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OK, I haven’t seen the movie “The Age of Stupid” yet, and from the looks of it, it won’t be easy to find it in a theatre nearby for quite a while, if ever. There are so many interesting eco-films out there that never come to a theatre near me. What’s up with that? In this day and age, it seems downright ridiculous and wrong to drive 45 minutes on a highway to see a movie, especially a green flick!
I’ve read three reviews of this movie so far this week: one says it’s overboard gloomy, one says it’s a wake up call, and one reports that it has already inspired a huge greenhouse gas reduction campaign in Great Britain called 10:10 (reduce emissions by 10% by 2010 – that would be in a few months!).
As a co-founder of Back2Tap, I figure I’ve got to see “The Age of Stupid” because it rails on people who think they are green simply because they recycle their disposable plastic bottles. The movie makes the point that it isn’t going to be as simple as recycling more or buying organic. We’re going to have to “reinvent” the way we live in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Thankfully, there is one lifestyle change we can all make without much effort – the way we drink water and use disposable plastic bottles. Tap water takes 800 times less energy to deliver than bottled water according to “The Age of Stupid.” We can all drink tap water from reusable bottles instead of bottled water and significantly reduce our waste of resources and carbon footprint. That is the primary message Back2Tap shares with schools, groups, and anyone who will listen. Join our Reusolution!
Have you ever read a book that you really didn’t want to “hear”? The Onmivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan was one of those books for me. Pollan’s revolutionary book reveals the ecological and health risks associated with our industrial meat and corn production as well as the pitfalls of industrial organic food. He points out that the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmoshphere than anything else we do. This is because our food system is based on petroleum instead of sunlight and soil. Pollan makes a strong case for smaller sustainable farms where animals and crops co-exist, and natural processes are allowed to drive the system in a constructive way, with everything in balance. Now, I look at my dinner plate with a degree of suspicion. Where did this all really come from?
Pollan identifies so many problems with our current food system that radical changes seem necessary in virtually every component. No wonder his letter of recommendations to the president-elect, or “Farmer in Chief” , in October was 9 pages long! Redirecting our food production system onto a sustainable course seems like a ”stretch” goal for our new president in the midst of all our economic woes, but I hope President Obama read Michael Pollan’s letter and is taking it seriously.
A surprising number of foods in our diet are corn-based because government subsidies keep the price of corn so low: meat, poultry, dairy, and most processed foods. After reading how detrimental this system of production is to the environment, to the animals, and to our health, I’ve lost my appetite for these conventional foods. Replacing these items will take a lot more preparation time or a lot more money, so I’ve decided to try to a combination approach.
One of the biggest steps anyone can take is to reduce their meat consumption. If every American went meatless one day a week, the carbon saved would be equal to taking 20 million cars off the road. It seems like a small sacrifice for such a huge benefit. When I do buy meat, I will try to buy grass-fed meat. I’ll stay away from processed foods and fast foods which are full of corn oil and corn syrup (not to mention calories!) and try to cook homemade dishes on the weekends that will provide healthy meals during the week. I’ll ask my husband and kids to plant a kitchen garden in the 9 x 9 patch of sun beside our house for my Mother’s Day gift again this year. We enjoyed fresh lettuces and herbs almost every single day for months last year. During World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt inspired Americans to plant Victory Gardens which ended up providing 40% of all produce. Finally, I’ll continue to buy as much fresh produce as possible from local sources such as farmers’ markets and community-supported farms.
I highly recommend this informative, entertaining and well-reasoned book and article by Michael Pollan. I’m sure everyone who reads them will be motivated to come up with their own short-term strategies for improving the quality of the food they eat and reducing the environmental impact of their diets.
To be perfectly honest, giving up bottled water was a no-brainer for me because I was always too frugal, practical, and lazy to bother with it. I never enjoyed spending money for plain water, hauling pallets of it home, storing it (where?), and having to recycle the empty bottles. It made so much more sense to just drink tap water. The other thing is, I drink mostly seltzer water, and much to the shock of my friends and family who think of me as a very health- and eco-conscious person, an occasional diet cola. I have to admit I guiltily kept buying these products long after I swore off regular bottled water because I didn’t know there was any option other than abstinence.
My husband came to the rescue and gave me a Soda Club seltzer and soda maker on Christmas in 2007. I was skeptical at first. Would the water be fizzy enough? Would it cost more? How much space would it take up? How would we get replacement CO2 tanks? What are the plastic bottles made of?
It is a fabulous machine. The selzer is as fizzy as you choose to make it, it saves us around $250/year, it takes up about the same amount of space as a blender, the CO2 tanks are picked up and delivered from our front steps free of charge (in groups of three), and the reusable bottles are made of a safe, BPA-free plastic.
I don’t miss hauling 7 two-liter bottles home from the grocery store each week. Beyond convenience and economy, our eco-footprint has been reduced, too. By eliminating 365 disposable plastic seltzer bottles, I estimate that we are saving 50 gallons of oil, 400 gallons of water, and 200 pounds of greenhouse gases each year.
Since seeing the movie FLOW (see my December 4, 2008 post), I haven’t been as keen to drink commercial sodas, on principal. I can’t stomach contributing to their profits. Thankfully, the Soda Club machine can make an array of regular and diet sodas for those days I need an extra treat. It’s a big hit with kids, too.
The facts about bottled water usage and waste are staggering. In 2006, Americans drank an average of 167 bottles of water each for a total of 50 billion bottles or $15 billion spent. Of that total, only 23% was recycled. Roughly 38 billion disposable plastic water bottles end up in U.S. landfills each year – 100 million every day! That’s enough, laid end to end, to reach China and back each day.
It’s not just that they are filling up our landfills – it’s also the waste of resources. The amount of oil we use to produce water bottles, 17 million barrels, could fuel over 1,000,000 cars for an entire year. Picture a disposable water bottle 1/4 full with petroleum. That is how much oil it takes to make and distribute a single plastic bottle of water. One bottle also requires at least three bottles of water to make and distribute and generates about 120 grams of greenhouse gases – enough to fill 12 balloons.
Can we really afford to continue wasting our limited resources this way? There is an easy solution – drink tap water from a reusable bottle!
