Category: climate change

The Plastic Disaster

Every day we should be working to reduce our exposure to plastic.  

The tragic chemical spill in Palestine, Ohio highlights how dangerous plastic production is to the public. Plastic creates pollution from every stage of its life, from the extraction of fuel, to shipping and manufacturing, and then end of life disposal.   Plastic is made from fossil fuels. Why would we want something made of fossils fuels to store our food, make our baby toys and bottles or line our water pipes. PVC pipes can leech chemicals into our drinking water. Plastic containers contain toxins and microfibers, and the disposal of plastic creates harmful pollution from burning, sitting in landfills or floating in our lakes, streams and oceans. 

Producers of plastic need to be held responsible for the products they produce and the hazardous waste they create. This should include the production pollution created, the shipping and the disposal. This would save taxpayers lots of money! 

 Below is a sampling of op-eds that have been written on this deadly disaster. 

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/02/24/opinion/east-palestine-disaster-was-direct-result-countrys-reliance-fossil-fuels-plastic/?event=event12

The East Palestine disaster was a direct result of the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and plastic. The hazardous chemicals being transported by the derailed train — including vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen — are used to make PVC, the world’s third most used type of plastic, typically used in pipes to deliver drinking water, packaging, gift cards, and toys that kids chew on. 

Plastic threatens human health at every stage of its life cycle, from the toxic substances released into the air during fossil fuel extraction, to the dangerous transport of these chemicals, to the plastic particles and toxins we consume from our food and drinking water, to the hazardous emissions from facilities burning or burying the waste after consumer use. 

Toxic Train Derailment in Ohio Raises Questions About Rail Safety and Hazardous Chemicals – EcoWatch 

Chemical Train Disaster in Ohio | Sierra Club   

Every year, millions of trains with highly toxic cargo pass close to our homes, schools, and public spaces. This includes poisonous substances like vinyl chloride, as well as coal, oil, and gas. There are simple ways that state and national leaders can ensure that a disaster like this doesn’t happen again. This includes requiring better train braking systems and early warning systems. Some materials, like vinyl chloride, are toxic at every stage and should no longer be in use. Unfortunately, rail companies like Norfolk Southern continue to lobby to avoid regulation and safety measures, and they’ve also slashed their workforce, making an already risky situation even worse. 

NY Times Op Ed by Rebecca Fuoco and David Rosner:  

Freight trains typically transport more than two million carloads of hazardous materials each year, including many chemicals. Vinyl chloride is particularly dangerous and increasingly common, used primarilyto make polyvinyl chloride, better known as PVC, a hard plastic resin used to produce pipes, wire, cable coatings and packaging. We should begin phasing out the use of this chemical. 

The East Palestine disaster was a direct result of the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and plastic – The Boston Globe 

Biden’s EPA Restores Rule Protecting Vulnerable Communities From Mercury and Other Toxic Power Plant Emissions – EcoWatch   

Toxic Train Derailment in Ohio Raises Questions About Rail Safety and Hazardous Chemicals – EcoWatch 

Reduce Your Plastic Footprint

This post below is from Hennepin County:

Plastics are common because they are cheap, lightweight, and versatile. More than one-third of plastics are used for packaging, including food packaging, grocery bags, and straws, which are all items that get tossed after one use. Plastic use has increased 20 times since the 1960s and will continue to increase if changes aren’t made.

The amount of plastic we use is problematic because:

  • Most plastics are made from oil. About 4% to 8% of the world’s oil production is for plastics.
  • Many plastics can’t be recycled. In Hennepin County, less than half of the total plastic generated is recycled.
  • Plastics collect in our lakes and rivers and break down into micro and nanoplastics. These are threats for birds and wildlife and have known and unknown concerns for human health.
  • Micro and nanoplastics have been found in our soil, water, and food. About 60% of microplastics come from high-income countries in the form of tire dust, pellets, textiles, and personal care products.

Your plastic footprint

When you’re starting a journey to use less plastic, a good first step is to quantify your personal impact. By estimating the waste you create, you can decide what to focus on during these four weeks. The Omni Calculator plastic footprint calculator is one such calculator that you could use.

Replacing disposables with reusables

Once you have a better idea how much plastic you use, get started today with these five simple swaps for single-use items:

Reusable produce bagPlastic bags: Start using your reusable bags for groceries, produce, and more, including clothing, shoes, gifts, or whatever you buy. Keep some bags near your door or in the car for easy access.Plastic storage baggies: Plenty of alternatives for plastic zip bags exist. Use reusable containers in glass, ceramic, metal, or choose reusable snack bags.Plastic utensils: Start by bringing your own reusable utensils for your home packed meals, then start refusing disposable utensils when they are offered in restaurants or to-go. Find a few reusable utensils at a thrift store if you don’t want to risk losing pieces of your regular set.Plastic wrap: Use reusable containers with lids for storing foods, place a plate over a bowl in the refrigerator, or try an option like beeswax cloth to wrap over the top of your containers.Straws: Cut back your use or eliminate plastic straws by using a reusable straw instead. Request no straw when you place orders in person or online.

There are Things You Can Do Everyday

Climate march in New York City

We can all make a difference!

As our planet continues to warm, we are facing many consequences. California is facing incredible rains, Europe has unheard of winter warmth, and where I live, we have smelly bad air warnings. We cannot throw up our hands and claim there is nothing we can do. Every activity we participate in affects our warming planet. Can we buy less, drive less, eat less meat and use less plastic? Little things make a big difference.

10 Things You Can Do to Help Save the Earth – EcoWatch     

2022 Extreme Weather Disasters in the US Cost $165 Billion, NOAA Says – NBC New York   

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2023/01/10/8-heat-records-that-were-broken-in-the-last-8-years-the-hottest-on-record/?sh=36a2950f455b

2022 was the world’s fifth-warmest year on record (msn.com)   

Be Car-conscious 

If you can, stay off the road two days a week or more. You’ll reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 1,590 pounds (721 kilograms) per year [source: EPA]. It’s easier than you think. You can combine your errands — hit the school, grocery store and dog daycare in one trip. And talk to your boss about teleworking. It’s a boon for you and your company. But being car conscious also means maintaining your car on a regular basis. You can improve your gas mileage by 0.6 percent to 3 percent by keeping your tires inflated to the proper pressure, and be sure to make necessary repairs if your car fails emission [source: EPA]. 

Give Up Plastics 

The statistics are shocking: People around the world buy 1 million plastic drinking bottles every minute, and use up to 5 trillion single-use plastic bags every year. Humans are addicted to plastic, and hardly any of it — about 9 percent — gets recycled. A staggering 8 million tons (7.25 metric tons) ends up in the ocean every year. Break the cycle. Stop buying bottled water. Say no to plastic shopping bags and use cloth bags instead. Don’t use plastic straws. Drink from a reuseable cup instead of a plastic one. Avoiding plastic can divert a ton of waste from the oceans and landfill. 

peace on earth

Clean air and clean water are better for all of us. Buy less and drive less.

https://xerces.org/blog/new-years-resolutions-that-will-benefit-nature-wildlife-and-invertebrates

New Year, Less Food Waste

40% of food is wasted in the United States!

How can you turn food waste into a game! ideas for frittas, soup, rice bowls, wraps and grain bowls below.

We have a crisis of food waste in the United States. Households account too much wasted food. Not only does wasting food, waste valuable resources and lots of water, but also food in our landfills decomposes creating and giving off methane gas which is a harmful air pollutant contributing to global warming.

Melissa Clark for the New York Times is writing about ideas to deal with food waste

“Susan Shain’s recent article for The New York Times has jolted me back into my composting groove. She wrote about how an Ohio community substantially reduced its food waste, which is a huge contributor to greenhouse gases and responsible for twice as many emissions as commercial aviation in the United States. That’s a lot of emissions.
Households, she writes, “account for 39 percent of food waste in the United States, more than restaurants, grocery stores or farms. Change, then, means tackling the hard-wired habits of hundreds of millions of individuals, community by community, home by home.”
The statistics left me nowhere to hide. What we do in the kitchen can make a difference: creating meal plans, shopping with a list, composting and using up the leftovers.
This last one is my happy place. I turn it into a game, saving bits of this and that in little containers, then puzzling out how to use them to seed future meals.
That handful of sautéed kale, those roasted vegetables, a tranche of salmon fillet? Chop it all up and fold it into a creamy risotto for color and flavor, or make a base for a loaded frittata.
Half-wilted bunches of cilantro or parsley and bags of baby arugula or spinach can find homes in all kinds of soups, like a lemony turkey and white bean soup, or pasta dishes like a pantry-friendly midnight pasta. Sturdy salads — cucumber or, say, yesterday’s takeout green papaya — will work as a topping for any rice bowl, including sesame salmon and katsudon (pork cutlet bowls, so beloved in the anime series, “Yuri!!! On Ice”).
If you have a motley band of root vegetables softening in your produce drawer, perhaps from an overenthusiastic spree at the farmers’ market or a surprise bonanza from your CSA box, you can upcycle them into a warming, adaptable vegetable soup. Enlist your wilted or leftover greens; rutabagas, turnips and kohlrabi, come on in!
As for leftover dessert, a batch of brookies or bread pudding (made from stale bread). Let’s just say this is never an issue in my sweet-toothed family. We gleefully finish every crumb.
https://www.ecowatch.com/food-waste-guide.html

1. Take inventory of your fridge and pantry before you go shopping to make sure you prevent overbuying.

2. Create a meal plan so you can utilize ingredients appropriately. 

3. Buy “ugly” foods of all shapes and sizes. 

4. Properly store food in the fridge for maximum freshness. 

5. For vegetables past their prime, repurpose them in soups, casseroles, frittatas and more. 

6. Compost! For more on how to do that, see EcoWatch’s composting guide here.

Food waste from PBS:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/food-waste-is-contributing-to-climate-change-whats-being-done-about-it

Food Waste 101: The Facts and Solutions

A Plastic Treaty Needed

The first round of negotiations on a global treaty to halt plastic pollution has ended in a split on whether goals and efforts should be global and mandatory, or voluntary and country-led.

More than 2,000 delegates from 160 countries met in Uruguay for the first of a planned five sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), a UN negotiating body aimed at crafting the first legally binding agreement by the end of 2024.

The world desperately need a plastics treaty and it will be a long process to agree to something. The chemical industry that produces plastic plans to make more and more plastic, and controlling a strong industry is difficult! They argue recycling is the answer, but they have done a terrible job making plastic recyclable and safe for the public. Recycling is not the answer, less than 9 percent has been recycled since plastic’s creation. 

If there is one thing you do for your health, don’t drink bottled water!

Plastic particles are in our organs and blood streams. Plastic particles are in our babies when they are born. Plastic contains lots of toxics, I would avoid eating and drinking from plastic containers! 

Macroplastics like bags and bottles, and microplastics like fibers from synthetic clothing—is a planetary catastrophe of the highest order, and one that’s getting exponentially worse. Humanity is now churning out a trillion pounds of plastic a year, and that’ll double by 2045. The Planet Desperately Needs That UN Plastics Treaty | WIRED   

Plastic is not Recyclable

Reduce Food Waste

end food waste

Wasting food is an enormous waste of valuable resources!

Not only does wasting food, waste valuable resources and lots of water, but also food in our landfills decomposes creating and giving off methane gas which is a harmful air pollutant contributing to global warming.
From Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, household waste increases by more than 25%. Added food waste, shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons all adds up to an additional 1 million tons a week to our landfills. (Source: EPA)

Food waste from PBS:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/food-waste-is-contributing-to-climate-change-whats-being-done-about-it

Recycle or Landfill?

It is America Recycles Day. Is it a joke or is it real?

Producers of plastic need to be held responsible for the environmental disaster they have created! What do all those recycling numbers (1-7) mean?

Are we living in a fantasy world about recycling? For many years I have been so hopeful and happy as recycling has become the norm, but now new studies show it is not as wonderful as we had hoped. Only 5 to 9 percent of plastic produced has ever been recycled. The fact is, a lot of plastic packaging, even with those silly 1-7 numbers, is NOT recyclable! Companies and plastic producers **greenwash by claiming to recycle more than they do, and they greenwash by claiming their product is recyclable.

What about recycling paper, metal and glass? Are these recyclables? Paper, metal, and glass are valuable to recyclers, and do have a new life when recycled. Paper, glass and metal all have markets for their recycled material and can be recycled over and over.

Plastic is another issue. Markets for plastic are scarce. Also, plastic is loaded with harmful chemicals, and after being recycled the toxics become more concentrated. Even though the plastic chemical industry says they are recycling their products, the reality is very different. It makes me very sad, but I’m afraid the recycling of plastic is becoming a myth

“There’s a long history of corporations, and especially plastic makers, touting their products as recyclable to prevent regulation and public backlash. Many plastic items in the grocery store have a set of three arrows forming a triangle with a number in the middle—but it’s not a recycling symbol. It’s a resin stamp indicating roughly the type of plastic it is. The petrochemical industry created it to make consumers think the item is recyclable.” Greenpeace Report: ‘Most Plastic Is Just Not Recyclable’

Landfill or recycle: Working to recycle is still better than sending the packaging to the landfill. The plastic will sit in the landfill 5oo or longer years, where at least with recycling there is a chance, maybe someday, it will be turned into something new. Officials where I live claim collected plastic is turned into decking, siding, and lawn chairs. I still hope that is the case!

As a society we need to hold the producers of plastic accountable to create a product that can be recycled, a product that doesn’t contain toxic chemicals. Producers of plastic need to be held accountable for their product’s end of life.

Please recycle as much as you can, but also reduce the plastic that you use and plastic. Our planet and your health will be better for it! Thank you.

**What is Greenwashing? Pretending to be greener than in reality you are.

TerraCycle Collects Plastic Waste. Does It Really Get Recycled?

(bloomberg.com)   Greenpeace report finds most plastic goes to landfills as production ramps up : NPR

Overperform October

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
– Albert Camus

October is a magical month bursting with rich colors of red, orange and yellow, with a background of green. Stunning! Go for a walk or bike ride! Love our fragile planet!

Nature overperforms in October, and we need to respond by overperforming to take care of her! Every action matters.

Protect our beautiful world!

Unfortunately, 2022 has been an awful year for bad storms, and this year’s extreme weather is worse than in the past, and sadly future weather extremes will be worse than what we have seen this year. The good news is that it is not too late; scientists agree that we can still avoid many of the predicted impacts of future climate change, but only if we take compelling and urgent climate action. Because elected officials are slow to respond, we must all take individual climate action.

We are in a climate crisis, a plastic crisis, a democracy crisis, mental health crisis and a lying crisis.

We need to work overtime to protect our planet!

What can we do? Individual action is a powerful tool for reversing the climate crisis especially when millions of us unite together. The Actions for Happiness calendar below will help you navigate in a positive way through each day. Add your own daily positive thing to do for the Earth; use less plastic, drive less, waste less, vote, and always tell the truth, Demand people you know tell the truth and never share anything that might not be true. Like a historian check all your sources for truth! Finally, vote for our planet and truth!

Everyone can play a part by raising their voice, sharing solutions, and advocating for change –

https://www.startribune.com/climate-change-made-summer-drought-20-times-more-likely/600213266/

Communicating on Climate Change | United Nations 

Wealthiest 10% Responsible for Nearly 50% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Study Finds – EcoWatch 

Climate Change: Everything You Need to Know – EcoWatch

Tips To Use Less Plastic

Overperform this October, be optimistic, have fun, and enjoy this magical time!