Reflection: Week 7 & 8

Reflections: Week 7 & 8

Week 7:

• This week started with an eye opener, titled Environmental Working Group.For my facial product, I chose Vaseline Petroleum Jelly. I found out that there not many concerns that is product is linked to, but that there are concerns about it that were not listed in the activity. I went further into research, and found what Vaseline had to say about their animal testing and did a little more looking around on Vaseline's website.
  

• We also watched a documentary titled "Green". It is a documentary created by a grad student, and is about the controversies along "Cancer Alley" which is a 100 mile stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. All of the large corporations in this area are polluting the air, land and soil that many poor individuals and families find themselves having to live on, and try to raise healthy children. One fact that stood out to me about this that in some areas, the soil was contaminated 17 FEET under people's houses! This was causing many diseases and other health concerns to the people living in that area, and growing gardens for their families food supply. Worse of all, the people working at these companies believe they're doing their part at home because they have flower gardens and are providing a place for birds and other wildlife to retreat to.

Week 8:

• This week I was assigned the article review titled "Privatizating Water". Basically, this is an article that highlights the advantages and disadvantages of privatizing water. It also goes into detail some of the controversies certain areas of the country are facing, and clearly depicts a riot that broke out in the city of Chochabamba which is located in Bolivia. This reading was interesting to me because it stated that currently, there at 36 countries that have very minimal water supply and are using many different methods to preserve and catch their rain water. I was even more surprised when it continued to say that within the next 6 year, SEVEN more counties are going to join the rankings of having the least amount of drinkable water for their citizens. Something is wrong here...

• We also watched the documentary titled "Thirst" this week. Thirst is a documentary that depicts the real life issues, in our own country and throughout the rest of the world, about water privatization. It makes the watcher debate the question of "Is water a human right or a commodity to be bought and sold in a global marketplace?". When looking on the Thirst documentary website, I was shocked to read that "over a billion people lack access to safe drinking water. Each year, millions of children die of diseases caused by unsafe water. The numbers are increasing." How can we fix this? How can the diseases and deaths numbers be reduced? Since the Thirst documentary has been released, there continues to be conflict and disputes, only they are now more intense.

Share & Voice: Spring Break

This year for spring break I am going to Atlanta and Jekyll Island, Georgia as well as Chicago, Illinois. I am driving down with my teammates from the ultimate frisbee team and we will be spending our time basking in the sun, playing a little ultimate (THREE days worth!) and camping for a week :)

This is a challenge... I want to know what each of you are doing over your break! Only don't just tell us what you did... post a picture and a short description of whatever you are doing, place you visit or people you spent your time with and I will do the same! :) It doesn't have to be something "environmental", just post ANY picture from your week off from school and show us what you had done :)

Hope you all have an amazing and safe spring break! :)

Review of Reading 31: Privatizing Water

On April 8, 2000 a riot broke out in a city called Cochabamba located in Bolivia. The riot had killed one 17 year old boy while hundreds of other protesters were injured. What was the riot over? Privatization of the countries water. The World Bank had threaten to withhold $600 million in the countries debt relief if they did not privatize their water. Because the privatization of water had not happened, water bills in the average house hold rose 35% per month. Protesters were able to declare victory. The city ended up privatizing their water, resulting in an end to the riot.


In 1992, when world leaders at the Rio earth Summit recognized water as an "economic good", they were mainly acknowledging the failure of their government to provide clean drinking water to over 1.1 billion people. The government saw this as an opportunity to collect profits, even though water should be considered a human right.


Currently, there are 36 countries (which are all in Africa, Asia or the middle east) that do not have a large enough water supply to meet the needs for industrial, municipal, and food production purposes. By the year 2015, seven more countries will join these rankings. See something wrong here?


In the United States, we have been rather slow in privatizing our water systems and if we were to privatize more of our water, our country would have the chance to attract the" private capital and expertise needed to build and expand expensive water system, and help connect the millions who currently make do without piped water". Could you imagine NOT drinking water from a pipe, and pulling it up from the ground yourself, from a well or some other way?! Small and poor communities are continuously drinking from questionable water resources and expensive suppliers. Poor residents in El Alto, Bolivia are drinking water from tanker trucks, which is MORE EXPENSIVE than the piped water wealthier residents are drinking from!


Many countries, people believe that water should be delivered at a low cost, or for free. Do you agree with this? As cities grow and expand, it is much more difficult to raise money to maintain or expand current water systems.


"Privatization of water has resulted in drastic rate increases, significant job cuts, fewer environmental safeguards, dropped conservation initiatives and halted service to poor or remote communities".


The gist of it, privatizing water does not benefit anyone but the supplier. If water is privatized, there are less employees working in a company which results in a larger profit for them and in return the population receives less than par service, little to no water depending on the salary of a household, higher water bills and a loss of local control and accountability.


My thoughts: There should not be counties in this nation that are going without water. Can you imagine how horrible you would feel not being hydrated?! Imagine living in a country like Africa or somewhere in the Middle east where temperatures are not comfortable and not being able to have a refreshing glass of water to cool down... I have lived out in the country before, and the water we had gotten in our house then came from a well. Still, it was running water, through piper, and had been fortified with vitamins. I could not imagine having to fetch my own water, or drink water from Lake Superior without it being filtered and okay to drink. No one should have to drink from a sketchy water resource! Although I believe that water is difficult to maneuver from place to place, it should not be so expensive since it is something we, as humans, need to survive! I understand that it is expensive for water treatment plants to run and expand, but shouldn't the health and hydration of all people be a priority?! Personally, I think other countries are in more need than we are. To have 35 countries running low on water and seven more about to join those rankings by 2015 is devastating. What do you think we can do to help?!


Terms:
World Bank- committed to reaching the poor with a sanitary water supply

International Monetary Fund - Temporarily finances countries

Eye Opener: Environmental Working Group

For this eye opener, I chose something that I use daily and sometime multiple times throughout the day... Vaseline petroleum jelly! I use Vaseline nightly on my lips and on my eyes for a little extra hydration and when my lips are really chapped, I am applying it many different times throughout the day.

Here are my exact results from the Cosmetic Database Website:

Ingredients in this product are linked to:

	Cancer
	Developmental/reproductive toxicity
	Violations, restrictions & warnings
	Allergies/immunotoxicity
	Other concerns for ingredients used in this product: Contamination concerns

After doing this assignment, I am pleased to see that there are not many concerns with using this product (at least not a lot listed) that would effect my health. It is however, a shame that the company conducts animal testing. After further research on Vaseline's website, here is what I found regarding their animal testing:

"Our first priority is to our consumers and, where required by regulators for safety reasons, we carry out limited tests on some ingredients and foods to ensure our products are safe and suitable for their intended use. However, we will not use animal testing when we have available either an accepted alternative test or other information that allows us to sufficiently evaluate safety. We will continue our work for alternative methods by participating in industry and scientific programs, and we will continue to support legislation that promotes the elimination of animal testing through the development of alternative methods."

Share and Voice: Pampers

This weekend, my boyfriend was playing around on Hulu and came across a video I found really entertaining.... It's a "commercial" for Pampers that was on the show Saturday Night Live...

Check it out! :)

Reflections: Week 5 & 6

Week 5 and 6 Review

Week 5: Week five seems like it was so long ago for me! I am going to have rough time trying to remember everything from last week, but here it goes...

• Last week Reading 15 was assigned to a group of people in class. We had a discussion in the reading and it really made me think about the steady increase of our population. Automatically, I wondered if there would ever come a time that we wouldn't have enough food for everyone on our earth?!
• We had also watched a film titled "Diet for a New America". This film really made me think. It pointed out facts that I had never known about animals and how they're raised based on the type of meat they are going to be, how much fat actually affects our blood and how horrible our country eats compared to others (which is a main reason a lot of people in our country have health problems).
  
• The last thing we had done during week five was a CSPI. I had done a questionnaire the analyzed the food that I eat. How much I am eating of certain types of food (meat, vegetables, fruit and dairy) and then shows me how what I am eating, effects the earth. At the end of the questionnaire, it gives you a few examples on what you can do to help improve your diet and environment. One of mine was to eat less meat, which I did not decided to follow because already, I don't think I eat enough of it.

Week 6:

• This week in class, we had watched a film titled "The Future of Food". I was assigned to do a review on this film so I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail. If you'd like to read more about it, visit my Future of Food post! This film had held my interest for a while, and made me realize eating food that I grow in the area I live in, should be more important to me than eating food that might be cheaper and is coming from who knows where!
• Individuals were also assigned readings for this week. My reading was about corporate social responsibility. It gave the history of CSR within a few different countries and reasons for why "big wig" corporations should invest some of their time and money to make our country a better place to live.

What I think: The more and more we get into the semester, the more I like this class. I am constantly learning new ways to change some of my unhealthy "environment" habits and made the place I am living in, better! One of the things I have decided to try because of this class is putting an empty half gallon milk jug in my toilet! :) We'll see if it works! Another thing that I am doing, more so now than I was before, is watching what I eat. I want to make sure that what I am eating is something that is actually healthy for me, and not a food that is "thought" of as healthy! So I'd like to give props for Dr.V for making me think more about my environment and how my choices effect it!

Review: The Future of Food

This past week, we had watched a film titled "The Future of Food". While the movie had a lot of interesting facts, it was not too entertaining for me. The film had covered the history of genetically engineered food, patents on seeds and focused on a company titled Monsanto who had taken many people in the farm industry to court for using their patented seeds.

Summary:

Starting in the 20th century, nitrogen was being used as a fertilizer for many farm field, nerve gas was modified to be used as insecticides, and there was much more technology available which was suppose to make certain foods more readily available and cheaper. The era of having food production being able to keep up with the increase in population is called the "Green Revolution". The green revolution had created a spread in technology throughout the world. "These technologies included pesticides, herbicides, irrigation projects, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and improved crop varieties developed through the conventional (that is, not using biotechnology), science-based breeding methods available at the time". A popular herbicide many farms were using during the Green Revolution and are currently using on their land is called Roundup.

Ever since farming had started, families have saved their crop seeds to use and plant a new crop the following year. A company called Monsanto put an end to this. Currently, Monsanto has 11,000 patents of seeds and when a farmer purchases seeds from the Monsanto company, they are forced to sign an agreement that once the years crop is over with, they will NOT safe any of their seeds to use the following year and all of their previous seeds must be destroyed as well.


A specific part of the movie that stood out to me, was the case of Percy Schmeiser vs. Monsanto. For many years, Percy had used the herbicide, Roundup, on his farm. One year while spraying Roundup on his crops, Percy noticed that there were some areas around the power lines did not die from the spray. It wasn't something that struck Percy as odd, and word had somehow spread to the Monsanto company. Without any notice to Percy, Monsanto was quickly on his land, testing hiscanola oil seeds. Monsanto had made the decision to sue Percy for using a "Roundup ready seeds that he had probably purchased or borrowed from a neighbor so he did not have to spend the money himself". Monsanto had assumed Percy was breaking their patent and was not going to allow it. After further research, I had found that "In an out of court settlement finalized on March 19, 2008, Percy Schmeiser has settled his lawsuit with Monsanto. Monsanto has agreed to pay all the clean-up costs of the Roundup Ready canola that contaminated Schmeiser's fields. Also part of the agreement was that there was no gag-order on the settlement and that Monsanto could be sued again if further contamination occurred. Schmeiser believes this precedent setting agreement ensures that farmers will be entitled to reimbursement when their fields become contaminated with unwanted Roundup Ready canola or any other unwanted GMO plants".

Other important facts:

• The flavor saver tomato was the first genetically engineered food product introduced to the public
• 2001 was the first year people had realized they were eating large amounts of genetically engineered foods (they are not required to be labeled)
  
• Starlink (corn products) was found to be unsafe for humans - there was a massive recall
• In order for a seed to be patented, it must be different from all others
• Mexico does not used genetically engineered seeds
• A terminator seed has been introducted. It is engineered so that the seed cannot be used the following year

What I thought: After watching this video, I think that there are a lot of people in this world that are very money hungry. Monsanto is a huge corperation that is sueing over 9,000 individuals because they're suspicious of where these farms are getting their seeds from. How is it possible to prove which seeds are who's and why would a company waste their time hurting farms that are providing a service to our country, along with the ones we export to. I also believe that labeling genetically engineered foods is important. If a child has an allergic reaction to something they ate, it would be impossible to figure out which gene in a genetically engineered food item flaired the reaction. The more movies we watch about food throughout the semester, convice me I need to start getting a majority of my food from co-ops rather than just some.
Other view points/websites:

A website that has information about NOT patenting seeds and a link to information on patent cases.

An article on what Monsanto plants seeds

Monsanto's website

Website with more information on Percy's case