Throughout your week, take note of how many plastic straws you use. Do you use one when you go to eat at a restaurant, or when you buy an iced coffee? Is it possible you use plastic straws at home? If you use so much as one plastic straw in the next week, you could make one small change in your life to contribute to a drastic change in the environment.
Made from petroleum, plastics are made into thermoplastics and thermosets (McGehee). Thermoplastics can be recycled and include items such as soft drink and water bottles, shampoo bottles, and shopping bags. These can be identified by locating the recycling symbol with either a “1”, “2”, “3”, or “4” label. These correspond to polyethylene terephthalate (PETE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and low-density polyethylene (LDPE), respectively. Thermosets include items such as liner in cereal boxes, styrofoam egg cartons, and baby bottles. These are identified with the recycling symbol containing a “5”, “6’”, or “7” which correspond to polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), and other. Thermosets cannot be recycled because they would scorch in attempt to reheat and remold the plastic (Cowan).
Plastic straws are usually a polypropylene – they can’t be recycled. Additionally, over 500 million plastic straws are used by Americans daily, they are the 11th most found ocean trash, and it can take a plastic straw up to 200 years to fully decompose (Hugh). Because they are on the smaller side of non-recyclable plastics, they can do more harm: “The smaller those pieces get, the more places they can go” (Science News for Students). As these plastics become smaller and smaller, they become what it known as “microplastics”, making them more likely for marine life to ingest. In a recent study, it was found that zooplankton, that had swallowed plastic in algae, laid smaller eggs that were less likely to hatch (Science News for Students). If we do not start cleaning up our act, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. Although that may sound futuristic, it is just over a few decades!
If the environment isn’t important enough, plastic straws also have a negative effect on you – they cause bloating, cavities, ingesting chemicals, wrinkles, and excess sugar and alcohol consumption (Perspective).
Now that you’re convinced, how do we fix this problem? There’s an obvious solution: simply stop using straws. Although this may not affect you directly, there are people who have no choice but to use straws due to medical reasons. And, of course, some people simply prefer to use straws. Therefore, the absence of straws is not necessarily the best option for the majority. What about compostable straws? Although there is a good intention behind the creation of these, there is still the issue of whether people correctly compost the straws – unfortunately, this is not the best solution either. So, what is?
Buy a metal straw (or multiple)! They can be found online for only a few dollars, and typically come with a straw cleaner. They are a great alternative to typical plastic straw – they’re reusable, they protect our environment, and they prevent ingestion of chemicals (although, you may still end up with wrinkles). Go plastic straw-less today to protect our home!
Resources:
Cowan, S. (n.d.). Plastics by the Numbers. Retrieved from https://learn.eartheasy.com/articles/plastics-by-the-numbers/
Hugh. (2018, September 24). Environmental Impact of Plastic Straws (2018 Facts & Statistics). Retrieved from https://get-green-now.com/environmental-impact-plastic-straws/
McGehee, A. (2006, Nov). There are plastics and there are bioplastics-how much do you know? Countryside and Small Stock Journal, 90, 86-89. Retrieved from http://prx.library.gatech.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.prx.library.gatech.edu/docview/197239104?accountid=11107
Perspective | Plastic straws aren’t just bad for the environment – they can be bad for your body. (2018, July 03). Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/plastic-straws-arent-just-bad-for-the-environment–they-can-be-bad-for-your-body/2018/07/02/d682fdfe-7964-11e8-aeee-4d04c8ac6158_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.354afd959b55
Tiny plastic, big problem. (2015, Apr 10). Science News for Students, Retrieved from http://prx.library.gatech.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.prx.library.gatech.edu/docview/1672359979?accountid=11107
Why This Matters. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.strawlessocean.org/faq/
Look, we humans are awesome. We own this planet. If we really wanted to, we could spill every barrel of oil we have into the ocean, light it all into one gigantic fiery blaze, get on fire-proof boats in robot suits, somehow put on war paint inside the robot suits, build obnoxiously large metallic middle fingers, and shout to the heavens “TRY TO IGNORE THIS, MOTHER EARTH!!” Then, if we try really really really hard, we could clean it all up again, because some of us are actually sorry and some of us like to keep our marine food webs and all.
Why orchestrate such a display of power? Because we are the all-powerful movers of earth, the masters of fire and brimstone, and the makers of Haribo Gold Bears because holy freaking balls those things are really freaking delicious. We also have days of the year set aside where we butcher and devour different animals in front of children, purely because that’s what we’ve done for centuries. That right there is true power.
Point is, we are masters of everything we see. Remember in the Lion King where Simba is sitting with Darth Vader, who I guess came back to life to inhabit the form of a lion, and Vader is all “everything the light touches is our kingdom”? Yeah, we humans are exactly that. The only difference between humanity and Darth Vader is this: while the lions behave at the whim of the team of animators and writers that brought them to movie stardom, we are being toyed with by a tiny microscopic parasite that enter our guts, hitchhike a one-way ticket to our brains, and deliberately try to kill us by making us do really stupid and risky things.
I bet if you were eating a sandwich right before that last sentence, you probably aren’t anymore. It’s hard to eat something that’s been catapulted by your own shocked reaction, sending sandwich chunks to the opposite wall mid-chew. Even then, the walls may be really dirty, and that’s just not sanitary. I have no idea when I washed my walls last, and I keep my room relatively clean.
Why is this parasite trying to kill us? Simple. They want to get to our cats.
DAMMIT, MR. SCRUFFLES!!!
One of the reasons I wanted to write this article was to make myself look amazing. This isn’t hard, considering my creative wit and depth of scientific knowledge is nearly endless. The main reason I wanted to write this, though, was to talk about some badass ways that parasites can take over the minds of their hosts. It’s actually not uncommon to find mind-controlling parasites in nature. In fact, there is an entire field, called neuroparasitology, focusing on the effects a parasite can exert on host biochemistry, neurophysiology, and ultimately behavior and ecology.
Science jargon aside, there are some pretty badass parasites out there that tend to turn hosts into zombies. For instance, a genus of fungus called Chordyceps invades the mind of its insect host, forces it to climb to a high place, orders its newly-induced slave to latch on with a deathly grip, and busts out of the host all Alien-styled to shower its lethal spores onto unsuspecting insect hosts below.
Huuuugggghshhh, gross. I’m sorry I did that to you. I even feel a little dirty describing that. So, in an effort to make you and me feel less creeped-out and anxious, I’m going to comfort you by giving you increasingly creepy and troubling examples.
So there’s this non-sarcastically beautiful creature called the jewel wasp that wrestles cockroaches into submission and bites them in the neck to inject a mild dose of venom. This venom paralyzes the roach, and after a short time, causes the roach to move with absolutely no will of its own. The wasp then literally starts a one-float cockroach parade, leading the roach to the wasp’s burrow like a Siren leads a ship’s crew to the abyss to be eaten by mermaids or something. Gotta admit, I don’t fully understand the Sirens’ intentions. The wasp seals the roach inside the burrow with a single egg and a comically large timer counting down the exact moment until the egg hatches. When the timer goes off, the cockroach is devoured to death by the larvae and pupae of the wasp, giving rise to another generation of the most beautiful thing in the universe made entirely of cockroaches. Technically, these kinds of parasites are called parasitoids because they live on or within the organism for a long while, but they ultimately lead to the sterilization or death of their hosts.
The jewel wasp: made from 100% real cockroaches!! Holy balls, I just shuddered. Like, that seriously just happened.
Another badass parasitoid wasp, called Glyptapanteles, lays its eggs in a caterpillar to develop and consume the host. This time, however, the host does not die. IT DOES NOT DIE. No, these tenacious caterpillar hosts, half-devoured and all, cling to life like that chip I just dropped into my bowl of homemade salsa.
However, the wasp is not yet finished with its host. The caterpillar, after having live wasp pupae burst from its insides, spins a web of silk over the developing cocoons, stands upright on its back legs, puts on a lucky Japanese headband, and guards the cocoons with its life. Seriously, I wouldn’t dare screw with a half-eaten caterpillar sentinel, not even if I got a tummy full of wasp bodies as a treat afterwards. Eventually, the caterpillar starves to death, and that sucks, but at least– OK seriously curtains, what the hell are you doing?! Get it together!!!
OK, so I just bought one curtain yesterday, and not only is the color subtly different than the other curtains in my room, but they’re about a foot shorter, too. It keeps moving and I keep staring at it thinking “I can’t wait to give you back to the store”. I have never hated a curtain so much in my entire life. Please, curtain, quit moving and let me write.
Anyway, the point is that there are some pretty bitchin’ parasites and parasitoids that turn their hosts into zombies. You’ll notice though that all of the host examples I’ve used so far are from insects. Insects are little and dumb, and their tiny dumb stupid heads are really easy to invade. I mean, we’ve got huge brains! HUUUGGEEE!!! And they’re so complex, too! I mean damn, your visual cortex is so complicated that if you took every grain of sand on a 50-meter stretch of beach beach and lined them end to end, I’d be really disappointed because you decided to do that instead of listen to me talk about the visual cortex.
No, we are not immune. You read the first couple of paragraphs, so I assume you knew that already. So let’s just jump right into things and talk about Toxoplasma. This little protozoan is microscopic, but somehow it’s able to hijack the most complex brain on the planet like it ain’t no thang.
Braaaaainnnssss. Rat Amygdalaaaaaaaasssss.
Much like a forgotten old woman with nothing to live for, Toxoplasma loves cats. I’m not sure why Toxo loves cats so much, but in reality this is not very strange. See, parasites often have to infect several hosts in order to reach the one it’s really out to infect, called a primary host. All the hosts it infects in order to reach the primary hosts are called secondary hosts, or intermediate hosts. Secondary hosts often don’t feel the full effects of infection because the parasite isn’t reproducing inside of them, but occasionally a secondary host can have its behavior manipulated in order to reach the primary host. This is what Toxoplasma does. In fact, Toxo does this very very well.
The most clear-cut example of Toxo behavioral hijacking comes from the changes it can make to the brains of rats. Since Toxo is out to infect cats, it often causes the prey of cats to become more apparent in hopes that its current host will end up in the cat’s belly, the perfect place to make little Toxo babies. How does it cause rats to become more apparent? It forms cysts in the rat’s brain. In particular, Toxo cysts form near a region called the amygdala, a tiny region that controls fear and aggression. These inhibit the function of the amygdala, and basically cause rats to get sexually turned on by cat odors and actively seek cats by tracking their urine. Seriously not kidding.
Toxo gets really really interesting when we start talking about humans. The tiny protozoan can cause the formation of brain cysts just as it does in rats, though the damage is very subtle at first. These cysts aren’t as selective in their real estate options, so they just kinda form wherever. They release enzymes that convert a dopamine precursor into dopamine itself, triggering the action of receptors of a group of neurotransmitters called catecholamines (which include dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine). Ultimately, this causes people to do some wonky things.
What kind of wonky things? Well, for one, do you remember the Beatles? Well, John Lennon once saw a newspaper article about a car crash and wrote a song about it, which isn’t really relevant but does serve as a good segue into talking about how Toxo can make you crash your car. Just as in rats, Toxo can induce reckless behavior. So basically…man, I gave it away. Gimme a second to recover.
What else can Toxo do, you ask?? Well, it’ll deform your babies, of course!! Apparently Toxo can cause some pretty terrible damage to babies while they’re in the womb, causing deformities that I cannot describe to you. Let’s just say that I googled “Toxoplamodium babies” and it’s not likely that I’ll sleep tonight because of that decision. You’re going to google it anyway, aren’t you?? You heartless bastard.
See? It’s a real problem because this floating baby head appears on a banner with the name of the disease. That means it’s dangerous.
These things all seem pretty obvious. Sure, Toxo can cause people to be reckless, and babies are easy to injure as it (Anderson and May, 1967) is so the damage from Toxo seems a bit expected. What else can Toxo do that’s more unexpected? To find out, let’s take a quiz.
Question: Which of the following facts about Toxo is true?
A) Toxo can cause adult humans to become incredibly attached to their cats
B) Toxo can spread through dog semen, and can help upregulate testosterone to increase the odds of infecting a female
C) You’ll have no symptoms of Toxo in the later stages of infection
D) Toxo is associated with causing schizophrenia.
Answer: all of the above.
I find it absolutely mind-blowing that a tiny protozoan can increase a human host’s risk of schizophrenia. This isn’t some brain augmentation to an ancient area like the amygdala. Inducing hallucinations is not simple to do. On top of that, Toxo can cause humans to acquire ADD, OCD, and can even increase suicide risk. Just read this link. Your mind will be blown too.
Nature is truly out to kill us. How do I know? I am never wrong.
Dat p-value.
How else do I know? Toxo exists. We think we’re so high and mighty, immune from crazy zombie-inducing parasites.We are clearly not. Here’s where I make a point that we are not so different from components of the greater aggregate of beings we call “nature”, and that we ourselves are indeed a part of that. Then, here’s where I get really preachy, talking about how things we do affect the natural world, and here I mention the circle of life and make a funny quip about the Lion King and the irony therein that my argument of the circle of life has referenced an earlier part of this article.
Want to hear me talk about an animal, plant, bacterium, or whatever the hell else that you think is awesome? Leave me a message in the comments! I’ll probably ignore it, unless it’s actually really good. It’s worth a shot to try though.
Come on. Comment. Go for it.
To view the really interesting article most of this information came from, click this link!
Imagine you are in your last semester at college. You’ve done well academically, studied business, and you have a job offer lined up. Your parents are letting up on the constant brow beating about expectations and preparing for the future. The light at the end of the tunnel that opens up to the real world is as close as you have ever seen it. Just a few more classes to get through and you are home free. But, say, during one of those classes the professor says something that catches your attention.
“And believe it or not boys and girls, you could potentially grow gourmet mushrooms from recycled coffee grounds.”
You sit up, stop your doodle and look around. Did everybody just hear that? The professor just told us how we could make money on waste! Free money! Mushrooms! You approach the professor after class as all but one other student in the lecture file out of the auditorium. Though you probably wouldn’t know it at the time you are looking your future business partner in the face. Another light blinks on in the tunnel, and this one is green.
Sound far-fetched? It’s not. That is exactly how “Back to the Roots”, a startup enterprise centered on bringing consumers in touch with their food in a sustainable way – all while turning a profit and benefiting their community of Oakland, California – began. Nikhil Arora and Alejandro “Alex” Velez met for the first time after a lecture at UC Berkeley during their last semester in college in which the professor made the same proclamation I wrote above. Just as the professor had said, you can grow gourmet mushrooms off of waste like used coffee grounds, which is exactly what the pair did. First by experimenting in a frat-house kitchen after watching videos on YouTube on how the process should go, then to selling their mushrooms at a farmers market in Berkeley, California and eventually to their debut product the Back to the Roots at-home mushroom kit which features coffee grounds collected and re-purposed from Peet’s Coffee & Tea, a Berkeley based café, into do it yourself mushroom kits. Just add water at home to grow over a pound of gourmet mushrooms ready to eat!
The Back to the Roots grow-at-home mushroom kit
Within three years of their founding in 2009 Nikhil and Alex who are self-described “urban mushroom farmers” have secured distribution deals with massive retailers including Whole Foods, Bed Bath & Beyond and the Home Depot. They went from collecting coffee grounds headed for the landfill to being paid to haul it away by Peet’s Coffee & Tea, an early supporter of the young startups. As of 2012 they had diverted millions of pounds of coffee grounds destined for landfills. At roughly 3.6 million pounds in 2012 alone, that’s the equivalent of 175 dump trucks of material.
I first became aware of Back to the Roots through their recent Kicstarter campaign to launch a new product – the Aquaponics Garden – which like the mushroom kit is a “grow-at-home” concept herb garden using hydroponics. Growing herbs at home using this method is an old trick, but the mushroom wielding duo (Mario and Luigi?) added an interesting twist of a live fish in the nutrient bath. In this way, feeding the fish encourages it to… “feed” the plants which in turn clean the water for the fishy. The Aquaponics Garden has the same closed loop low waste ethos as the mushroom kit and is thus very much in line with the mushroom kit using recycled coffee grounds.
But I couldn’t avoid the nagging feeling that there was more afoot than delicious herbs and modern architecture inspired fish tanks. Around the same time that the Berkley grads were gearing up to take the DIY culinary world by storm, I began my PhD studies in Atlanta, GA. My new apartment with sweeping views of the side of a building and a dumpster covered in puke didn’t produce the kind of urban living I had expected when moving from rural Virginia where I went to college. Determined to spruce the place up, I wanted some potted plants. After all, there was a spacious balcony from which to enjoy to aforementioned scenery with a cool glass of sweet-tea (Atlanta, remember?). But lo – no direct sunlight. My first batch of plants withered soon after sprouting and becoming spindly, yellowed baby plants.
I turned to the internet – the font of all knowledge – to seek a remedy. Hydroponics was the logical solution. With hydroponics I didn’t need sun or warm weather. Hell, I didn’t even need soil. I settled on one branch of hydroponics – pardon the pun – called “aquaponics” in which the roots of the plant are interwoven into a passive binder, usually clay pebbles, and dangle into a nutrient rich solution. Through my research I found an easy design using a spray-painted plastic storage bin with holes drilled in the top and a fish tank aerator hot-glued to the bottom, a few feet of aluminum flashing to make a reflective enclosure, and a couple of 20 watt CFL bulbs plugged into the sockets of a “make a lamp kit”. Make a lamp indeed. A grow lamp.
Unfortunately, some of the critical supplies I needed couldn’t be found anywhere. I remember inquiring in the garden section of a home improvement store for things like “netpots” and “hydroton” and “rock wool” and “grow max powdered plant nutrients”. After a few minutes of listing name brands to a dumbfounded employee in an orange apron, I told him my intended application.
“I am trying to make an herb garden in my living room. Like basil and stuff.”
I felt it was a reasonable claim. After all, I had just put a few packets of seeds for exactly that – basil and stuff – in my basket.
A knowing look came over the clerk’s face.
“Oh. We don’t have that here.” he said with a little grin.
Back to the internet. It had to be done. A specialty store. I searched everywhere I thought was reasonable – head shops with fluorescent posters and glass “tobacco” pipes, local hardware stores serving as fronts for the mob, Jerry who lived behind the dumpster. Nobody had even heard of the stuff. When I finally found what I was looking for it was on the edge of the city in a run down industrial park. I called the store.
“Do you guys have…” I paused, remembering the clerk at the home improvement store, “Net pots?”
The clerk, “What size?”
This was the place.
When I arrived I found a brightly lit sign over the top of a small warehouse. Inside was every manner of tubing, pots, nutrient and testing apparatus that I had never heard of. They also had camouflaged “grow room tents”. It was an odd mix of completely legitimate looking industrial equipment – hydroponics is a great choice for farming organic produce in otherwise unsuitable locations – and everything I imagine I would need if I was looking for a great way to get kicked out of school.
I bought my supplies and a small booklet on hydroponic gardening. I paid in cash.
Is this aquaponics garden thing legit? I interviewed Nikhil, one of the co-founders of Back to the Roots to learn more. Nikhil and I discussed their recent success with a Kickstarter campaign to raise capital for production of the Aquaponics Garden, lessons learned from development of their grow-at-home mushroom kit, and the business philosophy that has helped them gain recognition.
—
Charged Magazine (CM): So, How’s it going?
Nikhil (N): Doing good. Just wrapping up the year so it’s been crazy. Comes to an end all of a sudden, Ya’ know?
CM: First, I wanted to congratulate you on the Kickstarter thing. You guys were asking for $100K and I think it closed a little less than week ago and you guys cleared almost two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars?
N: Yeah. Two-forty-eight. Almost 250 but it was crazy. It was really cool seeing the response from the community. It was the first time I’d really done something like that, the whole crowd sourcing thing, it just works! People we’ve never met before and don’t know who they were just coming out with their support. It was really cool.
CM: I think you’ve hit on something important – you’re talking about, I guess, the community involvement in your project. Is that the reason you guys decided to go with something like Kickstarter?
N: Yeah. I think we knew had a lot of support for the mushroom kit from our community and we felt that the aquaponics kit could be something similar. And I think to do really well on Kickstarter, and we were like studying it for a while before, you have to try to hit people on a different level. It wasn’t just a transactional thing. People felt more like they were supporting a movement, and they were supporting something bigger than themselves, and that’s why when we launched this product we felt it was something like that. It was something that inspired people and hit the right chord on Kickstarter so it kind of took on a life of its own. It was really cool to see and we got our product improved so much man, the 30 days from where it started off we got thousands of messages from people just out of good will giving us awesome ideas and suggestions. We just signed off on our final design yesterday to send off to the manufacturers and we made so many changes based on feedback we got from people.
CM: Right. And uh, speaking of that feedback, I read in a little bit on your Facebook page regarding this particular product and I definitely see what you mean as far as people who are very interested and passionate about the idea – but of course there was a little bit of negative feedback as well – specifically regarding the fact that you guys would have a live fish in the Aquaponics Garden. But you guys handled it surprisingly gracefully. You know, you said “yeah, we are definitely aware that this is something we need to build into our design” and it seemed you owned it right off the bat and the product is not even on the shelves yet, so I have to commend you on that.
N: Thank you man. It was a big design constraint for us. According to PETA and the most common standards, 1” of fish needs 1 gallon of water. That was our reasoning that for our 3 gallon tank you could have one beta fish in there or two smaller fish so we kept to that. One cool thing about aquaponics and why it’s totally different is that most of the time the health of fish is determined not by the size but more the toxicity of the water. You’re supposed to change the water in regular tanks really frequently, like once a week, to make sure it’s clean and ammonia is not building up but the cool thing with aquaponics is the plants are constantly cleaning the water out so it’s more about the constant quality of water for the fish.
CM: And definitely having the opportunity to grow yourself some fresh herbs at home is a driver.
N: Yeah. I think when you put something like that out into the world, on that kind of platform, we knew were going to get a lot of feedback, and we got some negative feedback and we got a lot of positive feedback that we were able to apply and make changes from. Overall it was a really cool experience and it would have taken us so long to get this data back if we had just launched into retail, because here you have such a direct communication with people I thought it was an awesome way to launch a new product.
CM: So, I think you guys mentioned this during an interview or something, but the connotation with two kids from Berkeley trying to grow mushrooms has a certain connotation – so I thought it was somewhat ironic that the second choice you guys pick is something with an equally, somewhat seedy I guess connotation, that is hydroponics and the whole growing plants in your closet kind of thing. I wonder if that thought occurred to you or what you think of that?
N: Yeah, you know it’s funny we never even thought about it that way. We had been kicking the idea around for a month or two before somebody said to us, “First you guys were growing mushrooms and now you’re selling hydroponics systems?” We just started cracking up and it hit us that we hadn’t even considered that both products have that same stereotype.
CM: Regardless of the stereotype though, I think the market you are attracting is a mix of DIY enthusiasts and people interested in knowing their food and on top of that doing something good for the environment and education. That’s the next thing I wanted to talk about, I think it’s pretty impressive what you guys are doing in the schoolrooms. You guys are doing product demos and have a program where you donate the mushroom kit to classrooms. Do you have similar plans to do that with the hydroponics kit?
N: We are. Actually, for the mushroom kit, every kit that you post a picture of on our Facebook page we donate one to a classroom of your choice. With the Aquaponics Garden we are trying to think how we can make that work. Now we’re thinking because we saw such a cool response to the whole Kickstarter idea, we thought, “Why don’t we implement that on our website?” We are thinking of having people who want to get a kit to a school of their choice can post that school on our website and they can get friends and family to pledge a dollar or two dollars and they can crowd source their own kits for schools or something like that. We are trying to think right now how to incorporate that because we are not launching them until late February or early March. We know this stuff would be amazing for schools because with the mushroom kit, it lasts for maybe a couple crops so maybe you get a month out of it, but with the Aquaponics Garden you buy it once and it lasts you for a lifetime, so teachers can have it for like 10 years you know? We want to see it in every classroom so we are trying to figure out what is the best way to make that happen right now.
CM: It’s way cooler than the class hamster.
N: Yeah!
CM: You and Alex are quite young, and I thought what is particularly interesting is that you guys are kind of wrapped up in the era of the startup culture. I would say some of your contemporaries in the tech fields go a completely different direction. It’s basically they have a handful of guys who work until they spin out an idea and they are seeking venture capital for like a million bucks. You guys every step of the way it seems said “How can we not only build our business and build a community involvement in our business? How can we build these connections where things that are good for our business are also good for getting jobs to the Oakland area?” For example in an interview you guys were talking about trying to find a domestic producer for your fish tanks.
N: Which we did. They are like 20 minutes away from us right here in northern California.
CM: Yeah, which I think is fantastic. I guess do you have a comment regarding your own education or maybe people who would be in your age group as far as the typical way of approaching a startup company?
N: Yeah, I just think for us it’s just been the right thing to do based on our values and I think it goes back to the environment we were in, how we were raised, things like that all played a part into that. But it’s hard to just pitch it to everyone saying “it’s the best thing to do based on our values, based on the environment” but at the end of the day it’s the right thing you do for your business too I think. There has been this transformation towards transparency and community in helping companies grow, and if you are not engaged in community from the start and giving back and being a positive part of that community then you are stunting your own growth. There has been a shift in the kind of companies people want to support and people are really looking for companies that are doing good. That’s the one message we really try to tell people. If you are not going do it because you love the environment or something like that then do it because it’s good for your bottom line. Being open to your community is the next wave of marketing and transparency. There is a really cool movie actually called “The Naked Brand” that talks about how it’s not about clever marketing anymore, it’s about transparent marketing and how transparency is the new clever in how to grow a business. It’s something we’ve become really passionate about and I think us being open about our flaws and what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong has actually helped us grow faster. Admitting mistakes has helped us grow faster. We’ve all graduated in the middle of this whole financial crisis, I think with a sense of “there has got to be a better way to do this.” I think people, consumers, are thinking the same thing that there has got to be a better way to do business and are looking to support companies that they feel are doing it the right way. I just think it makes sense all the way around.
CM: Another thing I thought was interesting is that when you guys were talking about originally doing product research for the mushroom kits you turned to YouTube, and when you were trying to find buyers for your leftover coffee grounds you turned to Craigs List. I am kind of going back to what I was talking about before with the tech startups where of course their business wouldn’t exist without the internet but it’s because their business is on the internet. How has the internet shaped your company?
N: Yeah. That’s dead on. We graduated having no clue about anything to do with mushrooms so we just watched every single YouTube video and found all these articles and books on different websites. It’s just cool how you can teach yourself anything now. There is no longer an excuse of “I didn’t know that, or I didn’t know how to do that.” You can just log on and teach yourself anything. We taught ourselves mushroom farming on coffee grounds from YouTube. It democratizes business and startups and education because you can go to a library and long online and just figure it out.
CM: What are your goals for the launch of the Aquaponics Garden?
N: For us, so much about the Aquaponics Garden has to do with inspiration and education. Our big vision is to see how many classrooms we can get this into. We’ve taken it to some classrooms right now, this one prototype we have, and honestly it is incredible the response you get from kids. I think it’s maybe the combination of the fish, the bubbles going up from the pump or the sound of water coming back down, but it’s so stimulating for them that they just rush to it and ask all these questions. It’s crazy how fast they understand what’s going on with the whole ecosystem. That’s our biggest goal. We want to build this thing out so we can literally get this into every classroom. We feel like for every classroom you can get this in, you are changing 30 kids perspective on food and the environment. You are teaching them that things work together and there is no such thing as “waste” because the fish waste is making the plants grow. That’s our big vision. We really want to get this into schools.
CM: Sure. So my background is in engineering, and actually I have attempted to do my own hydroponics before. I moved into an apartment that had no sunlight, so I really couldn’t do any window planters so I made the whole enclosure with some CFL lightbulbs. When I was building my own design I spent a lot of time online to see what other people had done but I ran into a lot of kind of technical hiccups that I had to work through. So out of curiosity, I’m wondering what are some of the biggest technical issues you guys have run into trying to bring something like this to market?
N: The biggest thing for us has been bring this whole system down to a smaller scale – aquaponics is normally done on a larger scale – we took months of experimentation into how to get the ratios down, looking at flow rates to make sure the system was still functional at such a small scale, how many fish do you need, how many plants can you grow, things like that. It was constant learning, and we finally got to the point where we had produced a ton of these and put them in different households and it we had functional prototypes. Once we saw the basil popping up we got so pumped because we had figured it out. We were always tweaking along the way and we wanted to encourage communal learning around this where people are sharing tips on what worked. We want this to be a platform for people to get really creative with it – people want to try and grow flowers, different foods. One guy emailed us saying he wanted to put shrimp in there. It’s like people hacking into their own creativity.
CM: I’m interested in some of the manufacturing aspects. You mentioned you were able to find a local provider. Was that difficult given the way that everything – at least when you are trying to do it cheaply and in huge quantities – goes overseas? What did you learn from that experience?
N: It was a big learning curve all around. We talked to dozens of manufacturers. It’s funny, because you design something, and then you realize the first go-round when you take it to engineers who tell you “you can’t do this, you can’t do that” or it’ll cost you thousands of dollars so there was a lot of back and forth between design and engineering.
CM: Did you find a lot of pressure from existing industry to abandon your business philosophies as far as sustainability and local design are concerned?
N: We had a really good design partnership and at the end of the day I think Alex and I knew what we wanted to do and we wanted to keep it domestic – we wanted to keep it local – and there is kind of a statement about that so we shopped around until we found a partner who believed in that same vision. It’s tough. It is cutthroat, because every dollar of cost (in manufacturing) ends up being like 4 more dollars of retail because of markups and stuff like that, but we really wanted to keep it at a $50 price point. That was our big goal and we are working our butts off to do that. With that we had to compromise a lot, because we could have added a lot more features, but for us it was more important to get something out of $50 and leave room for people who really want to get into it with add-ons, but we wanted it to be available and accessible to everyone, at least to a lot wider market than having like a $100 price point.
CM: When you project into the future, how do you guys imagine you are going to maintain the regional impact you have in the Oakland area. Eventually you are going to need more space. What’s the plan?
N: Yeah, we are looking at a new space now but we want to stay in Oakland. We see a massive opportunity to connect people to their food and we want to work our butts off to take that on and be the brand that people think about when trying to connect to their food. We want people to feel good that our company is doing stuff in the right way. For us, were not afraid of scale, were not afraid of size so we are working to grow and meet really ambitious goals along the way. The more we grow the more good we can do in the world is how we see it. The more we can develop a platform for our products the more capacity we have to do good and I think the community is going to help us get there. We’re maintaining an open door policy. I’m really pumped. I’m excited for this new year.
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For more information on Back to the Roots products, and a look at their growing list of accolades, you can visit their website: http://www.backtotheroots.com/
Would you ever think sheep could be used in the place of a lawn mower? How could an animal do the same job as a piece of lawn equipment?! Well, in the case of managing kudzu, sheep (and goats) are doing a great job of keeping the invasive species at baaah. Uh… I mean bay.
A couple of weeks ago, I joined a few members of my learning community on a trip to visit some live action kudzu eating. The sheep we visited were part of a company named Ewe-niversally Green (clever, eh?) which specializes in the removal of invasive plants, particularly kudzu. The company is currently working with Trees Atlanta, clearing multiple acres of kudzu from the metro area each week.
What is an invasive species and why are they bad, you ask?
An invasive species can be any organism (both native and non-native) in an environment which grows at a rate which impedes the natural order. Every ecosystem is comprised of multiple types of organisms in balance, and if a new species is introduced or if a native species begins to dominate the system, this balance can be thrown off. Kudzu, like other invasive species, intrudes on the naturally occurring species by out competing them for resources. Over time, if the invasive species is left to prosper, a decrease in biodiversity could result and the ecosystem could crash if the invasive species caused too much damage to the natural order of the ecosystem.
So how are invasive plant species typically removed?
Usually, kudzu is maintained via mowing or by the use of chemicals. By using sheep instead of traditional methods, the natural habitat is conserved in a more sustainable, “eco-friendly” fashion. The risk of funky herbicides seeping into the soil or water supply is greatly decreased, or potentially eliminated completely. Plus, the sheep are supplied with yummy vegetation which makes them quite content.
Sheep Fun Facts:
The sheep we visited (there were about 100 of them, including a few goats) could easily clear an acre of kudzu a day! They can also clear foliage off trees up to about seven (7) feet from the ground!
One sheep dog (a super cute Border Collie where we went) can herd around 1,000 sheep/goats by itself. The shepherd uses different whistle patterns to direct the well trained pup where to go and what to do. It’s quite spectacular!
And poison ivy? They love it! It’s their equivalent of a tasty candy bar! Azaleas and rhododendrons, though, are poisonous to the sheep.
If you would like to learn more about the sheep we visited, check out Ewe-niversally Green’s website here, or find them on Facebook here.
Conservation is not a commonly exercised word for most Americans. A booming economy once offered us blissful ignorance from contributing our share of frugality and it prevented us from joining the rest of the world in maintaining a conscience. However, as vital resources such as freshwater diminish and global population continues to propagate, Americans should begin to choose conservation despite the fact that most financially don’t need to.
Drinking water is already a precious resource in some countries and climate change will only increase pressure on freshwater supplies1. The city of Delhi is short on water supply this summer by about 50 million gallons2; children in sub-Sahara Africa drink out of waterholes where animals bathe in from lack of any other water3; and the UN reports that a third of the world’s population is enduring some form of water scarcity4. Considering other looming water wars across the globe, it seems immoral of us to purchase a plastic water bottle that takes 3 times as much freshwater to produce than what’s in the actual bottle5. Now more than ever, every drop counts.
The bottled water industry, although perhaps not the most environmentally hazardous industry in our country, is one of the cleverest for it seems to have duped us all. It made a $10.6 billion profit in 20106 on something we can all attain for free. It has managed to “manufacture a demand for water as a commodity to be bought and sold for profit,” stated Gigi Kellet5, director of the Think Outside the Bottle Campaign, by costing consumers $1,400 per year for eight glasses a day versus the $0.49 per year that eight glasses of tapwater a day would cost7.
Not only are bottled waters sneakily detrimental to bank accounts, their production uses 17 million barrels of oil annually – enough to fill one million cars for a year7. Extracting water for bottling places strain on flows to natural rivers, streams, springs, as well as ecosystems and groundwater levels5. Also account for the fact that plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose and only 13% of the 29 billion purchased water bottles annually are recycled8, and one might ponder choosing tap water over bottled.
Most Americans are aware of the world’s water crisis and the environmental consequences of consuming plastic-encased water, yet some still adamantly refuse to drink anything but bottled water. The largest misapprehension for most people is that bottled water is cleaner than tap water. Consider though that the bottled water industry spends tens of millions of dollars a year ($162.8 million in 20065) advertising their pristine water sources, falsely leading consumers to believe that it must, in fact, be cleaner than tap.
The fact of the matter is, 47.8% of all bottled water is derived from tap water9, including Glaceau SmartWater, Nestle Pure Life, Alaska Premium Glacier and Yosemite10. Pepsi was forced to change their Aquafina label in 2007 to accurately describe that their source came from a public water system11. Coca Cola’s Dasani is also derived from a municipal source. In 2003, Nestle’s Poland Spring was sued for false advertising in a class action lawsuit charging that their water, which supposedly came from springs, was actually just heavily treated ground water12. The suit also stated that another Nestle source “stands over a former trash and refuse dump, and below an illegal disposal site where human sewage was sprayed as fertilizer for many years.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reports that the source for Spring Water, the bottle with a picture of a lake surrounded by mountains on the label, was from an industrial parking lot next to a hazardous waste site. Brands such as Artic Falls Bottled, Glacier Mountain Bottled, and Everest are all bottled in New Jersey, Ohio and Texas, respectively10.
Not only does bottled and tap water generally come from the same place, the municipal water board purifies these sources more than the bottle manufacturers. Regulated by two different agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires more stringent testing and purity standards for tap water13 than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does to bottled water. In fact, bottled water rules actually allow for some contamination by E. Coli or fecal coliform while tap water rules prohibit any contamination. There are also no requirements for bottled water to be disinfected or tested for parasites, unlike the rules for big city tap water systems.13
Several cases have been made for contamination in bottled water, including carcinogenic chemicals. The NRDC tested 103 bottled waters in 1999 and concluded that 4% of the bottles violated the excessive coliform bacteria standard, 21 bottles contained more bacteria than allowed, and 8 bottles had levels of arsenic that tested at a level of potential health concern.13
According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), lab tests for Walmart’s Sam’s Choice brand conducted in 2008 found bromodichloromethane, a cancer-causing chemical, at levels that exceed safety standards under California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986. The analyses conducted by the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory revealed disinfection byproducts, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes, fertilizer residue (nitrate and ammonia), plasticizers, and propellants within 10 popular water bottle brands they tested, reported EWG.
The FDA’s seemingly negligent rules are completely exempt for waters that are packaged and sold within the same state, which account for 60-70% of all bottled water sold in the United States13. If the product is declared on the bottle simply as “water,” “carbonated water,” “filtered water,” “seltzer water,” “sparkling water,” or “tonic water,” then it is not considered drinking water by the FDA and their quality standards are not required for these labels.13
On a side note, the vice president for communications of the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) is Tom Lauria, the former lobbyist for the tobacco industry. EWG points out that he “has had extensive experience distorting the facts and misleading consumers in an attempt to hide the truth about the industry that pays his salary.” The man who once denied that smoking was addictive14 is now communicating that bottled water is a beacon of health. Do you see the parallels?
Others argue that bottled water is just more convenient than tap water. Sadly, we have come to confuse a plastic bottle’s disposability with “convenience” but there’s nothing more “convenient” than clean EPA-regulated free water running from your kitchen faucet. Is the issue an unwillingness to stand at the sink with a reusable bottle for 10 seconds? Bottles such as Hydros come equipped with a filter so that you don’t even have to pour from a Brita filter pitcher anymore. Being on-the-go is not a noteworthy excuse either since there are public sources in every park, school, office, and stadium in the United States.
Although taste is highly subjective, arguments were also made that bottled water tasted better than tap water. Consumer’s tastes have been shaped by cunning marketing and the erroneous belief that bottled water is healthier than tap water. However, in taste test after taste test, people can’t tell the difference between the two. The University of Maryland’s Student Government Association (SGA) conducted a taste test between tap water and Pepsi’s Aquafina, their school’s official bottled water, and found that twice as many students preferred tap over bottled15. The hosts of Showtime’s television series Penn & Teller: Bullshitconducted a blind taste test comparing waters that showed 75% of New Yorkers preferred city tap water to bottled waters16. The hosts of the show conducted another test where a sommelier handed out water menus with $7 bottles of “L’eau du Robinet” (French for “tap water”), “Agua de Culo” (Spanish for “ass water”), and “Amazone” (“filtered through the Brazilian rainforest’s natural filtration system”) on them. The patrons had no idea that all of the extravagant bottles were filled with the same water from a hose in the back of the restaurant.
In the end, tap water tastes the same as bottled water, is more convenient, is less expensive (about 500 times less expensive17), and is purer than bottled water. Over 50 universities across North America have joined theBan the Bottlemovement that seeks to eliminate plastic water bottles from campuses. These campuses have recognized our country’s unspoken responsibility, a responsibly that comes with affluence and the ability to set precedents for other prosperous countries. They’ve recognized that we need to start conserving whatever we can because we share the world’s resources with 9 billion other people. They’ve recognized that corporation’s privatization of water has lethal consequences for those less fortunate than us and that tap water is the environmentally noble choice. It’s time for everyone else to opt for tap water too.
1 Kundzewicz, Z.W., L.J. Mata, N.W. Arnell, P. Döll, P. Kabat, B. Jiménez, K.A. Miller, T. Oki, Z. Sen and I.A. Shiklomanov, 2007: Freshwater resources and their management. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 173-210.
2 “Delhi Water Crisis to Worsen.” Gulf News. Al Nisr, 21 June 2012. Web. 31 July 2012. <http://gulfnews.com/news/world/india/delhi-water-crisis-to-worsen-1.1038737>.
3 “New Straw to Kill Disease as You Drink.” BBC News. BBC, 04 Apr. 2006. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4967452.stm>.
4 “The Global Water Crisis.” UN News Center. UN, n.d. Web. 31 July 2012. <http://www.un.org/works/sub2.asp?lang=en>.
5 Gies, Erica. “Rising Sales of Bottled Water Trigger Strong Reaction from U.S. Conservationists.” NYTimes.com. The New York Times, 19 Mar. 2008. Web. 31 July 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/business/worldbusiness/19iht-rbogbottle.html?_r=1>.
6 Burnham, Ted. “Battling The Bottle: Students And Industry Face Off Over Water.” NPR. NPR, 12 Feb. 2012. Web. 31 July 2012. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/12/146692656/battling-the-bottle-students-and-industry-face-off-over-water>.
7 Bosque, Tomas. “7 Bottled Water Myths Busted.” Ban the Bottle. N.p., 1 Mar. 2012. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.banthebottle.net/articles/7-bottled-water-myths-busted/>.
8 Didier, Suzanna. “Water Bottle Pollution Facts.” Green Living on National Geographic. National Geographic, n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://greenliving.nationalgeographic.com/water-bottle-pollution-2947.html>.
9 Shapley, Dan. “Almost Half of All Bottled Water Comes from the Tap, but Costs You Much More.” The Daily Green. Hearst Communications, Inc., 12 Aug. 2010. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/bottled-water-47091001>.
10 “6 Types of Bottled Water You Are Drinking.” Reader’s Digest. N.p., Aug. 2011. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.rd.com/health/wellness/6-types-of-bottled-water-you-are-drinking/>.
11 “Aquafina Labels to Spell out Source – Tap Water.” CNN. Reuters, 27 July 2007. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/07/27/pepsico.aquafina.reut/>.
12 “Nestle Sued for Falsely Advertising Poland Spring Water.” Water & Wastes Digest Magazine. Scranton Gillette Communications, n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.wwdmag.com/nestle-sued-falsely-advertising-poland-spring-water>.
14 Landman, Anne. “Lauria Quit Cigarettes, But Now He’s on the Bottle.” PR Watch. Center for Media and Democracy, 3 Sept. 2010. Web. 02 Aug. 2012. <http://www.prwatch.org/node/9415>.
15 Saravia, Claire. “Bottled Water Loses to Tap in Taste Test.” Diamondback Online. The Diamondback, 10 Nov. 2010. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/bottled-water-loses-to-tap-in-taste-test-1.1770525>.
16 The Truth About Bottled Water. Perf. Penn and Teller. YouTube. Showtime Television, 28 Feb. 2009. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdvJOF-2mm0>.
17 Derbyshire, David. “Tap Water as Healthy and Far Cheaper than Bottled, Says Watchdog.” The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Limited, 29 June 2006. Web. 1 Aug. 2012. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1522617/Tap-water-as-healthy-and-far-cheaper-than-bottled-says-watchdog.html>.
As a supporter of the “Let’s stop wearing shoes” movement that seems to be taking over the mentality of both young adults and shoe manufacturers alike (that is a later story, though), I often find myself lamenting the amount of shoes I am required to pack when going on vacation with my mother. As a supporter of traveling and not destroying the environment in the process, those same trips with my mother tend to stress me out. Previous trips have found us in France and Ireland in GIANT tour buses that make me cringe when I think of the carbon emissions coming from my enjoyment of a new country.
I have newly found faith in my mother’s traveling compulsion these days. Immediately upon finishing my first year of college, my mother and I hopped on a plane and flew to San Jose, Costa Rica to join a trip with G Adventures, an eco-friendly tour company based in Canada (and one where I was only required a pair of flimsy sandals in order to be comfortable).
The highlights of the trip included white water rafting, ziplining, and a safari with a whole lot of monkeys. So let’s go into picture heavy post, because I very honestly cannot encompass this trip in words.
All I could think of with these flowers was what an awesome ladder they would make.
Farms in La Fortuna have the oddest peppers.
This iguana had his very own creek by the hotel that fed him.
I never understood why they get called snake birds… Looks like a bird to me.
I see ibises and cranes at home on the river, but it was just so much more fun in a new place!
Apparently, we were really lucky to see these little guys on Cano Negro.
Everyone wants a cute little capuchin for their own, right?
The Jesus Lizard: so named because it can run on water.
This was someone’s private beachfront right by our hotel in Montezuma!
The beach by our hotel in Montezuma had some AWESOME driftwood.
I loved just going by the ocean and watching the waves crash every morning.
Some howler monkeys getting a tad bit frustrated with us just before we went ziplining through their treetops.
A small tunnel created by water erosion just off of Tortuga Island.
G Adventures offers many kinds of tours. My mother and I took a YOLO trip, which is a budget-style trip kind of perfect for us. The trip style that interested me the most, and is how our tour guide Jorge started in this line of work, is a “Volontour” trip. Jorge worked at a biology research center studying leatherback sea turtles. Volunteers, through G Adventures, were able to work alongside the biologists, protecting the sea turtles as they hatched.
I’m still a bit in awe of the fact that I got to be in Costa Rica, sharing the tree tops with howler monkeys. I’ll be back when I get over that awe and talk to you guys about college (yes, yes, it is that time).
In 1970, 100,000 people gathered in Washington DC to protest the Vietnam War. The deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin that year had fatally deglamorized the hippie lifestyle. Smog-darkened skies were accepted as a byproduct of prosperity. Environmental concerns had never been at the forefront of serious discussion. It was Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson who first proposed a “national teach-in” on the environment to take place at every university campus in the US. What better way to ignite a grassroots-led movement than to take advantage of the existing energy from anti-war protests? The poignant events of 1970 awakened an emerging consciousness on which Earth Day was able to capitalize. Consequently, 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day, and thousands of colleges protested against the deterioration of the environment.
Forty-two years later, new generations are still helping to make Earth Day a huge international event. Although the subject of most concern has shifted from local toxic pollution to the complexities of climate change, Earth Day continues to stress the importance of a sustainable society.
This year at Georgia Tech’s 15th Annual Earth Day celebration the opportunity to unite our voices for a sustainable future was palpable. Events were designed to encourage environmentally aware behaviors such as recycling, energy efficiency, and reducing disposable items. The event featured a car exhibit, a green market, a clothes swap, an E-waste drop-off, free bike repair stations, Captain Planet, Reynard the Fox, a stage, and 70 exhibitors all on one sidewalk.
Most of Earth Day, I volunteered with the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) booth where participants had the opportunity to paint a recycled cardboard tile, with labels “land” or “water” or both, so that when all tiles were pasted together, a map of the world emerged. The message? “EWB wants to highlight the interconnectedness of our environment, our world and the importance of sustainability. Our goal at EWB is to help people on an international level to become more sustainable,” said EWB president Hannah Kates.
An Earth Day-goer for the last few years, Janna San Juan noted, “Earth Day seems like it’s growing every year. It gets people excited and reinforces the idea of being green.” She was looking forward to trying the ‘Renewable Energy Challenge’ where participants could race against a solar panel on a stationary bike to generate energy. They could light a bulb or fan themselves, such as the person in this image chose to do.
Shoes flying through the air soon caught my attention. The ‘Shoot the Shoe’ booth was run by the women’s basketball team, where participants had the opportunity to throw an old tennis shoe through a basketball hoop. Earth Day committee member, Luke Chambers, who was promoting the booth in collaboration with Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program said, “Nike’s shoe recycle program reduces the need for new rubber and other materials which decreases environmental impact. Our goal is to collect 500 pairs of worn-out tennis shoes.” He also went on to tell me that $10,500 worth of reusable office supplies were donated for the ‘Office Supply Exchange’ event where students could shop for free.
Before I could walk anywhere else, I was accosted by what could only be described as the Abominable Plastic Bag Man. One More Generation, the non-profit organization founded by two elementary school students, was at Earth Day to raise awareness about Americans’ plastic bag use. Fittingly, their “Plastic Bag Monster” donned 500 bags, the average person’s yearly usage and, hopefully, scared many others into purchasing reusable grocery bags.
Like a child at a carnival, I let my senses lead the way at this event, so I ended up next in front of the live music. This anomaly of a band, appearing in swing attire while at one point dishing out Spoon’s punk rock song “I Turn My Camera On,” attracted a large crowd with their energetic dancing and old school vibes. Champagne Roomlead singer Jared McGrath announced to the audience in between songs, “My favorite thing that comes from this Earth would have to be… beer.” Cheers to that.
After taking dozens of photos of the self-proclaimed “Southern Fried Swing Punk” band, I turned around to find another simple sensory boost. Dry ice! It was the American Chemical Society giving out cups of cold smoking punch. They really sealed the deal with some bubble action. By filling a bowl with a block of dry ice and running soapy water over the top, they created a ‘CO2 bubble’ which eventually erupted into a cloud of fog. The kids, myself included, loved it.
Free T-shirts were available for a very small labor fee. You could collect your olive green “Helluva GREENgineer” shirt by participating in the ‘deconstructed’ maze. Four eco-trivia stations were distributed throughout the event representing earth, wind, fire, and water. Participants collected a stamp at each booth by answering the trivia question correctly, and four stamps got you the 100% organic cotton t-shirt. “We’ve already given out about 150 stamps,” Marcela Moreno, a volunteer at the wind booth, informed me two hours into the event.I quickly decided to take advantage of this freebie and ran to each station before the event ran out of shirts.
Near the end of the event, I went back to the EWB booth where all the tiles had been painted. As I helped paste the painted world back together again, I couldn’t help but think about all of the strides that have been made since the first Earth Day in 1970. The development of the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, necessary laws that were formed because of the grassroots effort behind an unsettled generation. I then noticed that someone had painted a new continent in the middle of our Pacific Ocean, and someone else had painted trees and flowers in our Antarctica. Clearly, we still have a lot to work on, but with a united society and events like Earth Day, we can still continue to make large strides to save our environment.
