Photo Credit: Angus Clyne

Taking an environmental ethics class really gets you thinking about a lot of different issues.  What do you think is a big issue?  

To me, a very controversial issue is that of population control.  It is a very broad issue, covering everything from general basic rights to world hunger.  However, I think that the most interesting facet of the issue is a bias against women.  Having a family is sometimes a common dream among women, but often times, it is expected of women to bear many children and to stay at home to take care of them.  Sometimes it is the choice of these women because they decide that they want to be with their family instead of working, but many women do not have the option of working because it is not socially acceptable.

There is much conjecture that enabling women to work not only decreases the amount of children they bear because they want to take care of their children, but it also reduces poverty and empowers women.   The issue is not only a human rights issue but environmental as well.

I wanted to write this because this is a problem and a solution I only recently became aware about from readings from an environmental ethics class and my work at the Women’s Center on campus.  Are there any issues that you think should be a priority?  And what can we do about these issues?

Photo Credit: Ingrid0804

What are your plans this summer?  Do they include a beach bonfire?  Camping under the stars?  Before you light up the night with some great summer campfires, consider where you are getting your wood and how this could destroy the forest, not through a forest fire, but through the spread of invasive insects and diseases through firewood.

Last Friday, the state of Virginia announced that its forests are the latest victim of Thousand cankers disease, a fungus that has been infesting walnut trees in the eastern states.  In June, a quarantine for firewood movement was set in Ohio in order to contain the spread of the invasive Asian longhorned beetle.  In California, government officials are working in order to put a stop to the ever-growing infestation of the goldspotted oak borer, a pest which has been killing oak trees in Southern California.

Though the origin of these destructive pests and diseases in the United States may or may not be known, they have been able to spread mainly through the movement of firewood from place to place.  When trees die, the pests or diseases that are living inside them are not necessarily dead also.  When firewood is not properly regulated, these guys are getting a free ride to unaffected areas of the forest.  Trees not only provide beautiful scenery, but they keep our air and water clean, and they provide natural shade for many properties.  A lot of forests and private properties have been in ruins thanks to the spread of invasive species of bugs and sickness, and in order to prevent extremely lethal cases, we have to know where our firewood is coming from.

Read more about this issue and get more advice about how to help or prevent spreading invasive species through firewood movement at Don’t Move Firewood. Read more about the pest that is affecting San Diego County, the Goldspotted Oak Borer here.

Surfer and Environmentalist Kyle Thiermann creates another fun, catchy, and to-the-point video highlighting the devastating affects of plastic pollution. With guest speakers such as musician Jack Johnson, “Story of Stuff” creator Any Leapold, and author of “Fierce Heart” Stuart Coleman, this short video brings together a diverse understanding of a major global environmental issue that we face today. Going plastic free will benefit the planet, your health, and your pocket book! Check out other videos by Kyle Thiermann at Surfing For Change.

Photo Credit: Serge Freeman

It’s July and everyone is heading to the beach.  However, it’s getting hard to avoid beaches that have had a closure due to poor water quality, which would have a harmful effect on our health and a harmful effect on the environment as well.  

For example, Avalon Beach, a popular beach-front tourist destination located in Southern California, was pinned by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) as one of the 10 most polluted beaches in the United States.  Starting in 1999 when weekly water quality testing was sanctioned by the state, water quality at Avalon Beach has been under the microscope after poor results were found.  Since then, it has been found that the cause of this is human sewage.  Not only does this raise huge health and environmental issues for living things in and out of the water, but also economic issues, as tourism is a main industry in Avalon Beach.  Recently, the city has announced a $5.1 million dollar plan to fix the sewage system.

With tourist towns like Avalon Beach on the radar of polluted beaches, what other popular beaches are on the top 10 worst beaches for water quality?  And how can we make sure the beaches with the good quality water stay that way? Stay informed and volunteer for local stream teams that test local water quality.

Also?  Protect yourself and your family by heeding signs that have closed the beach for the day.  No need to ruin summertime with a nice ear infection.

Read more about Avalon Beach here. Or find out more about local beaches here.

Photo Credit: Charity Kennedy

It’s time for all those super cute dresses to come in season!  However, try on some of these sustainable fashion rules regarding eco-friendly fabrics when shopping this summer.  

Sustainable shopping means that you know the history of a product – how it was made, how it got to the store, etc. – and you have chosen to buy that product because the product history lives up to eco-friendly standards.  These standards include a minimal use of pesticides and chemicals, good land management practices, following fair trade practices.  It also includes an eco-certification from trusted organizations, all of which depend on the product.

When shopping for clothing, look out for these fabrics:

1) Bamboo: a plant that is easy to grow in great quantities without pesticides.  Also, 100% biodegradable if processed correctly.

2) Hemp: it is an extremely versatile fabric, requiring no chemicals to grow.  However, hemp is also more unregulated, making its product history a bit fuzzy.

3) Ingeo: a new fabric made from corn.  Though corn production makes a huge impact on the environment due to water and pesticide usage, creating ingeo takes half the energy it does to create cotton.  And speaking of cotton…

4) Organic cotton: shoppers can probably find this in any store at the mall.  Conventionally grown cotton also has a huge impact on the environment, and the production of fabric from it is even more detrimental.  However, organic cotton can also create a huge impact with chemicals and pesticides used to dye the fabric.  So look for it in natural colors like white, cream, ivory, etc.

There’s more sustainable fabrics out there, so keep an eye out on the net and on those itchy tags on the back of your t-shirts. Learn more here.

Photo Credit: Joshua Stevens

After my mom makes coffee for herself in the morning, I use the single cup water heater to make a cup of tea.  I know there’s a coffee filter with coffee grounds in there that will make my tea taste bitter if I leave it, so I take it out, and there is always the morning conundrum: Trash or Compost?  

The odd part about this, is that I will throw out the coffee grounds AND coffee filter, without giving it another thought.  So I thought that with this article, I can educate myself a bit about composting.

According to the EPA, the following items are compost-able:

• Animal manure
• Cardboard rolls
• Clean paper
• Coffee grounds and filters
• Cotton rags
• Dryer and vacuum cleaner lint
• Eggshells (NOT what’s inside)
• Fireplace ashes
• Fruits and vegetables
• Grass clippings
• Hair and fur
• Hay and straw
• Houseplants
• Leaves
• Nut shells
• Sawdust
• Shredded newspaper
• Tea bags
• Wood chips
• Wool rags
• Yard trimmings

What else?  There is a whole list of things, here that I bet you didn’t know could be composted.

So, the answer to my earlier question: YES, compost the coffee filter.  It also did not take that much effort to find out this information.  I could have save approximately 3 coffee filters filled with grounds from the trash if I just looked it up before.

Find out more about what you can and can’t compost here.

Photo Credit: Ley_photography

In a world of increasing gasoline prices, people are wanting to hear when their fuel costs will begin to go down.  Recently, I read a book by Jeff Rubin, who has been a chief economist at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) for over 20 years.  The book is entitled Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller: Oil And The End Of Globalization and takes a very interesting approach on voicing environmental conservation.  The reason I wanted to talk about this book is to write about of the topics that Rubin discussed called “The Efficiency Paradox”, which discusses the flaws in our energy efficiency.

Rubin writes about “The Efficiency Paradox”, which made me see a whole new side of alternative energy sources.  I’ll describe Rubin’s Paradox by using an example.   Let’s say an engineer develops a battery to makes cars more energy efficient.  As a result, more and more companies begin to mass produce the battery and produce more cars.  However, there are now more cars producing more energy than there would have been if the energy efficient battery was never created.  Therefore, The Efficiency Paradox arises.  Although all of the cars may have energy efficient batteries, our economic system then mass-produces them, consuming even more energy than there had been in the first place.

Fortunately, Rubin offers a solution to The Efficiency Paradox: Use less energy.  Alternative forms of energy, such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric, are all renewable, but none of them are proving to be as efficient as oil.  You can produce a lot of energy from just a small amount of oil because oil is very efficient.  However, oil is also a limited resource and cannot sustain our high-energy society forever.  By decreasing our energy needs, we can start seriously using alternative forms of energy.  For example, instead of spending money to buy a brand new hybrid vehicle, try driving less, carpooling, or even living closer to where you work.  By doing this, people will save money, help conserve the environment, and will help decrease our energy dependence.
Citation

Rubin, Jeff. Why Your World Is about to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization. New York: Random House, 2009. Print.

Photo Credit: Surian Soosay

Clean up crews have been scrambling to decontaminate the area surrounding the devastated Japanese nuclear power plants in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the country earlier this year. Usually, soap, water, brushes, pads and plain old hard work are used in the clean-up, but CNN reports that Hawaiian entrepreneur Hank Wuh has a new solution: blue goo.

Wuh donated 100 five-gallon pails (worth around $250,000) of DeconGel, his company’s hazardous waste cleaner, to the cause. Now, Japanese officials are using DeconGel both inside and outside of the exclusion zone to clean anything and everything. DeconGel, aka blue goo, begins as a liquid that can be brushed or sprayed onto contaminated surfaces. Then it dries to form a gel that traps microscopic pieces of radioactive or otherwise hazardous waste (including mercury, chromium, beryllium and PCBs). The blue goo can then be simply peeled off, rolled up and disposed of.

Wuh is the CEO of a Skai Ventures, and says that researchers from the Honolulu-based venture capital firm and technology accelerator discovered DeconGel accidentally. Ample research followed and the initial goo was transformed into DeconGel. Wuh launched a company called CBI Polymers to market and sell the goo in 2009 and thus far it has been used to clean everything from Hungarian villages awash with toxic alkali sludge after an industrial accident to meth labs. CBI Polymers has approximately 75 clients around the world, ranging from power plants, utilities, hospitals and research facilities. The U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Energy is also a customer.

Read more about the blue goo at CNN.com.

Photo: Marcellus Protest

There are some indications that America may be experiencing a bit of a natural gas “boom” right now.  Last year the country produced 22.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, up 3.1 trillion from 2005.  Natural gas is seen as a better alternative to coal (which is used to generate half the country’s electricity) and is cheaper and more abundant than wind and solar.  In 2009 the U.S. recorded the lowest amount of emissions since 1995.  This is due in part to the lame economy, sure, but renewable energy and increased use of natural gas played a role as well.

What accounts for this increase?  New drilling technology called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” (not to be confused with a style of dance banned at your local Jr. High).  The process has come under fire lately (literally) as residents living near extraction sights have voiced concern over the chemicals used; there have been accounts of igniting tap water.  Shockingly so far it has gone widely unregulated, and only 5 states require public disclosure of the chemicals used.  The French think it’s wack to frack, and have already placed a moratorium on the process and are close to a full ban.

The EPA are now looking into it, and in 2009 House Democrats proposed legislation requiring companies to disclose chemicals used.  Why the delay?  Well it’s kinda like watching Scooby Doo, you most likely already know who the bad guy is before he’s unmasked, but you have to go through the whole episode for the punch line to take effect.  “And I would’ve gotten away with it too if wasn’t for you meddling environmentalists!”

More details in the May 14^th-20^th edition of The Economist

Photo Credit: Tim McGrath

Summer’s on the brink of arrival and everyone is getting ready for summer barbeques, beach days, and of course, those days at amusement parks and Fourth of July parties ending with a spectacular fireworks show.  San Diego County, however, is in for a bit of a change.  

This month, the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board enacted the very first rules in the nation concerning fireworks displays over coastal areas.  The rule states that fireworks shows from Laguna Beach to the Mexican Border will have to pay a to $1,500 to display fireworks over the ocean.  The rule will also affect smaller bodies of water such as rivers, streams, and reservoirs.

Firework shows can spread pollution into the water, usually metal and other contaminants.  Along with that, it will degrade the quality of the water and sediment, affecting the biological factors of the water (animals, plants, etc).

Read more about this new regulation here.