Washington Recycling

OK, to piggyback off of the earlier post, I have chosen to look at the Washington State Recycling Association. Their Hot Topics area has links to very nice information sheets on various recycling topics like recycling glass & plastic, recycling paper to save water, etc.

This is a site that has good local information for exploration.

Recycler

OK, so this is news that is a month old, I only read it today so I am sharing it today. Seattle University was named the Recycler of the Year by the Washington State Recycling Association. Here is a link to the article about this and what the University did to earn the award. Some of what was highlighted was previously posted here at Enviro-Sustain about Bon-Appetit catering company.

Onearth

Onearth is the journalism arm of the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC). In general this site seems to be currently dominated by the gulf oil spill but there are some interesting areas of the site that drive down to more specific interest areas.

I looked around a little yesterday and more today and found a few interesting bits. This one is about the beetle infestation in the western US forests.
Another one I read was a Q&A with an author who wrote a book called: Bottled & Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water.

Pacific NW | Chefs now offering low-carbon diets to help save the planet | Seattle Times Newspaper

Pacific NW | Chefs now offering low-carbon diets to help save the planet | Seattle Times Newspaper

EPA Sustainability Continued

As I mentioned yesterday, I am highlighting a different area of the EPA Sustainability website. Today I looked at the Water & Ecosystem Services section of the sustainability site.

I looked at the infrastructure for water and wastewater section and I didn't know that much of our infrastructure for this was built for and during the population boom after World War II. There is also information about how the funding for upkeep and new facilities is becoming what they call an Infrastructure Gap.

I continued to look around the site and I ended up on the sustainable agriculture section since I have read and learned so much in the last month or so about sustainable farming.

As I dug down through the links on the site I found myself in an area about organic farming and I was intrigued to know that organic farming has taken place since the 1940s. I also thought to myself that it was interesting that it didn't mention when organic farming stopped and when non-organic farming took over prominence in the past. It was also interesting that over 40 agencies/groups certify products as organic but they don't use the same set of criteria, hmmm I say.

As with yesterday's post, these are the areas I happend upon and I am sure in your exploration you will see topics and areas that are more interesting to you.

EPA - Sustainability

There are several sections of the US EPA website that I have begun to explore and one to highlight today is that of Urban Sustainability and the Built Environment.

It may or may not be a surprise to you that 80% of Americans live in urban areas.

Another interesting statistic for those of you who have done the ecological footprint calculator. Buildings account for more than 40% of energy consumption. This might be part of the reason why no matter what I did on the quiz, I still scored 3.7 Earth's.

Further exploration of the tabs on this site brought me to areas such as Smart Growth and Environmentally Preferable Purchasing. There are many others but I will let you explore what you find most interesting to you.

Sorry for the short post but as much as I like sharing what I find interesting, this is a government website and thus is not the most exciting site and I want you to enjoy it so I thought allowing you to seek out your own topics was the best way to go.

I think I will highlight a different section of the website on sustainability tomorrow since there are several areas.

Green Blogs

OK, after an extended pause here at Enviro-Sustain while I did World Cup Weekend at the other blogs, I am back and ready to share more great green resources.

I have found myself lately reading articles about healthy eating. Here is one about what is in your food that doesn't really need to be. I was interested in the 39 ingredients in Doritos. Here is another post from 2 weeks ago about unhealthy food.

That was not what I wanted to post about for today though. I wanted to look at a couple of the blogs that are compiled by Yahoo Green. One of them I had not explored previously is called ecogeek, which for people who know me would guess I was intuitively drawn to. In fact, I found the information and blog posts to be very interesting. A couple of them were on wind power and I learned quite a bit.

The other blog I would like to spotlight today is titled The Green Cheapskate. It sounded like a fun title and the posts are pretty fun (and useful) as well. The two that I looked at today were titled 50 Healthy Foods Under $1 per Pound and 10 Things I Learned While Living Without Running Water. As you can imagine a bunch of veggies cost less than $1 per pound but also eggs, oatmeal and pasta. As for living without running water, I learned a few things while traveling through Africa a couple of years ago. I agree that toilets are an engineering marvel and that clothes don't generally need to be washed so often. I think that #3 on the countdown - Cold water is so much better than no water, and HOT water is very, very special - could really be #1 on the list.

Green Consumerism

Some of the things I have learned over the last month are about how I can make an impact by being more aware of how carbon or ecological intensive the items I purchase are and then basing purchase decisions on that. As you may have also seen in some of the earlier posts last month, I signed up for some newsletters from the source websites. Yesterday these two things came together in an article from World Changing. The article titled New Emissions Measurements Show "Green" Consumerism Failing was startling, it is failing? I only just started to participate and it is failing! Well, I read on through the article and I found it very interesting. Two important statements from the article were:

Gains in emissions reductions from technological advances have been wiped out by increases in consumption as people demand higher levels of affluence.

The UK's 50-70% of gains from home energy conservation are lost when they're redirected for other resource consumption, by people buying other goods and services with the money saved.

After reading this, I thought to myself, I am probably very much involved in this statement. What do we do when we save money in one area, we like to spend it in another area, often an area that is a luxury compared to a necessity. After reading this I am more aware of this aspect of green consumerism and I will try to be more alert to how this impacts me.

Ecopsych and Green Resources

Teaching Psychology for Sustainability: A Manual of Resources/ Classroom Activities

http://www.teachgreenpsych.com/

The Exploring a Sense of Place program evolved from the vision that as modern humans we are identified with our human constructs, but we have lost an intimate relationship with the natural ecosystem where we live.

http://exploringsenseofplace.org/site/


APA Division 34. Population and Environmental Psychology members conduct research and advance theory to improve interactions between human behavior and environment and population.

http://apa34.cos.ucf.edu/

Feet First is an advocacy organization promoting walkable communities. We envision people walking every day for their health, transportation, environment,
community and pleasure.

www.feetfirst.info

The Nature of "Sense of Place"

"Sense of Place"

Specific qualities of landscape infused a site with a sense of place for people. Past experience heavily influenced relationship between people and place, as places were sensed as a combination of setting, landscape, ritual, and routine and in the context of other places. Each meaning structure of people, space, and environment contributes a particular set of qualities to genius loci.

The wholistic perspective of "topophilia" described by Y. Tuan states that "topophilia" is the relations, perceptions, attitudes, values, and world view that affectively bond people and place. Analyzing the content of people's remembrances for significant and recurring themes about space and place yields insights into fundamental life themes of sense of place, environmental mastery, privacy and autonomy.

loss of place--humiliation--losing one's past, present, and future sense of place
placelessness--distress--attaining a sense of place
rootlessness--alienation--continuity and change in the sense of place

An understanding of sense of place for which places are not merely objects, but objects for subjects, is needed. The sense of place can most usefully be conceptualized in terms of the structure of feeling.

Collective identity and sense of place is one of the primary social functions of residential differentiation for most people in modern societies.

Sense of place helps to protect the region's cultural heritage and promote cultural awareness and strong kinship ties.

The ancient Platonic approach to memory is focused on recollective experience. Recollection promotes access to transpersonal memorial and involves a turning inward, a withdrawal of attachments to the external world, and a gathering-in or coming to presence of the self. These recollective experiences may underlie the sense of place, boundaries, personal identity, and human autonomy.

Theodore Roszak’s Eight Principals of Ecopsychology

1. Core of the mind is the ecological unconscious: Like Jung’s notion that the collective unconscious is a repository of human evolutionary history; the ecological unconscious is a living record of evolution.

2. The ecological unconscious is a living record of evolution: and houses the ecological intelligence of our species.


3. The goal of therapy is to re-awaken environmental reciprocity and heal alienation: and in doing so one is able to access the ecological unconscious and live more healthily with the natural world.

4. To recover the child’s animistic quality of experience: in doing so we get to re-experience the natural world with the wonder and excitement that comes so natural to children.

5. For the ecological ego to mature towards an ethical sense of responsibility: therefore we are able to move beyond the developmental stages that are concerned with individual needs and move towards becoming the collective or social animal that we are.

6. To re-evaluate masculine traits that dominate nature: thus moving away from wanting to control nature to living and learning from nature.

7. To return to small scale social forms: scaling back to livable social systems that are smaller, allows for more interaction and dialog among humans and therefore serves their needs more appropriately.

8. And the need to recognize the synergistic interplay between planetary and personal well being: the needs of the planet are the needs of the person.

Eco/Psychology = Outer World/Inner World

Ecopsychology connects psychology and ecology. The political and practical implications are to show humans ways of healing alienation and to build a sane society and a sustainable culture. Theodore Roszak is credited with coining the term in his 1992 book, The Voice of the Earth. This was a call for the development of a field in which psychologywould go out of the built environment to examine why people continue to behave in "crazy" ways that damage the environment, and the environmental movement would find new ways to motivate people to action, ways more positive than protest. Roszak expanded the idea in the 1995 anthology Ecopsychology, which he co-edited with Mary Gomes and Allen Kanner. As mentioned by Roszak, there are a variety of other names used to describe this field: psychoecology, ecotherapy, environmental psychology, green psychology, global therapy, green therapy, Earth-centered therapy, reearthing, nature-based psychotherapy, shamanic counselling, sylvan therapy.

Conservation psychology is the scientific study of the reciprocal relationships between humans and the rest of nature, with a particular focus on how to encourage conservation of the natural world.

This applied field uses psychological principles, theories, or methods to understand and solve issues related to human aspects of conservation.

Conservation Psychology is also the actual network of researchers and practitioners who work together to understand and promote a sustainable and harmonious relationship between people and the natural environment.

Environmental psychology is an interdisciplinary field focused on the interplay between humans and their surroundings. The field defines the term environment broadly, encompassing natural environments, social settings, built environments, learning environments, and informational environments. Since its conception, the field has been committed to the development of a discipline that is both value oriented and problem oriented, prioritizing research aiming at solving complex environmental problems in the pursuit of individual well being within a larger society.

Know Our Environmental Protection History!

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/earthdaytimeline.html#news

Environmental Justice

What is environmental justice? I guess we've been working on this project without truly exploring the concept. The media is saturated with advice on being environmentally conscious and active. Sure, we can talk about the clever ways to cut our carbon foot print and support local agriculture. We can go for hikes, appreciate the environment, remove invasive species of plants and learn how to garden. These are all important things. But how do these ideas relate to social concerns of racism, classism, and equity?

To begin, a few definitions:

Environmental Justice Environmental Justice - The right to a safe, healthy, productive, and sustainable environment for all, where "environment" is considered in its totality to include the ecological (biological), physical (natural and built), social, political, aesthetic, and economic environments. Environmental justice refers to the conditions in which such a right can be freely exercised, whereby individual and group identities, needs, and dignities are preserved, fulfilled, and respected in a way that provides for self-actualization and personal and community empowerment. This term acknowledges environmental "injustice" as the past and present state of affairs and expresses the socio-political objectives needed to address them.

Environmental Equity- An ideal of equal treatment and protection for various racial, ethnic, and income groups under environmental statutes, regulations, and practices applied in a manner that yields no substantial differential impacts relative to the dominant group. Although environmental equity implies elements of "fairness" and "rights", it does not necessarily address past inequities or view the environment broadly, nor does it incorporate an understanding of the underlying causes and processes.

The EPA releases reports about environmental equity, here . As of 1992, it was stated, "there are clear differences between racial groups in terms of disease and death rates; racial minority and low-income populations experience higher than average exposures to selected air pollutants, hazardous waste facilities, contaminated fish and agricultural pesticides in the workplace; and great opportunities exist for EPA and other government agencies to improve communication about environmental problems with members of low-income and racial minority groups."

Environmental Racism - Racial discrimination in environmental policy-making, enforcement of regulations and laws, and targeting of communities of color for toxic waste disposal and siting of polluting industries," according to Reverend Benjamin E. Chavis, Jr., Ex-Chairman of the NAACP. Racial discrimination can be intentional or unintentional and is often a manifestation of "institutional racism." This term acknowledges the political reality that created and continues to perpetuate environmental inequity and injustice.




Environmental Classism - The results of and the process by which implementation of environmental policy creates intended or unintended consequences which have disproportionate impacts (adverse or beneficial) on lower income persons, populations, or communities. These disparate effects occur through various decision-making processes, program administration (e.g. Superfund clean-up schedules), and the issuance regulatory actions such as compliance inspections and other enforcement measures such as fines and penalties, and administrative and judicial orders. Flawed policies
formation processes coupled with agency norms, priorities, traditions, and professional biases often make implementation
subject to these disproportionate consequences.

According to the United States EPA, the six most prominent examples of environmental hazards include:[60]
Lead - There is a particularly high concentration of lead problems in low-income and culturally diverse populations, who live in the inner city where the public housing units were built before 1970.

Waste Sites - Low income, and quite often culturally diverse populations, are more likely than other groups to live near landfills, incinerators, and hazardous waste treatment facilities.

Air Pollution - 57 percent of all European Americans, 65 percent of African Americans, and 80 percent of Hispanic Americans live in communities that have failed to meet at least one of EPA's ambient air quality standards.

Pesticides - Approximately 90 percent of the 2 million hired farm workers in the United States are people of color, including Chicano, Puerto Ricans, Caribbean blacks and African Americans. Through direct exposure to pesticides, farm workers and their families may face serious health risks. It has been estimated that as many as 313,000 farm workers in the U.S. may suffer from pesticide-related illnesses each year.

Wastewater (City Sewers) - Many inner cities still have sewer systems that are not designed to handle storm overflow. As a result, raw sewage may be carried into local rivers and streams during storms, creating a health hazard.

Wastewater - (Agricultural Runoff) - It is suspected that the increased use of commercial fertilizers and concentrations of animal wastes contribute to the degradation of receiving streams and rivers in rural areas, with communities that are often low income and culturally diverse.




SCORECARD.ORG allows you to look up pollutants and contaminants by zip code.

1999 WTO Riots

The protestors and activists were angered and concerned for human rights and environmental injustices in a globalized world. On the morning of November 30, 1999, the Direct Action Network's plan was put into action. Several hundred activists arrived in the deserted streets near the convention center and began to take control of key intersections. Over the next few hours, a number of marchers began to converge on the area from different directions. These included a student march from the north and a march of citizens of the developing world who marched in from the south. Some demonstrators held rallies, others held teach-ins and at least one group staged an early-morning street party. Meanwhile, a number of protesters still controlled the intersections using lockdown formations.

Environmental Justice Issues Nationwide

Robert Bullard (Director - Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta University) speaks on Environmental Justice. Interview recorded at The Belmont Meeting (Jan. 29 - Feb. 1 2009) for The Praxis Project.

Green Festival

This weekend, June 5-6 at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center the Seattle Green Festival will be going on.
Here is a link to the event guide but there is just a lot of information to look at on this site. There are also Green Festivals in San Francisco (fall and spring), Chicago (in May) and Washington D.C. in October.

Healthy (or Unhealthy) Food Post

This is a brief post about two pieces I have read over the last couple of weeks and it clicked in my head that they go together well. The first was one I linked to in a previous blog. The reading is titled 11 Scary Fast Food Breakfasts. Here is information on one of the items they highlight.

"Carl’s Jr Breakfast BurgerYes, I’m afraid you read that right, “breakfast” and “burger” in the same menu item. How do you turn a regular burger into a breakfast burger? By adding not only an egg–but an egg, bacon, American cheese and hash brown nuggets too!"

Calories: 780
Fat Calories: 370
Total Fat: 51 grams
Sat Fat: 15 grams
Sodium: 1460mg

The other reading that I am posting about is titled The Worst Chips and Dips. Just as a teaser, I will say that even though I rarely (less than once a year) eat Pringles but they are only about 42% potato!!!

WORST CHEESE DIP -
Kraft Cheez Whiz Original Cheese Dip (2 Tbsp, 33 g)
90 calories
7 g fat (1.5 g saturated)
440 mg sodium

"This glowing orange goop is pure junk. If you have a taste for cheese, save your calories for the real thing. We're especially fond of Tostitos Salsa Con Queso Medium. With the nutritional perks of tomatoes and peppers, salsa con queso beats straight cheese dip every time. Plus, you can eat twice as much for the same caloric punch (not that you should, of course!)."