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Saturday, March 22, 2008

Water, Food, Life....
Posted by Melina | 4:20 PM



Happy World Water Day!



Remember the big pet food scare last year when we were made aware of what amounts to plastic being put into animal feed and pet food by Chinese companies trying to save a buck? Remember how it put the spotlight on globalization and its impact on our food supply, and how we are really fucked when it comes to our government checking on imports?...that old Reagan line about deregulation being fine because corporations will police themselves. Well, as anyone coulda predicted then, its not working. The thing is that the problems that we think we can solve in food tainted with this substance that has killed some pets and caused massive recalls of pet foods, are pervasive in a world where we cant control what a second or third world country is feeding its livestock. Nor can we even begin to grasp where that feed comes from, and, of course, the health of the animals used to make so many things that we use, from gelatin to plant fertilizer. There are things that we should be able to control, like what we produce in this country and what we import. The fact that most Americans have abdicated their responsibility to mindfully feed themselves, much less vote for candidates who will protect us from the kind of corporate greed that would put our children, much less our pets, in physical harm, is a symptom of the dumbing down of our culture. At some point a line has to be drawn connecting the cutting of social services, the housing situations in varying parts of the country that seems to always put lower classes in places far from food choices, and allows fast food places to congregate and prey on those populations; the cutting of education funds, and the evolution of the global marketplace to the point where, even if you could think straight between your uniquely American 3 jobs, you couldn't sort it out anyway. Add to that a couple of generations who think that a hamburger is a quarter inch thick piece of brown leather with special sauce, (each made of the meat from some 2000+ cows,) and that salad is the lettuce and tomato on that, and you have kids who turn their nose up at any real food offered to them that doesn't have a full week's sodium in one serving and isn't cooked in old brown oil!

There is a continent of plastic waste floating in our oceans which is the size of Texas and getting bigger all the time, Americans are consuming more and more plastic in the form of individual and convenience sized foods and our worry about germs makes us apt to choose disposable everything rather than reusables. It may be easy to dismiss this problem because its out there in the middle of the ocean and we aren't seeing it here, in front of us, but surprise folks, there is an insidious mass of near invisible plastic particles floating among this mass that contains 6 times more plastic particles than plankton! Get that? Fish eat plankton...if there are tiny bits of plastic in and around the main food of fish, then the plastic is in the fish. Take that a step further beyond the direct effect of that on our food supply to the fact that fish is used for everything from fertilizer to stock feed to pet food, and the conclusion is obvious. The plastic is here and we are likely ingesting it.



Besides the energy used to create the bottles themselves, most bottled water facilities use much more energy in importing and bottling etc than is warranted by their environmental claims about the purity of their water. Starbucks charges almost $2 for a bottle for their Ethos water claiming that they are giving back to the world's water shortage, a mere 5 cents per bottle, while the markup still makes it the most expensive of fine waters. No matter how its bottled, they cant deny that a similar program pushing reusable water bottles would be much more helpful to the planet all around. Its just that bottled water is such a great business, and Starbucks has the corner on bullshit environmental practices with their bogus charity that ensures them a healthy profit.





We live in a water paradise compared to so many other parts of the world. As the climate changes at an alarming rate, it occurs to me that we are maybe not so far from the many in this small world who have to walk, sometimes 3 hours, to get to a community well. The entire day for these individuals is spent in collecting water and returning it to the village. Meantime, we are chugging and tossing out any plastic piece that isn't marked with the few codes that our particular city is or is not recycling. Its really time to become much more aware of our use of and disposal of our resources...and where our food is coming from. There are things that we can effect in this world, and there is really no excuse for not doing the few things that we can; reuse, recycle, be aware, and stay politically active! Blue Girl has a very good post on the water issue here.

Life for our children is already going to be so different than it has been for us. Lets make sure that they will be able to experience life that allows for even a little relaxed enjoyment without the barrage of poison that we are fighting through every day.

c/p RIPCoco

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3 Comments:
Blogger Jayhawk said...
The article about the Texas-sized plastic wasteland in the Pacific finally persuaded my wife to quit buying bottled water by the case. Now if I can just get my HOA to turn off the lawn irrigation when we get 1" of rain...
3/23/08, 12:21 PM  
Great post! thank you for the link! I am convinced that we are at the tipping point so far as getting our collective act together where potable water is concerned, and it is all interconnected, with Climate Change being a huge, overarching factor.

I feel a series coming on - maybe we need to fetch a cuppa some time this week, and chat about writing complimentary posts about related issues on a regular basis?

--BG
3/23/08, 12:40 PM  
Blogger dguzman said...
Great post. That turtle pic was really stunning, and sad. I heard about the giant plastic wasteland on NPR, on my way back from a birding festival in Cape May. I had to pull over and process for a while. We recycle/reuse all the plastic we're forced to buy (egg containers, plastic bottles, etc.)---a friend calls it our "lesbian tupperware." Maybe it's not making that giant plastic wasteland any smaller, but it's sure not making it any bigger. Again--great post. Thanks.
3/24/08, 3:31 PM  
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