intellectual properties

a complicated equation

i enjoyed reading this article about real vs. fake christmas trees yesterday, not because i have any intention of buying a tree, but because the beginning of the article basically describes how i attempt to evaluate ANY purchase. where did it come from? how far was it shipped? how was it grown/produced/manufactured? where will it go when i’m done with it?

If at first glance the choice seems like a no-brainer, think again. Then ask your local tree retailer where those real trees were shipped from, or how much petroleum went into the plastic for those fake trees. Go ahead and try to figure out how much gas you use shopping for your real tree every year for 10 years, how much fuel was used to transport that tree (and the air around it), how much energy the local waste company uses for its disposal, and compare that with the petroleum used to make the plastic tree, the fuel used to ship it (in its flat box) from somewhere in Asia, the gas you use shopping for it.

All of that calculating might yield a carbon footprint – ah, but what about the health effects of chemicals used to make the fake tree or grow the real tree? What about water depletion for the real tree? What about the combustibility of fakes? What about the impact of either on the U.S. economy, your wallet or your allergies?

Now, go ahead and do the right thing.

the article more or less concludes that the number of variables to consider when determining whether to buy a product or which product to choose over another in terms of sustainability are completely overwhelming, but even though sometimes it feels like the more informed you are the harder it is to make the decision, there is always a better choice and we should just do our best. (btw: the author concludes that the best thing to do is buy a live tree and compost it.)

BND 2007

a friend of mine sent a link to this news story about a toy made in China that contains a chemical that turns into GHB when ingested (it’s not intended for ingestion, but kids eat things). she expressed concern that people are putting their consumer values ahead of their health and safety values. this news item is quite timely considering the holiday season is right around the corner, and so is BUY NOTHING DAY.

On November 23, we celebrate the fifteenth annual Buy Nothing Day. This year is going to be exceptional. The mainstream has finally woken up to the reality of the environmental crisis, and the responsibility that lies with us, the planet’s most affluent – the upper 20% that consume 80% of the world’s resources. Now’s our chance to do something about it.

i think that not only is buying american (or european, or canadian, or other places that have 1st world health and safety standards, not just for us but for them) is important, but more important than that i think is just plain NOT BUYING.

rampant consumerism is killing our environment, our children, our economy. it all just has to stop. whether it’s toxic toys from china or plastic disposable things made in the USA, we don’t need more crap – we need less. and the more people think they need, the more they’re willing to give up in terms of human rights and safety so that they can get cheaper and cheaper goods.

americans are so addicted to the instant-gratification response of consumerism (which is promoted and put into our brains by commercial marketing and the media) that we think it feels like “punishment” for american families to force themselves to stop buying toys and all kinds of cheap chintzy crap at Wal-Mart and instead save money for healthier, better things. WTF?

the money spent on material things we don’t need could be put to better use in our lives – better food, better homes, higher education, healthy activities, self-improvement, savings accounts for your kids … all kinds of things. for you AND your children. think about how much money you would save for your family if every time you went to the store you only bought things you really need, instead of things you think you WANT.

if we want to save our children’s futures, we need to stop feeding into a toxic economy NOW, and also be good role models to teach our children different and better consumer spending habits. there is just no way around it.

linkages

first, as a follow-up to the last post on plastics, today’s Chron has an interesting article about ‘bioplastics’ – “plastics” made from plant sources like corn and switchgrass that are biodegradable. there are a few products on the market already – Target’s “gift cards” are made out of it, and we have used the biodegradable cutlery, cups and dishes – which work well unless you’re serving hot soup or beverages, then the stuff tends to get a little soft and can leak. the costs/benefits of these products are still being weighed, as the manufacturing of the bioplastic isn’t exactly a green process and you still have to get the ingredients from somewhere – and many of it is made out of genetically-modified plant material, which means environmentalists aren’t quite as eager to hop on the bandwagon as you’d think they would be over a replacement for plastic that decomposes naturally.

i’m a little obsessed with this topic at the moment. today as i walked around at lunch time, it seemed like all i could see was plastic – plastic bags, plastic forks, plastic salad containers, plastic lids on coffee cups, plastic toys, plastic hangars, plastic packaging…..

second, my friend posted a link to this interesting NYT article about a recent study correlating the drop in crime in the early 90s with the banning of leaded fuel via the Clean Air Act in the 70s and 80s, and thus a decrease in lead poisoning in youths – lead poisoning leads to learning disabilities and behavioral problems like aggression – and so a dramatic decrease in environmental lead could have been a factor in the decrease in crime (or, lack of increase, as expected) a decade later.

Has the Clean Air Act done more to fight crime than any other policy in American history? That is the claim of a new environmental theory of criminal behavior.

In the early 1990s, a surge in the number of teenagers threatened a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. But to the surprise of some experts, crime fell steadily instead. Many explanations have been offered in hindsight, including economic growth, the expansion of police forces, the rise of prison populations and the end of the crack epidemic. But no one knows exactly why crime declined so steeply…

…Reyes found that the rise and fall of lead-exposure rates seemed to match the arc of violent crime, but with a 20-year lag — just long enough for children exposed to the highest levels of lead in 1973 to reach their most violence-prone years in the early ’90s, when crime rates hit their peak.

too far fetched? it may seem like a stretch, but the more evidence like this that piles up, the less of a stretch it is and forward-thinking people are starting to take these connections very seriously in terms of public policy and regulation. we recently received an incredibly sobering presentation from someone from the alameda dept of public health on the corollary effects of health issues on social issues related to a project in west oakland that didn’t draw a chemical connection but a behavioral connection between air quality and quality of life – widespread chronic illnesses in particular have a devastating affect on the overall well-being of communities.

plastic oceans

i recently told someone about this huge island of plastic trash twice the size of texas that is floating out in the middle of the pacific ocean as part of explaining why i don’t like getting plastic containers for take-out or using plastic bags for shopping (why do cashiers try to force them on you? more than once when i’ve said i don’t want a bag for something i can carry out the cashier has asked “are you sure? why not?” and then when i say “i try not to use plastic” they look at me like i’m crazy) and why i literally carry a fork in my purse so that i never have to use a plastic one when i get some food to go, and i don’t think they believed me. i think they thought i was making it up, because, really, it does sound like some fantastic lie that some treehugging environmentalist would make up to try to scare people into recycling.

but really: it’s true. i posted about it before, but it’s still amazing to me that so many people have never heard of it, or if you tell them, that they don’t believe you. i guess it’s one of those things that people don’t want to know about, and even those who do know about it admit there’s little or nothing that can be done about it except try to prevent it from growing.

“At this point, cleaning it up isn’t an option,” Parry said. “It’s just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues. … The long-term solution is to stop producing as much plastic products at home and change our consumption habits.”

Parry said using canvas bags to cart groceries instead of using plastic bags is a good first step; buying foods that aren’t wrapped in plastics is another.

After the San Francisco Board of Supervisors banned the use of plastic grocery bags earlier this year with the problem of ocean debris in mind, a slew of state bills were written to limit bag production, said Sarah Christie, a legislative director with the California Coastal Commission.

But many of the bills failed after meeting strong opposition from plastics industry lobbyists, she said.

Meanwhile, the stew in the ocean continues to grow…

The Greenpeace report found that at least 267 marine species had suffered from some kind of ingestion or entanglement with marine debris.

Chabot said if environmentalists wanted to remove the ocean dump site, it would take a massive international effort that would cost billions.

But that is unlikely, he added, because no one country is likely to step forward and claim the issue as its own responsibility. — SFGate

plastic world

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you – just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: ‘Plastics.’
Ben: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That’s a deal.

i’m not sure this is what he meant when he said there’s a great future in plastics.

~link via

h-2-hosed

the consequences of hyperhydration include:

Americans will throw out more than two million tons of PET bottles this year. Even when recycled, it is hard to turn scrap PET into new bottles. More virgin material is always necessary. PET is a petroleum product; it comes from oil. The Container Recycling Institute estimates that 18 million barrels of crude-oil equivalent were needed to replace the bottles we chucked in 2005, bottles that were likely shipped long distances to begin with —from Maine or Calistoga or Fiji.

at the same time, grocers are fighting hard to not have refundable deposits places on plastic water bottles because they don’t want to have to deal with (the millions of) them.

what i also find amazing are the people who are eating pesticide covered, chemically-flavored, totally processed food that are sucking down the bottled water in the name of health. if you’re some kind of organic whole-food purist, i can understand why you’d be picky about your drinking water source. but for most people walking out of Costco with 5 lb bags of cheetos and huge slabs of factory-farmed ground beef along with their 24-pack of 12oz “purified drinking water” bottles, it’s just ridiculous. for most people (and i say most, because indeed, if you live in a city like las vegas, you certainly shouldn’t be drinking the tap water, but most americans have pretty decent H20 running right out of the tap), what’s in your drinking water is nothing compared to what’s in your food chain, but people are OBSESSED with the water, thanks to heavy marketing and misinformation by the food industry. it’s all such a huge, wasteful scam.

time to hit the pedals

leaving a party last night a little after 4am, jason, who’d left a few minutes earlier, called me to say that there was a truck explosion on the macarther maze – the web of freeway exchanges in west oakland that connects the bay bridge to the rest of the east bay and pretty much the U.S. via I-80 – and we might have to take a different route home. as we approached the scene, indeed there was a huge plume of smoke and a fire several stories high. i wondered aloud how much heat it would take to bring down the freeway. apparently, it only takes one fuel tanker, because we woke up this morning to this:

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plastica

semi-related to monday’s post about chemicals, there have been a lot of recent discussions and reports that chemicals leech into your water from plastic bottles and containers. There is some truth to these claims – plastic is a porous material (unlike glass or stainless steel which absorb nothing) and both aborbs particles – which is why they don’t stay truly clean – as well as releases particles into whatever is inside the container.

Besides the waste factor, this is another one of the reasons i try not to buy food or drinks in plastic containers or wrapped in plastic, and you should NEVER, EVER microwave or cook food in a plastic container!(frozen food especially!)

although it’s not yet been proven that plastic releases chemicals into your food/beverage/body – the debate is still up in the air because there is some somewhat controversial evidence to support the claim:

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blue vinyl

last night jay and i watched an HBO documentary called Blue Vinyl about PVC and other vinyl production. my co-worker loaned me the tape, and told me it was “funny”. “a funny documentary about plastic?” i asked. hrm. so anyway, parts of it are funny, but most of it is disturbing and sad. the plastics industry, which currently runs prime time commercials about how “great” plastic is and how it’s saving our world, is not so wonderful for those people who have suffered the side effects from its production and destruction. seems half the world is now made out of plastic, and in this consumer society, lots of it is being produced, consumed, and then burned or dumped into landfills. yay. yet another thing for me to be disturbed about….