Ironically, for the first time in my life I tried organically grown lettuce... It was a bitter-sweet experience to say the least. I really enjoyed it because it was crispier than the lettuce that isnt grown organically. By the way, I eat romaine lettuce so this is what I am talking about. I was fully enjoying it while celebrating that I was not impacting the inviroment by eating pestiside infested food. That was the sweet part. Alright, now for the bitter part, which is a no brainer but oh well. I was about half way through the package and found hundreds of tiny leaf eating bugs. Some almost microscopic. Now I had seen these bugs somewhere before...... Ah, yes! I remember.... I had a few flowers growing outside my residence. I tried many times to get rid of these bugs because they were devouring my plants and killing them. I did everything but spraying pestisides on them. I even went as far as carefully removing each individual bug and placing it oh soo carefully on another plant in my yard. (I know this sounds a bit rediculous and outragous. I am aware of that. LOL) I am not one for killing, even a little bug. Hey, they got to eat too. I understand why my plants were their prefferable choice of dinning out and laying thier eggs there. After all, I took good care of my plants. It was a reliable food and water source, not too much sunlight, and they were in no immediate danger. I would agree it was a perfect spot to plant their breeding community. Back to the part where they were depleating my plants rescources...... No matter how many I moved to another spot, the problem persisted. After all, I am sure that they laid their offspring in the plant somewhere. Some of them, the babies were the size of a mechanical pencil dot. Having some compassion for them, I decided to give up on their eviction. These were the same bugs on my lettuce that was on my plant. I figured I wouldnt be able to fully remove them, assuming they might have laid their offspring in the shaft of the lettuce, I said forget it. I am not sure if this is a universal problem with organic food (hence: organic- no bug killing pestisides). So I am debating..... Organic or NonOrganic......
paper bagsRecently, I have started recycling. I didn’t have the means to before I moved, but now I am. It was shock to me that about 90 of my waste is recyclable. Even though I have educated myself about these issues, it still shocked me. I didn’t expect it to be 90 percent. It also makes me aware of how much "convenient items" I buy. I have been making an effort to buy the less convenient packaged products. I am not sure what it is, but when I go to the grocery store, they seem to act like it’s a hassle to bag it in paper. They rarely ask "Paper or plastic?" and assume its Plastic. They get disappointed when I point out to them that I wanted paper. They get angry because it makes more work for them. They should really ask before they assume. It’s a simple task, why make it difficult? I have also been taking a look into organic foods (although it is quite a bit more expensive). I recently read that the additives that companies put in our food like BHT, can be unhealthy in the long run. Infact, they don’t even know what the long term effects are. Why are we putting items in the food that we don’t know what long term affect its going to have on the consumers who buy and eat that product? The issue has been raised that some of these additives may be linked to cancer. I don’t know about the general public, but I don’t want to find out that I have cancer, and then find out it was caused from an additive I could have not eaten. I have also been informed that companies give the animals we eat some types of human made products in their food to fatten them. Often times the animals die of heart attacks before they can load them up. I have been pondering the thought of vegetarianism in my mind for a while anyways. If we eat animals, isn’t it wrong to give them a tortured life before we kill them? I can’t imagine the life they have to live being fed chemicals to fatten them (and kill them often times), & Putting prophylactic antibiotics in their feed to prevent infection (I can understand treating them when they are sick, but why treat them if they aren’t?). Putting the antibiotic in the feed is putting the antibiotic out into the community. We as humans, who are eating this meat, get immune to those antibiotics. It has come down that some people are dying from simple cuts because they are immune to the only antibiotics that will treat it. Who really is paying the price just to give the sellers an extra buck?
The average lifespan in the USA is 75 years. How much garbage do we throw away in a lifetime? If you throw away a bag of garbage everyday and live to be 75 that is 27,375 bags of garbage for one person. Approximately there were 112 million people in the USA in the year of 2004. If 112 million people threw away one bag of garbage a day for 75 years that is 3,066,000,000,000 bags of garbage. If you throw away one bag of garbage every two days, that is 13,687.5 of garbage. Even if you throw away one bag of garbage a week that is 3,900 bags of garbage. "The U.S. generates approximately 208 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) per year; that's 4.3 pounds per person per day." Our household waste, 208 million tons, is only 2% of our landfills! The rest is created from mines, manufacturing, agriculture, construction and demolition debris.Thats alot of garbage! So where does all this garbage go? If you do some research on this subject you'll find that its difficult to get a solid answer. Why is that? Why isnt it common knowledge that is easily accessible? It is said that our garbage go to landfills. It is proven that eventually all landfills will leak. If we burn our garbage it still pollutes the air we breathe and our enviroment. When our garbage decomposes it produces methane (a greenhouse gas that is causing global warming, which is causing polar bears to drown, people moving because the water is rising, etc.). They try to capture the methane and turn it into energy, but on average they are only able to collect 75% of the methane produced, the rest is soaking into our enviroment. So what can we do to help our planet in terms of all of this? Recycle plastics, papers, metals, etc. Buy only enough food to consume so we are throwing away as little of food as possible. Stop using plastic bags when buying items. Only buy what is really nessessary, buying exsessively eventually pollutes our enviroment. And there is much more we can do. Why should we do this? Because this is the reason our planet is in tragedy situations (to an extent) and for the future generations. Your kids and grandkids, etc. Its only going to get worse overtime if we dont do something about it. A great way to gain some more knowledge on this subject is to listen to the fantastic Jane Goodall Earth Day lecture at http://www.janegoodall.org/ or doing some of your own research. My rescources for my information are:
