounts found in the environment couldn’t possibly be killing them.  However, some experimental work demonstrated that even small amounts of some of the pesticides could affect the survival and reproduction of some species.  More important, research demonstrated that, although concentrations were very low in the soil, atmosphere and water, concentrations were higher in plants, higher still in herbivores, and still higher as one moved up the food chain.

The indirect toxicity related to two principles:

(1) Bio-concentration – the tendency for a compound to accumulate in an organism’s tissues (especially in fatty tissues for the fat soluble DDT) and

(2) Bio-magnification. – an increase in concentration up the food chain.

Because DDT was persistent, there was abundant opportunity for it to be taken up from the environment by organisms.

Thus, concentrations had increased 10 million times up this progression; largely because of bio-magnification (differential uptake and secretion may also be involved). These concentrations were not directly lethal to the highest order carnivores, but did impair their reproduction (Hmmm…I wonder if this is why we have so many reproductive problems today…aren’t we the highest level carnivores?).  DDT (actually, its breakdown product DDE) reduced the deposition of calcium in eggshells. The birds thus produced thinner shell that cracked more readily during incubation.

The populations of many predatory populations (the highest order carnivores), such as bald eagles and brown pelicans were nearly eliminated. The peregrine falcon disappeared in the eastern US as a result of reproductive failures by the 1960’s.

DDT (as DDE, a breakdown products from DDT) also appeared in the fatty tissues of seals and Eskimos, far from any area of use, indicating that, because of its persistence, it was being transported long distances in the atmosphere and then being washed away by rains. It also started showing up in human breast milk at remarkably high concentrations — so high that if it were cow’s milk, the milk couldn’t legally be sold through interstate commerce! DDE is the most widespread contaminant in human milk around the world. (This makes me sick as I nursed my child.  She has a mild form of autism like 1 in 300 children now do and it makes me wonder if this isn’t actually the cause, but that’s another topic).These same types of concerns, the accumulation of persistent organic pollutants (specifically, PCB’s and organochlorines, such as DDT) are showing up in killer whales (orcas).  Similarly, an article from August 2, 2005 in the journal, Science, indicated that concentrations of DDT and its residues are quite high in sperm whales (which are meat-eaters) across the Pacific Ocean.(While researchers used to think that DDT was not toxic to mammals, it is increasingly believed that, at high concentrations and for chronic, long-term exposures, it may be involved with liver cancers, reproductive abnormalities (e.g. ultra high levels of estrogen or low levels of adrenal steroids, such as progesterone), and other human and mammalian effects.)

These concerns and the resulting public outcry prompted the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cancel the registration of DDT in the US in 1972. (All pesticides used in the US must be registered with the federal government, so this cancellation effectively pulled DDT off of the US market.) (Its use is still allowed in special cases, as in controlling vectors of human diseases.) Manufacture of DDT in the US did continue for export until the late 1970’s. Currently there is no manufacturing of DDT in the US.

DDT is still, sadly, widely used in less developed countries.  And, again sadly, (but all too typically), when the last DDT manufacturing plant in the US was dismantled in 1983, it was sold to Indonesia, where it is currently manufacturing DDT.

Since the time of the US ban on DDT, populations of many of these predatory birds have recovered remarkably. (However, for information suggesting that many of the pesticides used today in the US are toxic to birds, resulting in the deaths of thousands per year [perhaps even millions], even when used in the recommended way.

In December 2000, 122 nations (including the US) signed a treaty intending to phase out completely Persistent Organic Pollutants (”POP’s”)(organic…meaning containing a carbon compound), including DDT.

(Twenty five developing countries, however, got exceptions allowing them to keep using DDT, as it is the cheapest and most accessible defense against malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. This whole malaria and DDT issue is really tough — between 1 and 3 million people die each year from malaria — a death toll comparable to that resulting from AIDS. In some cases, DDT is still effective against the disease-bearing mosquitoes, and many people feel that the benefits from continuing to use it for this purpose outweigh the risks. Resistance problems seem likely, ultimately, to force a change in control approaches in any case. There is considerable success with the use of bed-nets — mosquito netting that is treated with an insecticide and suspended over a person’s bed, protecting them during the evening and night when the mosquitoes are most active — coupled with more effective dissemination of anti-malaria drugs, and measures such as filling chinks in walls that fill with water and provide mosquito breeding grounds.)

These POP’s are generally fat-soluble (as is DDT), and are also very dispersable (occur in forms that are able to travel over great distances). The list of 12 POP’s covered by the treaty includes nine pesticides (Aldrin, Chlordane, DDT, Dieldrin, Endrin, Heptachlor, Hexachlorobenzene, Mirex and Toxaphene) as well as PCB’s, furans, and dioxins. Dioxins are a by-product of some types of paper processing, and are produced in other processes as well. You may remember hearing about “agent orange” — a defoliating agent used during the Viet Nam war? It has been implicated in causing a diversity of health problems, and dioxins are causal agents for several of these problems. Dioxins aren’t part of the active ingredients of agent orange (which are 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D), but are byproducts of their production. The EPA wrote, in 1985, that dioxins are “the most potent carcinogen ever tested in laboratory animals.” Many more POP’s are likely to be added to the list of globally-banned compounds, but ecological/epidemiological studies linking them to human or ecosystem injury have not been completed.

The atmosphere is not the only means by which POP’s get moved around: Arctic seabirds and migratory fish species, such as salmon, transport these compounds from the ocean to the land. For example, many pelagic seabirds have nesting colonies near inland lakes in the Arctic (Science July 15, 2005).

Another interesting accomplishment of this treaty was acceptance of the “precautionary principle,” which reverses the traditional regulatory burden of proof. Instead of assuming that a compound is harmless unless it can be shown to be dangerous, manufacturers must avoid production of likely POP’s even if they are not actually proved to be POP’s — that is; they are assumed to be “guilty” of causing harm until they are proved to be otherwise. Another way of stating the precautionary principle is to say that, if a technology or activity may pose a threat or harm, measures to anticipate and prevent that harm are warranted. My next article will be posted sometime next week.  I will continue to look into pesticide trends and hope that I don’t find anything anymore scary.  Until then if you’d like to look into DDT a bit more, here are some links for you. http://www.orcafree.org/danger_toxins.htmlhttp://www.environmentalhealth.ca/spring03false.html

http://www.environmentalhealth.ca/spring04buildup.html

http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2005/Toxic-Breast-Milk9jan05.htm

http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/policy/toxics/problems/our_chemical_world/ddt/index.cfm

To ethanol or Not ethanol…Hmmm…now that is a question.

 December 20, 2007 • No Comments (Edit)

The government seems to really be pushing ethanol and there is a ton of information out there about it.  Quite a bit of it makes ethanol seem like a dream come true.  We would no longer be dependent on foreign oil & we could have a fuel source that is better for our environment than our current soup de jour.  But seriously, we’ve all been alive long enough to know that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.  Is corn really our manna from heaven for all of our fuel woes?   Below is a small sampling of the ethanol information available.

Ethanol Basics
What ethanol is and what it does

Ethanol has been blended in gasoline for decades—and billions of miles have been driven on ethanol-blended fuels.

Corn is the primary feedstock for ethanol production. About 18 percent of the nation’s corn crop went into ethanol in 2006—some 2.15 billion bushels. Ethanol can also be made from other grains such as sorghum as well as from “biomass” sources such as corn cobs, cornstalks, wheat straw, rice straw, switch grass, vegetable and forestry waste and other organic matter.Ethanol offers a number of benefits to our cars, our environment, our economy and our national security:·         Ethanol adds oxygen to gasoline—helping it combust more completely and reducing the level of toxic exhaust emissions ·         Ethanol reduces our nation’s dangerous and expensive dependence on imported oil ·         The ethanol industry creates jobs and investment across the nation—especially in rural areas ·         Ethanol increases America’s fuel supply—helping keep gas prices down ·         Ethanol adds value to America’s corn harvest and helps reduce the cost of federal farm programs

What is ethanol and how is it made?

Ethanol is grain alcohol. In the United States, it’s usually made from corn. In Brazil, it’s most commonly made with sugarcane. Ethanol can be made from other grains like wheat and barley, and you can even produce it from potatoes. There are a couple of ways to make fuel-grade ethanol, and one of the most common ones is the dry-mill method, which goes something like this:

• The corn is ground into a powder.

• A mixture made of this grain powder, water and an enzyme enters a high-heat cooker, where it is liquefied. The liquefied mash is cooled.

• An enzyme is added that helps to break down the grain mixture into fermentable sugars.

• Yeast is added to ferment the sugars. The sugars break down to ethanol (a form of alcohol) and carbon dioxide.

• The fermented mixture is distilled. The ethanol separates from the solids and the distiller grains is used for live stock feeds.

• A small amount of gasoline is added to the ethanol to denature and make it undrinkable. 

Added in small amounts to gasoline, it reduces greenhouse emissions like carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides because ethanol contains a lot of oxygen, thus is burns pretty cleanly. The addition of ethanol also reduces the amount of fossil-fuel-based gasoline we use daily.

  

Sound wonderful doesn’t it?

Well…now for the bad news:

 Since there apparently isn’t as much energy in ethanol as there is in gasoline and we use ethanol on such a large-scale basis we will run into a snag or two.  For instance where are we planning on growing all of this corn for fuel use when we need that land for growing food for feeding everyone?  Or these wonderful facts:

Top Ten Facts about Ethanol

1. Ethanol is listed as a known human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

2. The cost of Reformulated Gasoline with ethanol will increase 3-6 cents per gallons compared to RFG with MTBE.

3. Spills of pure ethanol or gasoline containing ethanol from leaking storage tanks can create a benzene plume up to 150% larger than a spill from a non-ethanol fuel.

4. Ethanol cannot be shipped by pipeline because of its high affinity for water posing significant distribution costs and hurdles for gasoline blenders.

5. According to a study by Cornell University, for every gallon of ethanol produced, 1.4 gallons of energy is consumed in the process, compared to 0.15 gallons used in the manufacture of gasoline.

6. It takes 1.5 gallons of ethanol (E-85) to drive as many miles as one gallon of gasoline.

7. Every gallon of ethanol removes 53 cents from the Federal Highway Trust Fund because of a special tax break for producers.

8. Ethanol increases the vapor pressure of gasoline by 1 psi. resulting in higher evaporative emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds, while tailpipe emissions of Acetaldehyde increase 150%.

9. Ethanol permeates the hoses and lines of automobile fuel systems resulting in a 50% increase in VOC emissions for pre 1995 cars.

10. Ethanol dissolves oxide scale from the walls of pipes and tanks, subjecting the systems to internal corrosion, which leads to leaks.

  All this information brings up other questions of potential problems.  With so much corn needed, will the time be taken to rotate crops properly?  Or will they deplete the soil and create the need for pesticides and artificial fertilizers to get the corn to grow…further contaminating our soils and ground water.  Will they continue to use genetically modified corn…which causes the death of beneficial insects like the beautiful Monarch butterfly and does God knows what to our health since the potential health risks are still unknown.  Even without my personal what ifs, it appears that ethanol is far from perfect.  I doubt that there really is one perfect answer and personally I feel that anytime you rely so heavily on one resource, you will only create more problems. Why is it that we feel that there is only one answer to every problem?  Why shouldn’t we take advantage of all of the resources that God has placed on our planet without depleting one before using another?  Could be that there are many answers to this problem that could each be used in a manner that keeps them sustainable. 

I’m not sure what the next article should be about…should I continue on the alternative fuel route?  Or take a side road off to the genetically modified corn route?  Since the holidays are upon us I won’t be posting another environmental post until between Christmas & New Years, so there is time to put your vote in.  Which road would you like to travel?  Let me know & that’s where I’ll go.  Wishing you all the beauty that the holidays can bring…

Resources: 

Ethanol facts.com 

howstuffworks

Calgasoline.com

  

What’s All the Hoopla about Hybrids?

With the growing cost of gasoline there is a growing interest in hybrids.  Many celebrities own a hybrid, with the Prius being their number one choice.  This year at the Oscars a limo company offered Prius’s to the stars that wanted to show that they were “green”.  I myself own a Prius and love it!  I purchased one because I not only wanted a car with good fuel economy, but also that had lower greenhouse emissions.  In areas where the community tends to be a bit “greener” owning a hybrid has become a status symbol.  More and more companies are offering hybrids from Lexus to Toyota; there is a hybrid model for just about everyone.

While hybrids have wonderful gas mileage and are better for our planet, there are some drawbacks.  One is the cost, they are more expensive that conventional models even though the margin is narrowing.  The gas mileage on the highway driving isn’t as good as it is in the city either, although in my experience it is still good.  They also don’t have as much out of the gate power as the gas only models either.  To me these are all very small prices to pay for a vehicle that not only helps protect our planet but also gets 48-50 mpg (this again is from my personal experience). 

To get the best mileage from a hybrid you want drive with a lighter foot & use even acceleration.  Once you reach your desired mph back your foot off the accelerator until you don’t lose any speed.  In the Prius this is easy to do as they have a great monitoring system that for the goal oriented in us will prove to give us the incentive to do just that.  At least it does me

For what we have available to us at this time the hybrid is the best choice for those of us who need a car.  I did run into a bit of great news for the future of the hybrids!  They are working on a way to store the energy the hybrids and electric cars generate so that they can help supply energy to the energy grid while they are not being driven!  If the power company wants people to participate, it would need to pay us for using our vehicles as their power boosts though…hmm wouldn’t that be something, being paid by the electric company!  To read more about that research visit New Scientist. 

Sometime Thursday my next article on ethanol will be posted. 

S

“Waste not, Want not” Water Conservation December 13, 2007 •  No Comments (Edit)

 I was raised in a family who lived by the old adage “waste not, want

not”, but now with all of the extreme drought conditions occurring, those values need to be bumped up to the next level.

I live in North Carolina where what we are experiencing is officially known as exceptional drought conditions. We have seen news stories about a small town in Tennessee that only has water for 3 hours a day.  It may be a small town, but it should be a wake up

call for the rest of us to conserve water before our water supply runs

out.  I’m not the only one who feels that this is a situation that requires action.

“The need to reduce water waste and inefficiency is greater now than ever before,” said Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the Environmental Protection Agency. “Water efficiency is the wave of the future.”

  

Here is an article from MSNBC:

An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.

Across America, the picture is critically clear — the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.

The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

“Is it a crisis? If we don’t do some decent water planning, it could be,” said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the Denver-based American Water Works Association.Water managers will need to take bold steps to keep taps flowing, including conservation, recycling, desalination and stricter controls on development.“We’ve hit a remarkable moment,” said Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The last century was the century of water engineering. The next century is going to have to be the century of water efficiency.”The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.“Unfortunately, there’s just not going to be any more cheap water,” said Randy Brown, Pompano Beach’s utilities director.Global issue
It’s not just America’s problem — it’s global.Australia is in the midst of a 30-year dry spell, and population growth in urban centers of sub-Saharan Africa is straining resources. Asia has 60 percent of the world’s population but only about 30 percent of its fresh water.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists, said this year that by 2050 up to 2 billion people worldwide could be facing major water shortages.

The U.S. used more than 148 trillion gallons of water in 2000, the latest figures available from the U.S. Geological Survey. That includes residential, commercial, agriculture, manufacturing and every other use — almost 500,000 gallons per person.

Coastal states like Florida and California face a water crisis not only from increased demand, but also from rising temperatures that are causing glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise. Higher temperatures mean more water lost to evaporation. And rising seas could push saltwater into underground sources of freshwater.

Florida represents perhaps the nation’s greatest water irony. A hundred years ago, the state’s biggest problem was it had too much water. But decades of dikes, dams and water diversions have turned swamps into cities.

Wasted water
Little land is left to store water during wet seasons, and so much of the landscape has been paved over that water can no longer penetrate the ground in some places to recharge aquifers. As a result, the state is forced to flush millions of gallons of excess into the ocean to prevent flooding.

So what can we do?

Conserve, conserve, conserve.  Do our best to use as little water as possible.  In my home, I use a plastic dishpan in my sink to catch the water we use to rinse our dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.  Yes, you read that right…dishwasher.  The average dishwasher uses between 9-12 gallons of water per cycle to wash dishes and newer dishwasher between 5-12 gallons.  Hand washing the same amount of dishes uses approx. 20 gallons of water!  Say good-bye to dishpan hands!

The biggest water waste for dishwashers is the pre-rinsing, which dishwasher companies claim you no longer need to do & that it is just a mental thing with people.  I guess that makes me mental…LOL!

Anyway which brings me back to the plastic dishpan to catch the pre-rinse water.  I simply take it outside to water my garden then I’m not wasting any dishwater.  I know people who have bought one of those water rain barrels to catch the water from their drain spouts.  Amazingly these devices fill up during a rainstorm while pans that were placed outside had less than a quarter inch inside them!  I may have to look into getting one of these things.  Maybe in the spring…for now my budget is suffering from the Christmas woes and that won’t be an option anytime soon. ;(

Believe it or not, the average water usage per person per day is 200 gallons.

Here’s how…

	Showering wet down, soap up, rinse off = 4 gallons
	Brushing teeth wet brush, rinse briefly, = ½ gallon
	Shaving, fill sink basin = 1 gallon
	Washing hands fill sink basin = 1 gallon
	Tub bath minimal water level = 10 to 12 gallons
	Flushing toilet using a smaller tank = 4 to 6 gallons
	dishwashing washing and rinsing in the sink = 5 gallons
	automatic dishwasher short cycle = 7 gallons
	washing machine short cycle with minimal water level = 27 gallons
	Outdoor watering average hose = 10 gallons per minute
	leaks – even a small drip can add up to 25 gallons per day

The above gallon usage is calculated minimally. You can count on using quite a bit more if you leave the water running while brushing your teeth, shaving, washing the dishes, using old toilets that require more water, running the dishwasher and washing machines on longer cycles and filling the bath tub to the top.  Remember, water is not cheap or limitless.  Please use this natural resource wisely.  Think of ways you can help conserve water and share them with us in the comment section.

Conserving gasoline is another way we can help the sustainability of our planet.  My next article will be “What’s All the Hoopla About Hybrids”  it will be posted by Monday next week.  Have a safe fun filled weekend!

S

Alternative Paper Sources

 December 9, 2007 • No Comments (Edit)

Alternative Paper Sources

 Personally before researching this article, I had only heard of 3 alternative sources for papermaking.  Hemp, cotton and Lokta are the only ones I have personally used.  My store carries hempwrapping paper, handmade Lokta paper journals and cotton ribbon. Since the list is far more extensive than I ever imagined, I am only going to give the facts for the 3 for I’ve had experience in for now. 

Hemp:

 Hemp paper is made from the fibers of the hemp plant.  

• Hemp is the oldest cultivated fiber plant in the world.

• Low-THC fiber hemp varieties developed by the French and others have been available for over 20 years. It is impossible to get high from fiber hemp. Over 600,000 acres of hemp is grown worldwide with no drug misuse problem.

• One acre of hemp can produce as much usable fiber as 4 acres of trees or two acres of cotton.

• Trees cut down to make paper take 50 to 500 years to grow, while hemp can be cultivated in as little as 100 days and can yield 4 times more paper over a 20 year period.

• Until 1883, from 75-90% of all paper in the world was made with cannabis hemp fiber including that for books, Bibles, maps, paper money, stocks and bonds, newspapers, etc.

• Hemp paper is longer lasting than wood pulp, stronger, acid-free, and chlorine free. (Chlorine is estimated to cause up to 10% of all Cancers.)

• Hemp paper can be recycled 7 times, wood pulp 4 times.

• If the hemp pulp paper process reported by the USDA in 1916, were legal today it would soon replace 70% of all wood paper products.

• Rag paper containing hemp fiber is the highest quality and longest lasting paper ever made. It can be torn when wet, but returns to its full strength when dry. Barring extreme conditions, rag paper remains stable for centuries.

• Hemp particleboard may be up to 2 times stronger than wood particleboard and holds nails better.

• Hemp is softer, warmer, more water absorbent, has three times the tensile strength, and is many times more durable than cotton. Hemp production uses fewer chemicals than cotton.

• From 70-90% of all rope, twine, and cordage was made from hemp until 1937.

• A strong lustrous fiber; hemp withstands heat, mildew, insects, and is not damaged by light. Oil paintings on hemp and/or flax canvas have stayed in fine condition for centuries.

• Hemp has been grown for at least the last 12,000 years for fiber (textiles and paper) and food. It has been effectively prohibited in the United States since the 1950s.

• George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Ben Franklin owned a mill that made hemp paper. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper.

• When US sources of “Manila hemp” (not true hemp) was cut off by the Japanese in WWII, the US Army and US Department of Agriculture promoted the “Hemp for Victory” campaign to grow hemp in the US.

• Because of its importance for sails (the word “canvass” is rooted in “cannabis”) and rope for ships, hemp was a required crop in the American colonies.

• Many of the early documents printed on hemp paper hundreds, or even one thousand years ago, are still in existence. One of the more notable documents drafted in this Country in 1776 on hemp paper was The Declaration of Independence. Hemp was legal to grow then–but those were revolutionary times! Fabric made with hemp fiber was also used by Betsy Ross to sew the American flag. The industrial uses of hemp are indeed deeply rooted in American soil.

  

Cotton:

• One of the most commonly used plant fibers in the making of western papers.  Cotton sources include “rag” (recycled from 100% cotton fabric), raw cotton, and linters (shorter cotton fibers resembling clothes dryer lint).  Cotton is the purest form of cellulose produced in nature and it requires the least amount of processing before it can be used to make high quality paper.

• Cotton Paper:  Paper with a minimum cotton fiber content of 25%, and a maximum fiber content of 100%.  When fiber other than cotton is used, the balance comes from wood pulp.

• Rag Paper:  Paper with a cotton fiber content between 25% and 100%.  Originally used to describe paper made from recycling cotton rags.  Since most modern fabrics are blended with polyester or other synthetic fibers which are not desirable additions to paper, most commercially produced rag paper is actually made using cotton linters.

• Linters:  The short fibers that cling to cottonseeds after the first ginning.  These cotton fibers are too short for thread spinning or cloth making, but are useful in making paper pulp.

• Acid Free

• Lignin free

• Cotton can be mixed with other recycled paper fiber for a high quality paper type.

• Cotton papers are superior in both strength and durability to wood pulp-based papers, which often contain high concentrations of destructive acids. They don’t fade, discolor and deteriorate. They are available in a variety of weights.

• The life expectancy of 100% cotton paper is well over one hundred years.

• Handmade Cotton paper is available in smooth and vellum finishes.

  

Lokta:

• Lokta paper is handmade in the mountains of Nepal from the inner bark of the lokta bush (a wild shrub growing at altitudes from 7,000-9,000 feet).

• One of the strongest paper fibers.

• New growth regenerates quickly, it can grow up to 10 feet in height and 2 inches in diameter, and in four years after they sprout are ready to be pruned.

• Harvesting the lokta bush allows the plants root growth to accelerate to help hold the soil in place during the two monsoon seasons Nepal gets every year.

• Is the only export crop the remote villages have, thus giving them a sustainable form of income, making for a better standard of living without destroying their fragile ecosystem.

• The sacred Buddhist text, Karanya Buha Sutra, written in the Lichhavi script indicates that it was written some time between the 1st and 9th century A.D. was written on lokta paper.

Some other tree free sources of paper:

• Bagasse – the pulp that remains after extracting juice from sugar cane.

• Mango – Mango paper is usually from Thailand. It is made from kozo (paper mulberry) and mango leaf.

• Banana – Made from waste bark of banana tree, which is cut after the bananas have been ripened.

• Jute – you’ve probably seen jute twine; usually brownish in color and quite coarse. It can also be made into high-quality writing and specialty papers.

• Elephant poop – yes, you read it right, poop – but its bacteria free and odor free .

• Straw – as straw fibers are very similar to wood fibers, it makes an excellent paper. Oddly enough, the USA was once the largest producer of straw for paper making; but the industry no longer exists.

• Tamarind - contain petals and leaves from tamarind tree

• Coconut – the husks of coconuts were usually discarded, but the fiber is now being used to create paper with a thick texture.

• Kenaf- is a type of hibiscus, originating in Africa.

• Amate bark- made from the bark of Amate or Jonote tree, Mulberry tree or Xalama Limon.

• Chir- a classic Japanese paper style made from Kozo pulp.

  If any of you would like more information on any of these let me know and I would be happy to do some research for you.   I find it very exciting that there are so many alternative paper sourcesappearing on the market.  If only more of us would use them, whole forest would be saved as these source become the normal instead of the exception. In review, we can do our part to help the sustainability of the earth by recycling and using alternative sources for paper.  My next article (which will be ready midweek) will be about our planets water shortage and ways that we can help by living within our own sustainability.   

Thanks for reading! 

S   

Sustainability-Recycled Paper December 6, 2007 • No Comments (Edit)

Sustainability means living in a way that will create a future for all people to flourish while keeping the planet balanced and healthy. Using as little as the earth’s resources as possible so there will be enough for future generations to flourish as well. This also helps us with our landfill issues as living sustain-ably creates less waste.

How can we do this while still living our normal busy lifestyles?

This simplest thing we can do is to recycle. In our homes, our offices and simple curbside recycling.  Reuse items within our own homes. Those pesky #6 plastics that most cities don’t recycle can be used to hold children’s art supplies, small toys or nuts and bolts. I save a few and throw out a few until the ones I used need replacing. Oddly, I feel guilty when I throw any of them away, but realistically I know there is only so much I can do with those things. Old clothing can be given to charity instead of thrown out. If you are lucky enough to know a quilter, they almost always appreciate donations. Buy refillable bottles and a water filter instead of plastic water bottles. For larger items there 4,184 free cycle groups, you can list things you want to give away or look for things you would like for free.

I recycle most food scraps, newspaper, leaves etc by composting. This also saves my septic tank from unneeded matter and gives me the most amazing free organic fertilizer! There are so many ways we can recycle or reuse items in our homes with little or no effort.

Taking sustainability a step further to using recycled paper products in our homes and offices.

Let’s take a look at why we should…keep in mind these numbers are only for office paper usage.

Paper Facts

• 1 ton of paper = 400 reams = 200,000 sheets

• 1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333 sheets

• 1 ream (500 sheets) uses 6% of a tree (and those add up quickly)

Printing Facts

• Average cost of a wasted page $0.06

• Average employee prints 6 wasted pages per day, that’s 1,410 wasted pages per year!

• The average U.S. office worker prints 10,000 pages per year

Consumption

• In 2004 the United States used 8 million tons of office paper (3.2 billion reams). That’s the equivalent of 178 million trees!

• The U.S. is by far the world’s largest producer and consumer of paper. Per capita U.S. paper consumption is over six times greater than the world average.

• In the United States, we use enough office paper each year to build a 10-foot-high wall that’s 6,815 miles long. That’s more than the distance from New York to Tokyo!

Growth

• Global paper products consumption has tripled over the past three decades and is expected to grow by half again before 2010.

Energy

• The U.S. pulp and paper industry is the second largest consumer of energy and uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry.

• Production of 1 ton of copy paper uses 11,134 kWh (same amount of energy used by an avg household in 10 months)

Water

• Making one single sheet of copy paper can use over 13oz. of water– more than a typical soda can.

• Production of 1 ton of copy paper produces 19,075 gallons of waste water

Waste

• One ton of paper requires the use of 98 tons of various resources.

• In 2003, paper and paperboard accounted for 35 percent of the total materials discarded in the United States.

• Production of 1 ton of copy paper produces 2,278 lb of solid waste

CO2

• Production of 1 ton of copy paper produces 5,690 lb. of green house gases (the equivalent of 6months of car exhaust).

• Dumping paper in landfill adds methane to the atmosphere as it decomposes, with 20 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.

Forests

• In the U.S. we have lost 95 percent of our old growth forests.

• In North America many of these forests are later turned into tree farms. Tree farms are not biologically diverse and the result is a loss of wildlife habitat and soil erosion

• Old growth forests make up 16% of the virgin tree fiber used each year to make paper products.

• 4281 acres of rainforest are lost every hour worldwide

• It takes 3 tons of wood to produce 1 ton of copy paper.

Tree Facts

• A single mature tree can release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support 2 human beings.

• Each person in the U.S. generates approximately 2.3 tons of CO2 each year.

• If every American family planted just one tree, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would be reduced by one billion lbs annually. This is almost 5% of the amount that human activity pumps into the atmosphere each year.

• According to the USDA Forest Service, a tree generates $31,250 worth of oxygen, provides $62,000 worth of air pollution control, recycles $37,500 worth of water, and controls $31,250 worth of soil erosion, over a 50-year life span.

Recycled Paper Products

• Using recycled paper reduces the pressure on the world’s forests because recycled paper is made from paper, not from trees. The process of recycling is specialized and not every type of paper can be mixed together. Take for example newspapers and cardboard boxes; they must be separated before they can be used to produce different recycled paper products. Recycled paper is made after waste paper is de-inked and all fillers, clays and fiber fragments are removed from it. Then it is cooked and remanufactured back into usable pulp.

Recycled papers benefit our environment

• Paper mills require lots of energy to make paper from wood fiber. Paper fiber called cellulous must be separated from a tree’s natural glue called lignin. Several energy intensive steps must be performed to finally produce a paper sheet.

• Hazardous chlorine is also often used to bleach the pulp.

• Paper mills fulfill some of their energy needs by burning coal, oil, wood scraps and also often must purchase additional energy from the local power companies. An abundance of water is also required to manufacturer paper.

Manufacturing recycled papers is advantageous because:

• It saves more than 40% of the energy resources.

• It requires less water.

• Saves on landfill space.

• Manufacturing of recycled papers requires fewer chemicals and bleaching materials as compared to the virgin paper production.

• Recycled paper production significantly decreases air and water pollution.

• Consider that chemicals used in paper manufacturing produce various types of by-products and gasses. Solid waste material is usually dumped somewhere on the land, liquid waste is generally flushed into streams or the sea and gasses are left in open air contributing to global warming. Recycled paper companies are comparatively earth friendly. They not only produce less waste but are also reducing the need to landfill or incinerate our paper trash.

• Paper recycling helps conserve our forests.

  Recycled paper is the choice of the present and future. If we use recycled paper products it will not only save more trees but ultimately help save our planet from global warming.

  Even though I have recycled and used recycled products for years, I was astounded by most of these facts!

  Our government standards require that a mere 10% of post consumer waste be in a product to be labeled as recycled, so remember to check for the amount of post consumer waste. Many papers out there are 100% post consumer waste.

  For more detailed information on the environmental impact of paper use and the alternatives you can use this handy paper calculator created by Environmental Defense at

papercalculator.org As a home school mom and new business owner, my responsibilities have come into play, so the next in this series will be this weekend. Besides recycled…I’ll be looking into alternative paper sources. Hope you’ll be reading!

Cotton Facts

 December 5, 2007 • 1 Comment (Edit)

For quite some time I have believed in the benefits of organic food, after all we really must take care with what we ingest.  Over the past few years I have been noticing organic cotton around.  I felt it was a bit too expensive to waste money on.  Never stopping to think about the fact that it is grown in the very same soil where we grow our food.  That the run off affects the very same water we drink every day.  I started to look a bit more into cotton to see exactly what the facts were.  This is what I discovered:

Cotton Facts:Conventional cotton cultivation inflicts a heavy environmental toll. 

• Cotton uses approximately 25% of the world’s insecticides and more than 10% of the pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides, and defoliants.).

• Cotton pesticides can enter the human food chain via cotton seed oil used in processed foods. The meat and dairy products from cows fed cottonseed meal, trash from cotton gins and cotton straw may also contain pesticides that were applied to cotton.

• Eighty-four million pounds of pesticides were sprayed on the 14.4 million acres of conventional cotton grown in the U.S. in 2000 (5.85 pounds/ acre), ranking cotton second behind corn in total amount of pesticides sprayed.

• Over 2.03 billion pounds of synthetic fertilizers were applied to conventional cotton the same year (142 pounds/acre), making cotton the fourth most heavily fertilized crop behind corn, winter wheat, and soybeans.

• The Environmental Protection Agency considers seven of the top 15 pesticides used on cotton in 2000 in the United States as “possible,” “likely,” “probable,” or “known” human carcinogens (acephate, dichloropropene, diuron, fluometuron, pendimethalin, tribufos, and trifluralin).

• It takes roughly one-third of a pound of chemicals (pesticides and fertilizers) to grow enough cotton for just one T-shirt.

In contrast, organic cotton has all the benefits of organic agriculture, in addition to providing stronger, healthier cotton. For now it costs a little more, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Source: The Sustainable Cotton Project

I was amazed at the impact what we wear & sleep on can have on the environment.  I wondered why I had never thought about it before.  Now, I’m not going to throw out all of my cotton items & buy organic but I am going start buying the organic versions when I have the need and opportunity.  Each of us doing our part to help protect the planet we live on can have major impacts on the health of everyone!  Tomorrow I want to look more into sustainability.

Why go Organic? December 4, 2007 • No Comments (Edit)

 “When I was a child we didn’t eat organic and I grew up just fine.” 

That is a statement I often hear from my husband during many of our “discussions” on why I should or shouldn’t continue to buyorganic food for our family. I frequently tell him that’s because they didn’t have organicfood in the store back then.  Pesticide use was not as frequentand what was used was not as toxic as today’s chemical cocktailsbeing used.  And of course they didn’t genetically modify or irradiateour foods like they do today.  Soon they’ll have us eating plastic andtry to tell us that it is good for us.  Oh wait…they already do that.Hydrogenated oils are only 1 chemical compound away from thechemical formula of plastic!  Oddly even cockroaches won’t eat it, but yet they put it in our foods and tell us it’s safe.  Enough of my rant…there are many, many reasons to go organic. There seems to be a lack of knowledge of what organics do,not only for our families, but how they impact the planet we all share. I feel very strong about organic products and I hope that I can helppeople increase their knowledge so they can make informed choicesin their lives. So…

Why Organic? 
 

Organic farmers work in harmony with nature
Organic agricultural respects the balance demanded of a healthy ecosystem: wildlife is encouraged by including forage crops in rotation and by retaining fence rows, wetlands, and other natural areas.

Organic farms respect our water resources
The elimination of polluting chemicals and nitrogen leaching, done in combination with soil building, protects and conserves water resources.

Organic farmers build healthy soil
Soil is the foundation of the food chain. The primary focus of organic farming is to use practices that build healthy soils.

Organic producers strive to preserve diversity
The loss of a large variety of species (biodiversity) is one of the most pressing environmental concerns. The good news is that many organic farmers and gardeners have been collecting and preserving seeds, and growing unusual varieties for decades.

Organic production reduces health risks
Many EPA-approved pesticides were registered long before extensive research linked these chemicals to cancer and other diseases. Organic agriculture is one way to prevent any more of these chemicals from getting into the air, earth and water that sustain us.

Organic producers are leaders in innovative research
Organic farmers have led the way, largely at their own expense, with innovative on-farm research aimed at reducing pesticide use and minimizing agriculture’s impact on the environment.

Organic products meet stringent standards
Organic certification is the public’s assurance that products have been grown and handled according to strict procedures without persistent toxic chemical inputs.

Organic farming helps keep rural communities healthy
USDA reported that in 1997, half of U.S. farm production came from only 2% of farms. Organic agriculture can be a lifeline for small farms because it offers an alternative market where sellers can command fair prices for crops.

Organic food tastes great!
It’s common sense – well-balanced soils produce strong, healthy plants that become nourishing food for people and animals.

Organic abundance – Foods and non-foods alike!
Now every food category has an organic alternative. And non-food agricultural products are being grown organically – even cotton, which most experts felt could not be grown this way. 

Why organic food is more expensive than conventional food:In general, organic food costs more than conventional food because of the laborious and time-intensive systems used by the typically smaller organic farms. You may find that the benefits of organic agriculture off-set this additional cost. At the same time, there are ways to purchase organic while sticking to your budget. Consider the following when questioning the price of organic:

§                                 Organic farmers don’t receive federal subsidies like conventional farmers do. Therefore, the price of organic food reflects the true cost of growing.

§                                 The price of conventional food does not reflect the cost of environmental cleanups that we pay for through our tax dollars.

§                                 Organic farming is more labor and management intensive.  Source: The Organic Trade Association

Organics is not just for food, but for everything we grow.  Any pesticide use contaminates our soils and water sources!   Tomorrow I will discuss why we should (and much to my own surprise) also buy organic cotton.