Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

People Won't Change for the Environment (on my campus)

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by Katie Kish · 09/03/09

A recent article outlines a pretty simplistic poll conducted in London about people’s willingness to change their behaviour for the good of the planet.

A straw poll of 15 British men and 15 British women between the ages of 25-75 in central London, showed all were willing to make small changes for the environment, such as recycling, but few would commit to more fundamental changes to behavior.

The outcome was pretty surprising. People will “try” to drive less, and others take a shot at proper recycling. But no one is ready for a change in their lifestyle. This inspired me. I was sure I could find better numbers and results here in Toronto, Canada. We are supposed to be eco-friendly up here, right?

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bags, book, books, business, car, clothes, clothing, consumption, eating, Eco-Chick, electronics, Energy, Food, fur, Home, local, London, meat, News, plastic, plastic bags, plastics, Recycling, reduce, skin, style, Vote, women

Success for the Sea Shepherd; Japanese Whalers Head Home Short

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by Kimberly Jordan Allen · 04/15/09

In a statement made yesterday by the Institute of Cetacean Research, Japan announced that it made it back to the mainland with only 679 whales slaughtered, as opposed to their annual minimum of 985 killed. The Japanese fleet pointed to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as the primary cause for their failure in the annual hunt.

Criticized for their tactics, mocked for their motley crews, and adored for their perseverance, the Sea Shepherd holds true to the course, regardless of public intrigue. Paul Watson, noted demagogue, eco-anarchist, and purported “eco-terrorist” (a creative use of language in our opinion), leads activists out to sea on anti-whaling campaigns to intervene in the unlawful acts of poaching. Animal Planet has been recording the campaigns for the past two years, producing the popular television show Whale Wars. The show has brought international attention to the Japanese whaling fleet that slaughter the approximate one thousand whales annually in the name of ‘research.’

Regardless of opinion and conjecture, the Sea Shepherd and her crew place themselves in harm’s way to act on behalf of mammals that are unable to avoid the nets and explosive harpoons that determine their existence. According to the Japanese, the direct interventions of the Sea Shepherd are what caused the fleet’s inability to meet their quota this year. The whales are supposedly killed for scientific research but it is well known that the meat is packaged on the ships at sea and sent back to Japan for consumption.

According to Watson:

“We continue to speak the one language these whale pirates understand,” said Captain Paul Watson. “Profit and loss: we need to keep their losses up and their profits down. We will eventually beat these killers with aggressively applied economics.”

Go Sea Shepherd!!! Congratulations.

conservation, consumption, farm, Home, meat, opinion, Outdoors, tv, whales

Dose of Reality: Engagements

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by Katie Kish · 01/22/09

To produce that single ounce, miners have to quarry hundreds of tons of rock, which are then doused in a liquid cyanide solution to separate the gold. Payal Sampat, the campaign director for Earthworks, the mining watchdog, told The Independent: “Gold mining is arguably the world’s dirtiest and most polluting industry.”

My boyfriend proposed not too long ago (so I guess he’s not my boyfriend anymore) and he said the hardest thing wasn’t worrying about if I’d say yes or no…or getting the mood right…or doing it at the right time…or any of those small things. He said the hardest part, by far, was finding a ring that wouldn’t make me go into a rant about mining and health or cry because of child soldiers.

Recently National Geographic put up a slide show about gold – its effects on people and the environment.

A wedding ring which costs around $2000 (CND) which is about 1 ounce of gold creates up to 30 tons of toxic waste. This toxic waste effects us all here in North America as our lakes are not only threatened to be turned into dump sites, but already are in some cases.

CBC News has learned that 16 Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly “reclassified” as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland.

Environmentalists say the process amounts to a “hidden subsidy” to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat.

And really…The real cost of gold is a dirty one that could be with us for centuries as shown be previous studies.

Environmental Fate of Mercury

* “Hot spots” at mine sites
* Contaminated sediments
* Transport to downstream areas
* Bioaccumulation and biomagnification in food chain

Risks to Human Health

* Consumption of contaminated fish
* Improper handling of contaminated sediments
* Inhalation of mercury vapors
* Low risk in municipal drinking water
* Some mine waters unsafe for consumption

And although there are attempts to make it cleaner, you can do your part to make sure your bling is ethical. My engagement ring is from Brilliant earth, which was his final choice after checking out blue nile, polar bear diamonds and greenKarat.

consumption, drinking water, Eco-Chick, epa, ethical, fish, Food, habitat, health, News, produce, sport, Tea, waste, water, wedding

Dose of Reality: Happy New Year

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by Katie Kish · 01/02/09

“The science is beyond dispute… Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response.”

I never thought I’d see the day when the President of the USA would be considered “more green” than the prime minister of Canada. I’m happy to say, that I truly believe Obama is just that. (Although…to be fair – being “more green” then the Canadian government isn’t super hard right now.)

The future looks mostly friendly with Obama on leading the way. Originally there was some skepticism over his support for “clean coal” support – but won the environmentalists back with his incredibly aggressive and undeniably ambitious plan for climate change and renewable energies. This plan focuses on an attempt to reduce 80 % emissions from 1990 levels by 2050 along side auctioning 100 % of the pollution permits. If he holds true to his plan it will also include a $150 billion investment for green jobs and clean energies.

He is calling for 30% of all the government’s electricity to come from renewable energy within the next 11 years, and 25% of ALL U.S.A electricity to come from sustainable/renewable sources by 2025. All “new buildings” would be carbon neutral by 2030 and U.S oil consumption would drop by at least 35%. He opposes oil drilling in the Arctic, supports Nuclear energy (although doesn’t want it stuck under Yucca - but did accept $159 800 in contributions from Exelon) and supports labeling foods for GMOs and country-of-origin.

So it looks as though that America is rolling into a new year with some bright light ahead of them. To the east Spain is putting forth intense efforts to start a competition for the biggest and baddest solar energy device this world can offer. They’re not even going to keep it to themselves, but have said that they will export the technology to places such as Algeria and Morocco.

The 20MW solar tower is also a forerunner for an even more ambitious idea, one that Abascal [Abengoa’s CTO] hopes will become a standard for CSP plants in future — a 50MW version that could generate electricity around the clock. “During the day, you’d use 50% of your electricity to produce electricity and 50% to heat molten salt. During the night you use the molten salt to produce electricity.”

Molten salt technology is in its early stages but Abengoa is testing the idea at a power plant in Granada. So far the company has demonstrated that it is possible to store up to eight hours of solar energy by heating tanks containing 28,000 tonnes of salt to more than 220C. “This will make it possible to have almost constant production or at least it will be able to produce energy for most of the day,” said Abascal.

India is doing it’s part by introducing such technology as the solar rickshaw!

The solar version reaches a pretty impressive speed of about 15 kilometres per hour and, fully-charged, the battery can keep going for 50-70 kilometres. The goal is to develop the current four Soleckshaws into more advanced models in time for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

Hopefully these sorts of technologies will only keep going so that the everyday rickshaw driver can afford one. But for less costly environmental efforts we can turn to Japan where they’re using recycled bottles to save people’s lives.

All over the world there are people devoting their lives, or simply just doing their best to help save the environment. I look forward to this new year, when I suspect that we’ll see many changes in America, Canada and all over the world. Although some of the governments may not have the best plans, at least they’re starting to have plans at all. And it’s going to take the effort, passion and devotion of every single person to see some major changes starting to take place.

So Happy New Year! I hope this coming year brings you lots of green-filled surprises and cool new technologies for us all to try out. Throughout the year I’ll keep you updated on coral reefs, endangered species, deforestation, pollution and the hardships that people are facing because of global warming and other environmental disasters.

“We are not acting as good stewards of God’s Earth when our bottom line puts the size of our profits before the future of our planet.”
— Obama Oct. 14, 2007, in a speech at an interfaith forum on climate change

arctic, car, carbon, climate change, coal, consumption, deforestation, eating, Eco-Chick, electric, electricity, emissions, Energy, Food, Global Warming, green jobs, India, model, models, New Year, nuclear, Obama, oil, Plants, Pollution, produce, recycle, recycled, reduce, rum, spa, sustainable, Technology

Daylight Savings Time: Energy Waster

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by Starre Vartan · 03/08/08

Guest post by Brian Clark Howard, editor at The Daily Green

Cartoon from “K City” by Bruno Pieroni

Growing up in Central Indiana, daylight savings time seemed foreign and exotic. My friends and I were aware that we were the butt of jokes around the country for being one of only two backwards places in America that didn’t observe the phenomenon (part of Arizona being the other at that time). Part of the year we were on “New York City time,” and part of the year it was “Chicago time.” (To make matters worse, 15 of Indiana’s 92 counties actually did observe daylight savings.)

The biggest effect of not observing DST (daylight savings time) seemed to be which TV Guide schedule one had to look at to make sure you didn’t miss your shows. This was fine, until I moved away from Indiana, and I was perpetually perplexed about what time it was back at my parents’ house, making calling them a crap shoot.

People always said that the reason Indiana didn’t observe DST was because it was a farm state, and farmers didn’t like to switch times, given that they were accustomed to getting up at the ass crack of dawn to milk Bessy, rob the chickens of their nightly labors and putter about the cornfields. How the good farmers of Iowa managed to be convinced to go along with the time change was never explained to me.

Turns out Farmer John isn’t the only one who has a beef with daylight savings, in addition to computer programmers and those who calibrate elaborate machinery. There has long been a heated debate about whether the practice saves energy or wastes more.

Interestingly, the 2006 adoption across all of Indiana of DST gave researchers a unique opportunity to put the energy use theory to test. A professor and grad student at UC Santa Barbara found that residential energy use in Indiana went up by 1 to 4 percent after the switch to daylight savings time, costing ratepayers an additional $8.6 million annually.

Why? The researchers found that even though people did need to use lights less in the evenings, that was more than offset by people running the heat more in the resultant cooler mornings, and running their air conditioners more in the evenings when it was hot. When parts of Australia adopted DST in 2000, energy consumption stayed about the same, although increasing morning loads drove prices up. A 2007 simulation in Japan predicted that overall energy use would rise if Osaka switched to DST.

As a night owl who works a 9-5 (more like an 8:30-6:30 or 7), I really like daylight savings, because it is actually still light out many days when I head home. It helps mark a nice change from the long winter of leaving for work when it’s dark (I have a long train commute) and stepping out of the office and walking through Times Square when it’s dark.

Retail (people shop more) and sporting goods and events (duh) companies love DST, while theaters, TV broadcasters and yes, farmers, oppose it. Interestingly, daylight savings means higher gas consumption, although it may decrease traffic accidents and possibly some crimes. The jury is still out on whether it is good for health (decreases seasonal depression disorders and promotes exercise!) or not (increases skin cancer!).

Regardless of whether you come in favor of DST or not, you don’t have much choice in most of the country. Don’t forget to turn your clocks forward an hour, as it begins at 2 am on March 9. It might also be a good idea to adjust your thermostat (you should have an automatic!) and any timers on lights. Why pay for energy you don’t need, and pollute more?

The famously wise Benjamin Franklin had proposed adjusting the clocks with the seasons precisely to save on candle wax and other resources. So honor that spirit by adjusting your consumption appropriately.

consumption, daylight savings, electricity, Energy