The NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) is the nation's most effective environmental action organization (I'm quoting now). The
NRDC web site is beyond overwhelming. All 100 million members and activists must contribute to the content.
After sifting through the site, I came across a page on
Mercury Contamination in Fish. In the toolbox at the bottom, you'll find 3 helpful tools: a mercury calculator for estimating the level of mercury in your blood (lovely), a
map of state and local fish advisories and a printable
mercury wallet card. There's also a guide to
mercury in sushi.
The wallet card gives the mercury level of the most common fish and indicates those fish "perilously low in numbers". It also has recommended maximums for eating canned tuna. My skinny daughter is eating about 3 times the recommended amount of tuna which is one can every 3 weeks. It's OK for her to eat chunk light (the cheap, dark tuna) once every 8 days. She'll be thrilled.
They're serious about eliminating plastic polythene bags in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. (No clue where that is? Click here.) I came across this BBC News article from 2003 that describes the problem of polythene pollution in Himachal Pradesh and what they are doing about it: After reading the article I took a quick poll of a few friends and concluded that a $2,000 fine for carrying a plastic bag would most likely eliminate plastic bag use here in the US. Since the article was written in 2003, I searched the Web and found a more recent article that listed the efforts of several countries to reduce the use of plastic bags. (Hmmmm... America wasn't on the list. Must have been an error.)While Ireland's 15 cents per bag tax would make a dramatic difference on plastic bag use in the US, I'm guessing Taiwan's $8,600 fine on shops that use them would have a much greater impact. How about Bangladesh and South Africa? They've implemented 10 years' imprisonment for producers of plastic bags or for any shop that uses them. That would do it for me.
While other countries are getting serious about reducing their plastic bag use, what are we doing? Here. Read this article by John Roach for National Geographic News. Here's a little snippet: How embarrassing.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 9:24 AM 4 comments
Free Cycle xA grassroots movement to reuse unwanted items. Membership is free, with one rule eing that everything posted must be free.My new favorite web site is freecycle.org. Freecycle is a grassroots movement to reuse unwanted items. There are nearly 1.3 million members from 2,718 "communities". Joining is easy, and free. You find a local group, email the moderator, go back and forth with a few emails and you're in. According to a press release from "Night & Day", a mainstream UK magazine: I haven't posted anything yet but I did respond to an offer for a free loveseat. I'm going to look at it today.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 10:32 AM 4 comments
Here's a quiz (see end of this "tirade" for the answers):- What percentage of glass bottles do Americans recycle each year?
- What percentage of plastic bottles?
- Aluminum cans?
- Recycling rates have increased or declined in recent years?
In the US alone, over 1 trillion cans (1,010,000,000,000) have been trashed, not recycled, since 1972 - the year the Aluminum Association began collecting recycling data. According to the Container Recyling Institute, this amounts to 17.5 million tons of aluminum - worth about $21 billion at 2004 prices. Ironically, the 1 trillionth can not recycled coincides with the 40th anniversary of the aluminum can. Happy anniversary.CRI's press release states that only 44% of cans sold in 2003 were recycled - 820,000 tons. And, according to Jenny Gitlitz, CRI's research director:
I added CRI's Containers Wasted counter to my sidebar. You can too - if you know HTML. Click here for the code. That huge number that keeps increasing is the number of bottles and cans wasted in the US this year (not one of those is mine, by the way). I don't know what percentage of that number is aluminum cans but I do know that recycling just one can saves the energy equivalent of one cup of gasoline - enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for 3.5 hours. (How many cans do you throw away?)
Answer to quiz:
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 7:17 AM 2 comments
A month or so ago I started reading "Living Simply with Children" by Marie Sherlock. My coworkers thought it was funny that I needed to read a book to live simply. In today's world, you do. I imagine that books 50 years ago told parents how to make handmade clothes that would last as a child ages. Today, you need a book to tell you how to install closet organizers to hold your child's overabundance of clothes. We've come a long way, baby.Back to the book. About a week after starting the book, I volunteered my family (again) to help clean up the little river town near our house. It was devastated by the recent floods. I didn’t know anyone from the town so I went looking. I ran into a woman and her husband dragging mud-covered household items to the curb and offered our assistance. Long story short, my family and I returned the next day to help.
My point? The couple lives VERY SIMPLY. They live in a two-room house - actually one room and a basement - heated by 2 tiny wood burning stoves. When the water started rising (it eventually rose to roof level), they rented a U-haul and moved all of their worldly belongings into the truck! I'm not kidding - one truck. I figure that fact puts them in the same category as about .001% of Americans - or about 50% of the rest of the world.
That one afternoon on the river was quite a learning experience for my family. My children learned about helping families in need. My husband and I learned the true definition of "living simply". And that ain't us (yet).
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 9:48 AM 1 comments
The "Third World SUV" photo at www.bikeroute.com/EnviroFacts.htm is hilarious. (Look for the driver in the radiator cut out.) The facts aren't so funny.POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 7:38 AM 0 comments
When my husband picked up a copy of Outside Magazine in our chiropractor's waiting room I wasn't surprised. The cover story was "Women of Rock". The cover photo was a naked (gorgeous) Rock Jock positioned between two giant rocks. While I'm opposed to using scantily clad, anorexic-looking women to sell a product, this was a little easier to take since one of the "products" was the environment. The magazine's feature story "The Axis of Eco" reviewed 13 enviromentally-friendly trends. The author writes: These 13 trends are Architecture Greenhouse Gases Gear Ski Resorts Automobiles Hollywood Skateboarding Lodging FAQ Vices CelebritiesYou might want to read the section on Eco-Chic gear if you surf, hike, shave, brush your teeth, wear socks, use sunscreen or wear jeans. (Let's hope you do at least one of these...) I learned about Recycline, a company that makes disposable razors and toothbrushes made from recycled Stonyfield Farms yogurt containers. (Stonyfield is quite the socially conscience company. Read about them here.) And, it looks like you can find Recycline products in thousands of grocery stores across the country - except the 3 nearest to me, of course.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 9:50 AM 0 comments