ZwRT “Carbon Cycle” - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 9

Our world is runs on cycles: Water, carbon, matter, life...what goes around comes around.

This is a LINK to a quick summary of the water and carbon cycles, which can be applied to many other elements and concepts on planet Earth.

Another great source is the book: The Carbon Farming Solution, by Eric Toesmeier.

TwXLB “Changes” - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 8

Inspired by the Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard and the Entropy Law, I have taken a good look at consumerism in general as well as my own consumption of Stuff.  I have asked myself what I could do better and why I buy what I buy. It has been interesting, eye-opening and definitely uncomfortable.  As I was reading about entropy as it relates to sustainability and petroleum products, I started researching plastics, specifically plastic grocery bags. It only takes a few minutes to realize how ridiculously unneeded the bags are and how harmful they can be. People tend to forget something exists if they cannot see it. A plastic bag might rip apart and break down in a few months to the point of not being an obvious eyesore on a landscape, yet none of the plastic really went away or disappeared. The plastic breaks down into something called micro plastics and they get into waterways, animals and living organisms and work their way up the food chain until we also consume them (not to mention they are in our soaps, shampoos and lotions, but that is entirely another story). What I want to think about here is how the breaking down and spreading out of particles is a different distribution of those particles but there is not any less of them. If we think about all of the plastic bags that were ever made still being in existence, it is staggering. Now we know better, so as the saying goes, we should do better.

I got called out last week for not doing enough to be sustainable. The person who called me out was the most unlikely one on the planet: my own boyfriend. Why is it so unlikely that he would call me out? Because he is not into the same things that I am when it comes to preserving the planet. It’s not that we don’t see eye to eye, it’s just all new concepts for him and it takes a lot to convince him that changes in behavior only are needed. He’s stubborn, set in his ways and does not like change. I mean he really does. Not. Like. Change.

Declining to use plastic bags even without reusable bags!

When I got the text message from him pictured in the photo, my jaw literally dropped and I almost fell out of my chair. Whatever it was that made him tell the cashier that on that specific day he didn’t want to use any more plastic bags, I will never now.  But I do know that if my boyfriend can learn to load all of his things in his vehicle without any bags, then surely anybody can do it. And I did promise to help him get some reusable bags to keep with him. But then he called me out…

 He said that just us refusing to use plastic bags was not enough. He said he could understand the need but would be a lot more motivated if I were making a bigger change then just my own habits.  Well, that motivated me to go home and start a Facebook page to inspire and encourage people to ban plastic bags from the grocery store. You can find a link to that pageHERE. I put some facts about plastic bags, such as the average length that  they are used as a matter of seconds yet it takes hundreds and hundreds of years for them to biodegrade. I sent out invites to a bunch of friends and asked people to share their stories. So far I have almost 20 people who follow the page and about five people who have committed to not using plastic bags anymore.

And I’ve been thinking how I could do more. There are a number of cities and states who have banned plastic bags and/or single use plastic.  Shouldn’t Florida be one of those? One of the reasons of plastic bags are so bad is because of the harm that they do to sealife. Shouldn’t a state that has such an immense coastline and is famous for its beaches be a leader in protecting its environment? I would love to help get laws passed to ban plastic bags, and ultimately single use plastics, from the whole state of Florida.  They are just not necessary. With a few changes in our behavior we can quite easily and quickly adjust to a different lifestyle that makes all the difference in the world to the animals, the sea life, the beautiful natural environment of Florida and it’s future generations.

 Research on how to go about banning plastic bags has helped me understand what has been successful in the past and how to start taking steps in the right direction. One thing that I’m going to try, partly in the name of sustainability but also partly due to my own curiosity, is to write a few letters to local businesses.  I had one success so far, at my own place of employment. When I talk to my manager about our place of work supporting sustainable agriculture it was easy to point out the hypocrisy of the amount of plastic bags that we went through. The management agreed to take all plastic bags out of the organization almost immediately.  Maybe because of this, I feel fairly confident calling out other “sustainable” business to do the same.  I’m not sure how well this would go over with other businesses, but if it takes a letter then I don’t really have much to lose by asking. I mean, why do they ask “Is plastic OK? when you check out at Publix? Why not say “Is paper ok?” Or “Do you need bags today?” Or even “Paper or plastic?”. By saying “Is plastic OK? they are automatically making plastic bags the default option for everybody.

Example letters, steps and guidance for cutting back on plastic bags!
https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2015/8/15/ban-the-bag-in-your-town

TwXLT "Consumption and Pessimistic Entropy" - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 7

Funny....kind of... :)

The chapter titled “Consumption” in the Story of Stuff gives a detailed sense of just how much we shop, buy…consume.  In 2004 we spent more on watches, shoes and jewelry than for higher education ($100 billion vs. $99 billion).  In 2003 the United States and Europe spent $17 billion on pet food, yet we could end hunger and malnutrition for just $19 billion. The comparative lists go on and on.  We want a two or three car garage to use most of it for storage.  Leonard continues to describe how shopping is viewed as some sort of right, and to challenge our rate of consumption has led her to be labeled by some as “Marx in a ponytail” and for Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man, who lived in NYC experimenting with a minimal-consumption lifestyle, to receive hate mail even including the threat of death.  She also mentions one of my favorite books, Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, and how he was called “unmanly” and “very wicked and heathenish”! (Leonard, 2010) What?! This blows my mind.  Who could insult this book and the way it leads you through the winding magic of nature?  It gives me peace I can only otherwise find out in, well, nature.

Fleissner and Hofkirchner’s paper titled “Entropy and Its Implications for Sustainability” is quite a bit more dense, diving into the physics of sustainability and the contradictions therein. One concept in particular though seemed to resonate with me since I have pondered about on my own before, not knowing it had a name. Georgescu's Law states that “…in a system like the Earth (nearly no exchange of matter with the environment) mechanical work cannot proceed at a constant rate forever, or, there is a law of increasing material entropy. This means that it is not possible to get back all the dissipated matter of, for instance, tires worn out by friction.” (1997). 

This "disorder" makes sense to me.  Nature rules. 

This is very interesting to me, personally.  I would like to know exactly what he means by “get back”, but I would tend to agree with him on the basic (pessimistic?) concept.  I do not believe that people or the planet (in the future as far as we can see it) are capable of returning matter “back” to a natural state, near its source location, as a way to reverse our damage.  I do believe that if humans were to cease to exist the planet would eventually, probably, breakdown and recycle all our messes so that nature could thrive again.  But for the sake of our current reality (a world with humans) I would agree with Georgescu-Roegen: we are doing irreversible damage.  As I have said before, I’ve been told I may be a bit of a pessimist but I would rather make changes now than push our planet any further down a path of doom.  We know we cannot continue to function indefinitely like we are functioning now. Too many companies are using finite resources as if they were infinite.

I found an interesting review of Georgescu-Roegen that refers to him as a “genius pessimist and a philosopher of process”.  The author states that he was a complex character who believed in the inevitable running down of the economic process.  This is what I have always held true and believe to my core; if we are not living in harmony with nature, we are destined to fail.  How could anyone think that that a society that depends on nature, yet is built on the exploitation nature, could survive?  I learned that Georgescu-Roegen and I have our perceived pessimism in common and I gained respect for him because he did not just stay safely in one field.  Georgescu-Roegen was a mathematician and economist who dared to enter the field of physics, and then bring all three studies together.  That is incredible to me and I appreciate his efforts and contributions to the study of sustainability.  We need a wake up call.

Sources

Fleissner, P. & Hofkirchner, W. (1997). Entropy and Its Implications for Sustainability. Implications and Applications of Bioeconomics. Retrieved from https://igw.tuwien.ac.at/igw/menschen/hofkirchner/papers/infoconcept/entropy/entropy.htm

Sers, M. (2017). Georgescu-Roegen: The genius pessimist and the philosopher of process. Economics for the Anthropocene. Retrieved on December 24, 2018 from

https://e4a-net.org/2017/03/29/georgescu-roegen-the-genius-pessimist-and-the-philosopher-of-process-by-martin-sers/

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change

Annie Leonard / Free Press (publication:2010-03-09)
Read "Consumption"

PhRB "A Vision for Change" - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 6

PhRB—

High grasslands showing the beauty of Mother Nature. Andes, Ecuador. 

In her book “The Story of Stuff”, Leonard shares her lifestyle of living in a “tight community” where resources are shared rather than purchased.  The community is more sustainable than most due to the fact that the people buy less Stuff and throw out less trash.  They rely on each other first, and the economy second.  Carpools, shared babysitting, traded goods and borrowed tools are a way of life for her.  However, she is careful to point out that this is not a sustainable life either—closer, yes--but they still function within a system so based on “fossil fuels, carbon emissions, toxic chemicals and wasted resources” that it is IMPOSSIBLE to live a completely sustainable lifestyle without disengaging from society as we know it (Leonard, 2010).

Ecuadorian Shaman shares knowledge of a lifestyle shared with nature.

Up until this point, things are looking pretty bleak.  It’s so easy to get overwhelmed, feel hopeless and want to give up under a cloud of depression.  Thankfully, page 241 of “The Story of Stuff” states my above-mentioned thought almost verbatim.  It’s not enough to just be “greener” or recycle better.  That will just put us on a slower track to the end of nature, the environment and natural resources and, because of that, the end of life and the end of us.  We ARE nature; inexplicably connected whether we acknowledge it or not.  The Vision for Change as explained by Leonard is to change policy and our entire system until the sustainable option IS the DEFAULT option! To start, the suggestion made is to join a movement that you are passionate about.  I am fortunate to work in my passion at an NPO that focuses on sustainable agricultural solutions specific to various areas of the world.  I love my work and feel so much purpose and meaning in it. 

Moss growing in the clouds.  Pichincha, Ecuador. 15,000 ft. elevation.

The website Wiser.org is a great site that serves to connect agencies with each other to grow the movement toward the changes in the world that need to be made for us to be a sustainable, healthy world. I signed up at https://wiser.org/stay-informed/ to be informed of ways to help support that movement via texts and emails.  The idea is that “Things get better everyday, not just less bad” so that our children see that we have a vision for the future, rather than just a way to improve on the grave problems we have created (McDonough, 2015).

Sources:

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change

Annie Leonard / Free Press (publication:2010-03-09)
Read "Writing the new story"

Resource Abundance by Design | William McDonough (2015). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKlqL_nuh_c

PhRT "Biomimicry" - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 5

PhRT –

Tell me again how bad it is.

Sometimes I think I am too much of an empath to work in sustainability.  I get overwhelmed by the immensity of the issues, and the lack of concern from society.  When reading about waste, I often think about the years I spent traveling overseas.  These issues seemed to make more sense.  Maybe it was because I was seeing the problems from the view of the people who struggle to meet their basic needs and therefore, their behavior reflects this and there are fewer choices to actually be made.  It is just the way life is.  Flash forward to the more recent times in the United States, and the things that people do are much more about choice and reflect their own values (or lack thereof).

A small community in rural Ecuador.

Let me think of a concrete example.  In a very small coastal town called Puerto El Morro on the edge of the country of Ecuador, people live in poverty yet, because of the poverty, they see value in things others may not see as valuable. They use rocks to smash plantains to serve with a lunch of rice and shrimp.  The shrimp are from the river running by the town.  The food is local by necessity, but it is sustainable and healthy.  There are walls built from 2 liter bottles because, well, Coca-Cola has reached every corner of the globe.  If those bottle can be used, the people are happy to use them instead of throw them out. Milk and water are sold in bags, which is surely less plastic that a gallon jug.  Also, most grocery plastic bags are used and reused.  The dumps, for example, near Cali, Colombia, are a haven for the poor to find their food and other items still usable in some way.

A typical home near the coast of Ecuador.

Now, that brings us to one of Professor Culhane’s videos about the Zabaleen people in Egypt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kzQCmBspNZo) who are thought to be unholy because of how they pick through, process and use the trash thrown away by their neighbors in the nearby cities. As mentioned in the video, I would certainly agree that we should be thankful to these people instead of viewing them as dirty.  And why do we glorify the kind of wasteful, materialistic, throw-away culture that we subscribe to so often in the United States?  I wish there were no shame in using trash that would otherwise pollute the environment, and I wish there WERE shame in tossing trash like our society does without regard to where it will end up. 

A puppy near a trash pile, rural Ecuador.

A life close to nature in rural Guatemala.

Our society has it all backwards.  The video “Natural Capitalism (taking natural capital into account)” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=Cq7Yn5pUJ3A)  explains that Natural Capitalism models nature, a term called “biomimicry” (Sustainability Illustrated, 2016). Everything depends on the environment; both society and the economy.  So why would we NOT put our natural resources as the highest priority to respect and manage?  As the paper titled “The Entropy Law and the impossibility of perpetual economic growth” states, “Such high-entropy matter depletes finite stocks of ecosystem services provided by the ecosphere, hence are incompatible with the long-term growth in the material scale of the economic process.” (Romeiro & Earp, 2012). The very concept of exponential growth is not modeled by nature. Exponential growth is supported by human greed and the idea that more and more and more is somehow better. But it’s not.  Nature teaches us that balance is important.  Matter changing forms into new life is important.  Circular systems are important.  We have so much to learn from nature, if we could just listen. 

Sources:

Culhane, T.H. (2018). Intrigo for Waste Not Want Not Module PhLB: Doing God's work with the Zabaleen. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kzQCmBspNZo

Romeiro, A. R. & S´a Earp, H. N. (2012). The Entropy Law and the impossibility of perpetual economic growth. Institute of Economics. Brazil.

Sustainability Illustrated (2016). Cod fish and natural capitalism—biomimicry. Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=Cq7Yn5pUJ3A

"Mushrooms Save the Planet" - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 4

Fungi in my garden.

Over the last year, I have experimented with gardening and permaculture.  I chose a small area of land on our five acres because I did not want to be in over my head.  I installed a drip irrigation system with a 5 gallon bucket, fenced it neatly, loaded it with horse manure and began planting.  To my delight, mushrooms started popping up.  I was always told that was a sign of good soil and air.  My dad used to say this and he knows how to garden!  While reading for class this week, I was reminded of a process I witnessed this past summer here in South Florida.  We let the chickens range and they wandered the garden and ate some tomatoes, okay, okay...a lot of tomatoes! A few weeks later I noticed that tomato plants were popping up in the yard, more than an acre away from the garden.  While scratching my head, I realized, I had the chickens to thank!

Now on to this weeks readings and you will see how they relate to my experimental garden last summer...

According to Crosby, mushrooms can help clean up our mess on this planet in three ways.  They can break down microbes and chemicals to harmless forms and they can render heavy metals immobile because of their root systems. Fungi press enzymes that can breakdown hazardous molecules into carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.  The dense root part of the fungi can capture and hold dangerous heavy metals that cannot breakdown (Crosby, 2017). That is pretty amazing.

Baby Jackfruit tree and mushrooms in my garden.

In Calamur's experiment, the hazardous chemicals in batteries were put in a bin with sawdust and fungi (Pleurotus ostreatus spores) and compared to a control group.  The fungi did have an effect on the chemicals as shown by an outcome of lowering the pH of the trial bin.  This is significant because there is hope that these spores could be used to make batteries harmless to people and the environment after their use.  Currently, batteries leak potassium hydroxide, which is highly toxic to people and animals and it finds its way into water supplies.  There is a need for people to correctly dispose of batteries, but there is no real "green" way to use and dispose of batteries.  California has made it illegal to dispose of batteries in the trash (Calamur, n.d.).

Foraging chickens on our farm.

In my own life, I have never thought to much about batteries. I do love mushrooms though and find them fascinating.  On my farm and in my garden, they pop up in the finest soil.  I often take a picture and try to identify them (and have yet to find an edible one, but that's another story). Stamets' YouTube video is a short story about the magic of mushrooms to breakdown petroleum-based hydrocarbons.  The best part was not only that the mushroom grew huge, but also they started a whole life cycle back to nature that would have not occurred without them. After a few weeks the oyster mushrooms died and rotted, they grew spores, flies came and then maggots, birds ate the maggots and let seeds they had eaten in their waste.  The seeds grew and there were plants growing in what was once hazardous chemical waste (Stamets, 2017)!  I am always amazed at the human power to interfere with Nature and Nature's power to evolve back to perfection.

Surprise tomato plants! Thank you chickens.

Works Cited:

Calamur, S. (n.d.) Mycoremediation of Household Hazardous Waste through Pleurotus ostreatus. Retrieved on November 15, 2018 from https://clu-in.org/download/studentpapers/Fungal-Bioremediation-of-Household-Hazardous-Waste.pdf

Crosby, W. (2017). Mycoremediation – Using Mushrooms To Clean up Toxic Waste in Our Environment. FungiAlly. Retrieved on November 15, 2018 from http://fungially.com/mycoremediation-using-mushrooms-clean-toxic-waste-environment/

Stamets, P. (2017). Bioremediation with Fungi. Retreived on November 15, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=239&v=BelfLIJErek

 (Links to an external site.)

Links to an external site.https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=239&v=BelfLIJErek

"Bio Gas Session at ECHO Global Farm" - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 3

Yesterday I got to see Jerry Comellas (a USF Global Sustainability graduate who works with https://www.facebook.com/rosebudcontinuumand https://www.facebook.com/SolarCITIES/) talk about biogas digesters in MY town, FORT MYERS!! Woohoo!!! He spoke at ECHO Global Farm's 25th Annual International Conference (which is an amazing event every year). Is anyone else attempting to build one of these beasts for the first time? Im totally intimidated, but Im thinking of giving it a try this coming year.

What struck me about the November 6th lecture was the relaxed conversation at the end of class between Dr. Culhane and the presenters from Haiti.  I always enjoy the excitement and passion of the Haitian culture--two things that Dr. Culhane has no shortage of either!  The conversation had such a beautiful, lively tone as it touched on the spirituality of "residuals" (notice I dare not use the word "waste"!).  Someone asked if a God who created such a wonderful, complex world, would also create "waste" defined as a bi-product with no further use?  Dr. Culhane's answer reminded me of the law of conservation of matter, only one step further.  Everything re-evolves into other forms while maintaining the same amount of matter, but what if it were all useful?  What if waste were not a thing? What if we just need to form it into a useful state and pair it with the specific environment that it will improve upon, rather than degrade?   What a revolutionary idea! 

I believe the problem is not the residual products themselves, but rather how we, as humans, handle them.  We can do "our part" and recycle and shop responsibly, but this is the tip of the iceberg.  I am interested in how we get to where there is no "cradle-to-grave" product lifeline because everything is used in constant circles.  Isn't this the way nature intended?  Nature functions, it thrives, on circles of life.  Nothing is wasted in the natural world.  Nothing.  Therefore, we humans are failing because we have created a system that does not work.  It is a system where we only see a small part of the life of our stuff and we turn a blind eye to the rest of it.  

Watching the session on bio gas digesters yesterday was thought-provoking.  We can take the nastiest of waste (old food, animal manure, even human feces) and turn it into useful fertilizer AND methane gas for cooking.  It sounds crazy, looks weird, but kind of feels right. I watched Jerry Comellas light a blue flame on an open grill and place a pot on top as he casually answered questions.  The bio gas digester had been rigged with a tube to run the grill--no propane tank or electricity needed. Im not sure which I enjoyed more: the presentation or the looks of wonder (tinged with disbelief) on the people's faces.  Once again I am inspired.  We can do better.