this green house

by Matt DeNoto

I do a lot of my TV watching over at Hulu, where I can watch full length shows (and feature films) for free, and with less commercials than watching them on an actual network.

That’s where I discovered Building Green, a PBS offering that applies Green philosophy to the most practical application possible: the building of a home.

Over the course of 13 episodes, home designer and host Kevin Contreras brings viewers along on his journey of building his very own green dream home. Because the building process is broken up over a whole season, Kevin is able to go in depth to each facet of the design, discussing with experts the pros and cons of the ever-expanding array of green options.

One immediately attention-getting detail about the house is that the walls will be insulated with straw bales. The builders literally stack straw bales where the walls will be, then cover them with chicken wire and plaster over it. According to the show, this will offer excellent insulation and protect against termites while preserving a delicate natural resource (trees) by using an abundant material often seen as a waste product by farmers. It’s also saving the project a lot of money. The only ‘downside’ mentioned so far (I’m only 3 episodes in) is that the outer walls of the house will need to be two feet thick.

 

Kevin’s driving concern is the high number of toxic chemicals that find their way into our living spaces, often causing the air inside our homes to be significantly less healthy than the outside air. But that’s just one part of keeping the house green. From adding fly-ash to the concrete that becomes the foundation to capturing rain water for use in the home, every aspect of the house has been considered. Reusing materials, energy efficiency, buying locally, all of these are factored in to every decision.

 

Of course, as one can see from the ‘Reviews & Discussions’ section on the Hulu page for the ‘Foundation’ episode, there are still plenty of points of contention about the choices being made. One commenter blasts the home for having steel supports, even though Kevin addresses the alternatives and explains his reasoning in the episode. Other commenters argue that the home is too big for Kevin’s small family.

Overall, the show is well-balanced in its approach to the various green options. There are a lot of factors to every part of the process, and all must be taken into account, including preserving the quality of life we as a society have come to expect from our homes.

With a light, fun tone and tips in every episode about how viewers can make small changes to green up their homes right now, Building Green is an important part of the discussion about how we start to work Green into everything we do.

For more information, visit Building Green’s website

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opinion: not a “10″ in my book

I am sure you have all seen the major marketing campaign by Glaceau to promote the new “Vitamin Water 10″.  

 

The present method of producing erythritol by fed-batch and repeated fermentation of sugars by microorganisms which produce erythritol.

By fed-batch fermentation is meant a fermentation in which microorganisms are fed by the successive addition of substrates, and in which the product and the co-products of the fermentation remain in the medium until the end of fermentation.

By sugars is meant in the present invention all the carbonaceous sources which may be directly assimilated by the microorganisms which produce erythritol. Such sugars are chosen for example from the group consisting of glucose, saccharose, fructose, maltose, xylulose and maltulose, on their own or in a mixture. By extension, sugars also means certain sugar alcohols (or polyols) such as mannitol or sorbitol which, being assimilated by said microorganisms, will also lead to the production of erythritol.

If you use stevia sparingly (once or twice a day in a cup of tea, for example), it isn’t a great threat to you. But if stevia were marketed widely and used in diet sodas, it would be consumed by millions of people. And that might pose a public health threat.

Evolution of the Revolution

by Matt DeNoto

Before the Industrial Revolution, travel was slow and dangerous. Goods were made by hand. Everything took much, much longer.

And that’s because there was a limiting factor to all human endeavors. Back then the limiting factor was power. The only means we had to affect change were our own hands or the animals we domesticated.

So we did the smart thing. We found a better source of power. At first it was steam. Over time we discovered oil. Suddenly power was, for the most part, no longer part of the equation. Human productivity flourished. We were able to make more food, stronger shelters, and faster modes of transportation and communication.

Today there are new limiting factors to our endeavors. These new limiting factors include the dwindling supply of natural materials, the buildup of waste, and the strains of urban populations.

Now we must do the smart thing again. We must find better ways of using what we have. That’s what the Green Revolution really is. A smart reaction to our problems.

I imagine that one of the reasons the Green Revolution is so polarizing is because it is a response to problems that we ourselves caused. We chose to use a limited resource that causes pollution when we burn it for power. We chose to bury our trash in the ground, rather than find ways of re-incorporating it into the flow of goods. We chose to allow cities to become clogged beyond their reasonable capacities.

Why didn’t we see it earlier? Why have we not been self-correcting all along?

For one thing, we didn’t have the information. Sure, burning oil churns out nasty-smelling fumes, but the fumes dissipate and then they’re gone. As far as we knew, trash buried was gone for good and would never bother anyone again.

It’s only over the past couple of decades that our collective consciousness has really started putting the pieces together. And a lot of that has to do with a technology that simply didn’t exist previously. Computers.

The ability to store and manipulate huge amounts of data has finally shown us the consequences of our choices. Computer models are what tell us that the climate changes we’re seeing now do not line up with nature. They tell us when we can expect every oil well to run dry.

And just as computers were able to show us the problem, they are now being utilized to formulate the solutions. They are modeling more efficient batteries and cities. They are finding the ideal placement for solar arrays and wind turbines. Perhaps even more significantly, the internet has allowed like-minded individuals to come together and form plans of action.

Just as railroads and the telegraph helped speed up the Industrial Revolution, so our modern means of communication are building the momentum of the Green Revolution.

I guess the point I’m getting at is that the Green Revolution is not terribly revolutionary. And that’s a good thing. We’ve been through this before. It should be a comforting thought to those who believe we as a people don’t have a capacity for change, and it should be a wake-up call for those who don’t want to.

At the same time, there are those who feel we are not moving fast enough. It can be hard to look at the huge problems facing humanity in the future and not feel frustrated with it for the slow pace of change. To those people, I hope this little meditation has a calming effect. It’s only been a relatively small amount of time that we’ve known enough to see the problems we’re causing.

It will take time, but we’re now doing the smart thing.

community recycling

By Matt DeNoto

If you live in an apartment building in Los Angeles (as I do), you may have this sticker on your dumpster:

I first noticed it a few months ago. Eventually, curiosity got the better of me and I called the number to see what the deal was. Apparently all the trash that gets put into the dumpster is picked up by Crown Disposal and then, instead of heading straight to the landfill, it is dropped off at Community Recycling in Sun Valley. Over the phone, I asked what, exactly, did they recycle. “Paper, plastics, glass, you know, everything.” My first instinct (being a cynic) was suspicion; was this for real or was it just a hollow PR smokescreen to make residents feel like they didn’t have to take responsibility for doing any recycling because it’s all being done for them?

So I asked for a tour. And they said yes.

From the outside, Community Recycling starts with a large, flat expanse covered with huge piles of garbage. Bulldozers move the different piles around while garbage trucks arrive to drop off their precious cargo. Just beyond lies the facility itself, an interesting-looking jumble of structures connected together like a hamster’s habitrail. One box-like structure, a couple of stories up off the ground, is connected to the next by a downward sliding cylinder. Unfortunately, I was only allowed to take one picture while I was there, and here it is:

This is Mr. Basura, who sits in the Community Recycling main offices when not out teaching children about garbage and recycling. I was told this by Nicole, Community Recycling’s PR person, who would be giving the tour to me and couple of other community members. This was going to be the first tour specifically for community members. Nicole had previously been giving them only to schools. Once we’d all arrived, Nicole brought us up to a presentation room where the tour would begin.

At this point, I am going to stop using the word ‘tour.’ Because, as it turned out, the morning consisted mostly of a slideshow that Nicole narrated for us, followed by a brief walk around the outside of the facility on the sidewalk (basically the same view anyone driving by would get). While it was generous for the company to bring us in and give us some information, tour is a bit generous of a word.

The first slide was of a pie chart, labeled 1999 California Waste Characterization. As Nicole explained, the chart represented a breakdown of all the different types of garbage California threw away in 1999. It represented trash not just from residents, but also businesses and industry. Easily the biggest pie slice was Organic Waste, which includes food and yard waste. (The chart may be based off this study by the California Integrated Waste Management Board. According to this study, organic waste also includes rubber, textiles and carpet.) The next biggest slice was Paper. Then C&D (Construction & Demolition). Much smaller were the slices for Plastic, Metal and Glass.

In order to recycle as much as possible, Nicole said, Community Recycling devised three separate processes to handle almost all the different categories.

The first process handles ‘traditional’ waste, which includes the trash collected from my dumpster, along with other residential and office-based garbage. When the garbage trucks drop off the trash, it is first loaded into a trommel, a big cylindrical tumbler that shreds the waste out of the garbage bags and separates it for the next step. The waste leaves the trommel and is loaded onto a conveyor belt where workers pull out whatever looks recyclable.

At this point I asked Nicole about the privacy concerns associated with having people go through every piece of garbage someone throws away. She indicated that there was no hard and fast policy in place, but there were supervisors watching over the workers at all times and the pace of the work doesn’t really allow the trash to be inspected that closely. She did advise that sensitive information should always be shredded before being thrown away.

The workers separate out the recyclables into their appropriate categories: paper, metal, plastic, and glass. These are then pressed into large bales, where they can be sent out to other plants for the actual recycling process.

So once again, we are faced with a bit of a misnomer. Community Recycling doesn’t actually recycle these materials. It sorts waste and sends it along, either to be recycled or (what’s left over) to the landfill. Perhaps we simply haven’t yet thoroughly enough defined the concept of ‘recycling.’ The Community Recycling facility mostly sorts waste and then sends it off to other places. Does that count as recycling? It’s a noble and necessary process either way, but we may need some new terms to parse down the steps of what ultimately is ‘recycling.’

Tangents aside, the bales are sent off to other recycling plants. For the majority of materials, this means a trip overseas.

I asked Nicole about contamination. Doesn’t having all the trash mixed together result in a lower-grade product? Nicole’s answer, which I can’t really argue with, is that if the recycling plants are buying it, it must be good enough. So apparently separating and cleaning the different classes isn’t really that big of a deal for people throwing things away.

The only real piece of advice Nicole had for residents was to hold onto ‘hazardous’ materials. These include batteries and CFLs, which should be recycled at a dedicated center that handles those types of items.

I then asked Nicole how much ‘traditional’ waste gets recycled and how much gets sent along to the landfill. She said about 20% is recycled. It doesn’t sound like much, but it must be remembered that most of the products we use and throw away were never designed to be recycled, as I’ve mentioned in a previous article. Even items that can be recycled, like a plastic bottle, cannot be recycled into new plastic bottles. They are ‘downcycled’ into less valuable plastic items, like park benches or speed bumps. For products that are made from several different classes of items, like a toy with metal gears inside a plastic shell, the work necessary to break the item down is not cost-effective. It gets sent to the landfill.

The second process is exclusively for the ‘organic wastes,’ mostly food. Community Recycling takes the wastes to its composting facility, the biggest in the nation. One hundred and fifty acres of compost. Here the waste is laid down in huge, seven-hundred-yard long mounds. As the composting process takes place, the centers of the mounds reach well over one hundred degrees. The facility has a machine that rolls over the mounds, churning the compost to ensure that every bit is processed.

One of the great things about this process is that most of the waste doesn’t come from you and me. Community Recycling gathers the food waste from those who throw it away the most: restaurants, cafeterias and grocery stores. When produce goes bad, grocery stores load it up into the cardboard boxes in which they receive it and hand it over to Community Recycling. An interesting part of the process is that the food is dumped onto the composting mounds as it is received, boxes and all. These boxes may be laced with plastic or wax, but they’re left on the mounds during the composting process. The big churning machines break up the foreign material into strips, which makes it easy to filter out at the end of the process, resulting in clean, pure compost. It generally takes about three months to get from food to compost. This is sold to local farmers, or used at one of the four thousand acres of Community Recycling-owned farms.

The final process is strictly for C&D. Constructing or demolishing a building results in a completely different kind of waste than living in a home with a family or working in an office, but the opportunity for recycling is still great. The main types of waste from this process are wood, metal and drywall.

The metal is sold off to be melted down and recycled.

The wood is processed into woodchips, which are then transported to one of Community Recycling’s two biomass power facilities in Central California. Together, the two facilities generate over thirty-five megawatts of power.

The drywall is broken down into its component parts, namely paper and gypsum. The paper is recycled and the gypsum is broken down into a dirt-like powder. This powder can then be used for fertilizer or for erosion control because of its excellent water absorption and retention properties.

As one who is familiar with the economic arguments AGAINST recycling (namely that recycled material is more expensive than pure, virgin material), I asked Nicole whether or not the plant pays for itself. Nicole said the plant was owned by a private company and did indeed pay its own way.

At this point, the presentation ended and Nicole led us out of the building to the sidewalk, where we looked at the facility a bit. She showed us a large pile of compost and offered for us to touch it. We declined.

It was a bit anti-climatic, but still an informative morning. As I mentioned earlier, this was the first ‘tour’ specifically for community members. Community Recycling is slowly reaching out to the public, as their currently half-unfinished website demonstrates.

Community Recycling is important not just for the work it does, but also because it demonstrates that recycling can be a successful business in and of itself. As the Revolution progresses, Community Recycling could become a model for others entering the Green Industry.

But for now, it’s just nice knowing my own garbage is going to good use.

opinion: carbon calculator, week 10

 

Week 10, and the last, in the continuing series of what is missing from Carbon Calculators.  

There is a list of the things that those calculators don’t ask, thereby eliminating them from their algorithm. These are the things that are sometimes the meat of the matter, so to speak. By altering these things, you could affect your true footprint in ways unimaginable and truly make our planet sustainable.

 

STOP HAVING KIDS, or at least so many

The Vatican released a statement recently that the birth control pill does more harm to the environment because of all the hormones being secreted out of female urine.  This is laughable, especially when you consider all the damage done by the things listed above.

Interestingly, what can help the environment the most is being more responsible for the amount of children you are having.  You have a certain eco-footprint.  When you have a child, consider that your footprint just doubled.  You are using more water, more electricity, and buying more things.  You may use the television as a babysitter.  You are doing more laundry.  You may even be drinking more coffee.  Your home has gotten bigger.  Your car has gotten bigger.  And, your waist has gotten bigger.

I know this is something that many people do not want to hear.  I am not saying that your child isn’t fantastic and doesn’t deserve the best.  I have children in my life (not my own) that I love and think the world is better for them being here.  But that is not to say if you have four kids, I think you are irresponsible… because I do. 

Especially, if you consider yourself an environmentalist.  Because those two things do not go hand in hand. 

opinion: Addicted To (Snake) Oil

by Matt DeNoto

 

Just four weeks ago, I wrote a piece for this site extolling the virtues of ‘Cradle-To-Cradle’ design, in which products are planned from conception to be as environmentally friendly as possible. I mentioned the book Cradle To Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart. At the bottom of the piece, The Golden Spiral’s editor placed a link to video of a talk given by William McDonough, in which he details a city being built in China founded on C2C. The city would provide food and energy for all of its inhabitants, without producing any waste to sully the surrounding lands. The video left me with a sense of wonder.

But it also left me with a sense of unease. After all, the book was published in 2002, and it ends with the authors optimistically discussing their plans with Ford to redesign their factories. The video was from a talk McDonough gave in 2005.

So…where are the results? Why are we not hearing about C2C on the news? What about the Ford plant? What about the city in China? Is there really so much of a bias against environmentalism that the world would ignore these amazing accomplishments?

No. There is not. The actual answer is more complicated than that, and while it may not have much to do with the environment, it has everything to do with nature. Human nature.

An intriguing and revealing profile in the November 2008 issue of Fast Company reminds us that the people at the forefront of the environmental movement are just as subject to the whims and weaknesses of life as anyone else. While William McDonough has done an excellent job spreading the word about the problems our world faces, his record with solutions is less than exemplary.

That city in China? It now sits abandoned and rotting. Not only did it cost far more than estimated, the design was fatally flawed. The city planned to use corn husks as biofuel to run the village. But the Chinese farmers who would actually be living there already had a use for the corn husks, as feed for their goats. When presented with this conflict by his crew as the village was being constructed, McDonough was evasive. He seemed only to visit when there was a camera crew following him around, planning to portray him as a visionary who could save the world.

And the reason you don’t hear cradle-to-cradle more often? Because McDonough’s company has the term trademarked, and they charge hefty fees for its use. According to the Fast Company article McDonough has been heard to say, ‘I want to be the Bill Gates of sustainability.’ The article makes the case that by this statement McDonough is not ju st referring to the way Gates is ubiquitous with computing, but also the way it has made him an icon. And rich.

To be sure, McDonough has brought attention to the Green Revolution and that is a good thing. He’s a charismatic speaker who leaves his audiences shining with hope. But he appears unwilling to open his tightly-controlled world up either to the rigorous scientific testing that refines and improves ideas like C2C (and keeps disasters like the city in China from happening), nor to the masses who would spread C2C around the world, but as a philosophy first and a marketing term second.

The article concludes with McDonough seeming to gain a sense of self-awareness. An acceptance that the way he has been trying to get things done for the last couple of decades is not working and may in fact be harming the overall movement. But whether that will be enough to convince him to change his ways will be up to him. Whether it will be too late for the rest of us to care will be up to us. Now that the Revolution seems to be gaining momentum, there will be new icons to take McDonough’s place.

The Revolution came about when people began to question the world as it was. The world that made toys with toxic chemicals, the world that burned or buried its trash, the world that puts profit ahead of basic human life. The Fast Company article serves as a stark reminder that we must continue to question everything. Especially those who would sell themselves as saviors.

opinion: carbon calculator, week 9

 

Week 9 in the continuing series of what is missing from Carbon Calculators.  

There is a list of the things that those calculators don’t ask, thereby eliminating them from their algorithm. These are the things that are sometimes the meat of the matter, so to speak. By altering these things, you could affect your true footprint in ways unimaginable and truly make our planet sustainable.

EATING MEAT

 

Earlier the number one easiest thing you could do to shrink your carbon footprint was alluded to… well, THIS IS IT.

Meat consumption plays a bigger role in greenhouse gas emissions than even many environmentalists realize. The production and transportation of meat and dairy, particularly if you include the grains that are fed to livestock, is much more energy-intensive than it is for plants. Animals, especially cattle, also release gases like methane and nitrous oxide that, pound for pound, are up to 30 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. Internationally there is an additional cost to animal agriculture: massive deforestation to make land available for grazing, which releases greenhouse gases as the trees are burned and removes valuable foliage that absorbs carbon dioxide. As a result, according to a 2006 United Nations report, internationally the livestock sector accounts for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions — more than the transportation sector.

To summarize, in order to raise livestock you have to clear cut the area of trees, which are CO2 absorbers and must be taken into consideration when you map the footprint.  The animals are being fed a corn based diet, so all the damage done listed previosuly in the High Fructose Corn Syrup discussion, also has to be added into the footprint.  There are the transportation emissions.  The actual animal methane emissions, which is a more dangerous greenhouse gas than CO2. Lastly, the meat is also making us fat.

Many people shun vegetarian diets because they view it from the terms of a 1960’s hippie. Getting over this stigma may be the thing that saves the world. Consumers may not have a choice about where a power plant will be built or the fact that they live in an area where they have to drive to work; but a consumer can make a choice about how much meat they eat. On study indicates that switching to a vegan diet can reduce carbon emissions by 6%.

opinion: green backs

By Matt DeNoto

What if doing the best thing for the environment also meant never having to pay income taxes again?

One of the major factors slowing down the Green Revolution is cost. New technologies, new infrastructure and new designs all cost money, even though they’re not (yet) commercially competitive. So where would the money come from?

Visionary book Natural Capitalism, by Amory & Hunter Lovins (co-founders of the Rocky Mountain Institute) and Paul Hawken, paints a picture of a world where doing the right thing is not only the most responsible choice, but it’s also the most economical. And it all rides on one simple fact that lawmakers everywhere should come to accept.

Taxes are a burden.

Like jury duty and voting, paying taxes has been pitched to us as a civic duty. But at the end of the day, no one looks at taxes that way. All we see is the money draining from our wallets. First through the deductions from our paychecks, and then again through sales tax when we go to buy anything. Come April, everyone in America does their best to pay as little in taxes as possible.

As it stands today, taxes appear to be punishment for doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing – working hard and contributing to society. What if we took the negative connotations associated with taxes and used them to encourage more conscientious behavior?

The first step is doing away with all income taxes. The second step is reapplying those taxes to practices and materials that do harm to the community and the world. Under this scenario, when a contractor was shopping for windows for a new building, the most affordable windows would no longer be the ones made from the flimsiest material. Shoddily made windows don’t insulate well, and they would be taxed more heavily for it. Windows that do insulate well would be subject to less tax, thus helping make them more competitive. Recycled paper would be taxed at a lower rate than paper made from virgin pulp. Gasoline would be taxed at a higher rate than sustainable biofuels. Sustainable fish, sustainable wood, sustainable sources of heat, products made without toxic chemicals, all of these would become commercially viable options.

The really wonderful thing about this system is that it reinforces where responsibility truly lies, with the consumer. If a homeowner wants a certain brand of siding on his/her home that isn’t as environmentally friendly as a different brand, the homeowner knows s/he is paying the price for that choice.

Another benefit of the system is its flexibility. As consumers become more and more aware of their purchasing power, unsustainable products and practices will become uneconomical and go bankrupt. Now the government can redistribute the taxes in order to encourage even MORE sustainability.

It appears that the process may already be starting, albeit slowly and without much fanfare. Part of the recent stimulus plan passed by Congress is income tax cuts, which as President Obama has pointed out we can expect to see factored into our paychecks next month. The money for the tax cuts will come from the carbon ‘cap and trade’ plan that Obama is currently trying to get through Congress. The plan will most likely mean, as Republicans are quick to point out, that energy prices will rise. But it also means that we as consumers have more money in our pockets. It will be up to us whether we use that extra money to pay the higher energy prices, or put the money toward finding ways to cut our energy use altogether. It means that the choice most industries have made to pollute indiscriminately is one we will no longer have to carry on our backs.

So what do we do when the system is as sustainable as it can get, and there’s nothing left to tax?  I think that’s a problem our great-great-great-great-grandchildren will be happy to have.

opinion: Selling the Revolution

by Matt DeNoto

If you’re reading this, I assume you’re sympathetic to the cause. Or you’re my mom. (Hi Mom!) You already understand that human actions are having effects on the planet’s climate. You know that we have been living in a wasteful, inconsiderate, destructive population for years now. You have seen that too often, money has taken precedence over responsibility. In other words, I’m mostly preaching to the converted here.

But how do we reach out to those who do not understand? How do we explain things in such a way that they become excited about getting involved in all the changes that will soon be taking place?

The first step of course is to consider their point of view. I’m going to overgeneralize here, so take it all with a grain of salt, but I think in many cases people hear about ‘saving the environment’ and they get the impression that we want to take away their cars, stop them from eating their favorite foods, and make them join hands around a campfire while singing ‘Kumbaya.’ And it scares them. They think we want to take away the things that make them happy, the things that make their lives easy. They have the mistaken impression that we won’t be happy until everybody is living in a hut with a dirt floor, wiping our butts with leaves.

The very simple idea that we should try and get across is that the Green Revolution is all about making their lives better.

For example, buying food and products generated locally not only cuts down on pollution (because if it’s made locally, it didn’t have to be shipped there by a giant, exhaust-spewing truck), it also keeps money in the community, as opposed to having it shipped off to some corporate headquarters. Plus the fewer trucks on the road, the less traffic you have to contend with.

An even more cut-and-dry example is this: If you live in an area that gets a lot of sun and were to install solar panels on your roof, not only would you get free electricity for your own home, you’d actually feed any extra power your panels generate back into the system, for which the power company PAYS YOU.

Another thing to remind them of is that they are already part of it. Over the last twenty years, refrigerators have done the same job using less than half the electricity. And the less energy their refrigerators use, the lower their energy bills are. The revolution has already been improving their lives without them even noticing.

I know thinking about it this way may upset some of those who think that more drastic, immediate change is necessary. People who think we have to stop producing harmful chemicals NOW and stop living off of fossil fuels NOW. I’m sympathetic to those points of view, but trying to shove ideas down the throats of people who can’t even bring themselves to use CFLs will simply engender more defensive suspicion and bitterness. By introducing small, demonstrable benefits to the masses it will be easier to help them start thinking more about the consequences of their actions and choices.

The more of us that care, the faster the revolution can go.

opinion: carbon calculator, week 8

 

 

Week 8 in the continuing series of what is missing from Carbon Calculators.  

There is a list of the things that those calculators don’t ask, thereby eliminating them from their algorithm. These are the things that are sometimes the meat of the matter, so to speak. By altering these things, you could affect your true footprint in ways unimaginable and truly make our planet sustainable.

 

DRINKING SODA

The way this simple drink impacts our lives is incredible.  

There are the obvious things like the emissions produced from the production, marketing and transportation of the cola.  But, what about the not so obvious things.

The can is made out of aluminum.  While most of us recycle, it doesn’t change the fact that the raw material, or resource, was taken from the Earth in the first place, never to be returned.  Also, the recycling process does not have a 100% reclamation rate.  There are residual losses that have to be made up for by taking from the resource, again.  In other words, lets say you need 100 cans, so you recycle 100 cans.  However, that process only makes 80 cans, so you need to obtain 20 cans worth of raw material.  But now, you need 200 cans because sales have increased this year.  Now, you need to obtain 120 cans worth of raw material.  

The cans, until the FDA issues a ban, contains Bisphenol-A.  This is a chemical that is used in the synthesis of making the cans or plastic bottles.  Most research indicates that this is an environmental hazard, in that it is toxin in our bodies that acts as a hormone mimicker, creating cancers and deformities on vast scales.

The biggest culprit to making sodas an environmental cesspool… the high fructose corn syrup.  In the last 50 years, corn has become the largest commodity crop in the world, but mainly the United States.  It now accounts for 80% of our agriculture, althought 0% of it is edible to humans.  Unless, of course, it goes through a chemical process altering it into HFCS.  Despite what the commercials say, this stuff is NOT as natural as sugar.  

How does this hurt the environment?  There are many, but the biggest issue: pollution.  Commodity corn is very different than the corn you grill during the summer.  Commodity corn is the corn that is used to sweeten everything in your cupboard, feed our livestock, makes the cereal you eat in the morning, and even makes the boxes that the cereal comes in.  Commodity corn is 100% genetically modified.  

This means that a farm that used to only be able to produce 10 bales of corn, can now produce 200 bales of corn.  The plant has been genetically engineered to not mind close quarters.  However, the problem with this is that because of how much corn is being grown and lack of little else, it has sucked up anything good from the soil and left it barren.  Currently, for every American there is considered to be 4 acres of food available to them.  In ten years (!), that number is expected to decrease by 50%.  A major part of this is because some of the land has to be taken out of the equation because it is dead.  In order to grow all that corn you need fertilizer and pesticides.  And, not the stuff that used to be available to us.  As we have gotten stronger and stronger pesticides, we have gotten stronger and stronger pests.  There is one weed that has proliferated across 22 states, and the only thing that will kill it is Agent Orange.  Want to know how they found that out?  The same company that made the GMO corn, well, they make Agent Orange.

So we have barren land, we have weeds and bugs that won’t die and are killing every crop that is not corn, and we also have dead zones in the ocean.  All the poisons we are putting on the corn to make it usable, are getting washed off the plant and that water is making its way into the ocean.  In fact, like clock work, at harvest time, there is a plume of dead in the Gulf of Mexico because of fertilizer and pesticide runoff that traveled down the Mississippi.  Therefore, our fish are dying and the ones that are alive are pumped full of these awful chemicals that we are then grilling up to eat with the corn!  

Lastly, your soda is making you fat.  The science can be explained, point by point.  However it is interesting to note that as our intake of HFCS has gone up, our waste lines have increased.  But, the point that is necessary from this… the heavier you are the more likely you are going to turn up the air conditioning, stick to a commute in your car, buy more clothes because your size is going up, and so on.

The heavier you are the more of a drain on the environment you are.

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