Greenwashing and Product Ratings

One easy way to decrease your own carbon footprint is by buying products that are more eco-friendly. Whether you choose to buy organic fruit (no harmful pesticides or chemical fertilizers!), or just buying products that are manufactured locally (little to no harmful gases released in transportation of goods!) , any little bit you do can help. However, often times it can be hard to know which products are more "green" than others. Often times large companies advertise themselves as "green", when in reality, they're just greenwashing.

Greenwashing is a term that describes a company's practice of marketing itself as actively participating in sustainable, environmentally friendly practices, despite the fact that it is actually not putting in any effort to do so. One example of this is when hotels put placards in their rooms encouraging guests to reuse their towels in compliance with the hotels' "green campaign." However, the hotels don't charge extra for guests not reusing their towels, they're not installing more efficient washing machines, they're not actually doing anything to enforce their so-called "green campaign" besides printing up placards (on un-recylced paper, no doubt!). Placing that placard in the rooms was merely a scheme to increase profit; businesses that appear to "go green" often have much better reputations.

Overall, the term "greenwashing" is used when businesses are putting more money into advertising their "green campaign" than actually implementing a green campaign. It's sad that this term even came to be, even more so that it applies to most of the "green" organizations today. In order to fight back against these business, make sure to research which companies are actually holding up their end of the bargain. Don't be fooled by placards in hotel rooms! Do your part and support the businesses that are putting in genuine effort to make themselves more eco-friendly. One way to do this is to look up the "green rating" of the products that you purchase.

There are many websites available to everyone to look up product ratings, one of which is

http://www.goodguide.com/

The video above gives an excellent description of the features of the website, but, in short, this website rates products based on a number of criteria, all inclusive within the categories of health, environment, and society. It helps you determine whether or not the products you buy are right for you, and even provides alternatives to those products when they aren't (in the context of sustainability). I think this is an excellent tool that will benefit everyone who uses it - especially if they choose to use the mobile app and transparent toolbar. It's hardly an inconvenience to scan a barcode while you're out shopping or check a toolbar while you're making online purchases, and it could make a huge difference in your sustainable practices. Don't support companies that don't put any effort into making this planet more green - they don't deserve it. Support the businesses that are trying to help the Earth and make it a better place for you to live!

Project Nim – Watching with An Environmental Justice Eye

Off Topic - but...

 I’ve never had a personal face on animal rights – This is where anthropomorphizing an animal can help attract people to at least look at the issues of animal cruelty, ethics, and responsibility., since the beginning of this course I had zero qualms about EJ this being such a human centered paradigm considering there are many other organizations where they have found success at protecting ecosystems and species. But, Environmental Justice is not just a human issue and this documentary helped me actually see this clearly.

I just watched this great documentary about one of the famous chimps that have involved in learning sign language. It was the 1970’s -Trying to answer the question is a chimp could learn to communicate in ASL if treated like a human since birth. Nim started out living in a home with a large family a raised as a human child with a mother and many siblings.

Herbert Terrace, who ran the program, ended it abruptly when he surmised that Nim was only performing sign language to get what he wants out of his trainers, that no real language skills have been conferred to the chimp in his years in the program. Much like in the recent Planet of the Ape Reboot, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Nim was sent to live with a chimp colony in Oklahoma, where I can only assume he had little in common with the other chimps. Mirroring the movie even more the ranch even included a cattle prod wielding antagonist.

When Nim was 10 years old he was sold to a TB lab and became a medical experiment. Eventually he was “rescued” by supporters and sent to live in upstate NY in a large cage where he ultimately died at the age of 28.

So the EJ Issues are obviously

Agency – Not that a chimp should be roaming the US making his own decisions, but I can be certain he would not choose to be moved from NYC to Oklahoma ranch, and then to a medical research lab.

Structural Violence – Obviously the whole mechanism that allows this chimp to be sold to a medical research lab and really any movement outside of the home in Manhattan where he spent the first two years of his life was a cruel cold machine if not literally, at least psychologically grinds chimps into pulp.

IGHT – This continued structural violence of selling and testing on chimps generation after generation is can be nothing other than IGHT – could Nim’s mother had a wonderful life? I doubt it.

Place Based knowledge – Chimps, I’m sure, do best in the place where they can know where to go for food, water and recreation – this is what is taught to them as children in a natural colony. Removing them from this place integrated to their culture can create a disjointed and confused chimp.

The mother of the NYC family said “essentially tricking him into believing him thinking he’s human being with no plan whatsoever of protecting him” and I think this is the key to watching this movie – If you are going to get this chimp to perform for you in a manner unlike anything he would do in nature, you have a responsibility to his well being for the rest of his life. 

Inventive Recycling

This is a great video on how recycling and saving something small such as a plastic bottle can make a big difference and make a great change on our lifestyles!

Ordinarily, we would simply throw our plastic containers and other recyclable items into the recycling bin (and hopefully not the garbage!) only to pass the duties of the actual reuse of these items to someone else. But do we really know what our waste is being turned into? Most of the plastic we recycle can be made into recycled plastic, but this product is actually not even recyclable. The recycling process of plastics require a variety of different treatments which in turn requires massive amounts of energy when you think about how much plastic we use everyday. The United States has continually increased it's use of plastic bottles each year since the 1990's, even though the recycling rate has remained at around 27 percent. This means that only a small amount of effort is being put towards recycling all the materials we can after we use them.

 We may not all be able to build houses out of our own collection of plastic bottles, but in order to keep our unusable waste amounts decreasing, and our reusable products increasing, it definitely would not hurt to pay a little more attention to the things we can recycle instead of mindlessly throwing into the garbage can for our simple convenience!

Here's also a helpful list of items that can/cannot be recycled:

"Planting Pride, City Wide"

          The pictures above are from neighbors in Boston's urban neighborhoods who have banded together to form a urban design group called CityRoots. They have worked with  32 community groups, comprised of over 600 residents, on more than 48 projects ranging from community greenspace installations to tree plantings and low-impact landscaping. 


          CityRoots has transformed front yards, streets, parks, and vacant lots into beautifully restored green areas. Aside from the aesthetic transformation, CityRoots has proven to create physical and social transformations that leads to greater strength of the urban communities. They realize that building a greener neighborhood is a community-building opportunity. 


          For urban ecology to make a difference, organizations like CityRoots need to be supported and continued. We can not only build neighborhoods but also communities. 

LIVING WITH FRIENDS

    As the population grows, there is less and less habitable area on earth. For this reason, the population density in certain areas increases beyond a point and become urban centers. When these urban centers start intruding onto natural resources, we also intrude onto local wildlife.

                One of the fundamental concerns of urban ecology is how to deal with invading animals. The rats that live in our attics, the squirrels in the parks, the termites in the houses, the moles in our lawns and the weeds in our gardens are not invading us, but vice-versa. As we push the boundaries between our worlds, creatures of all sorts have adapted to an urban life.

                Urban ecologists understand that we will never be able to exterminate all wildlife from our urban areas. With this assumption, they try to understand the needs of wildlife and develop cities that take that into account. Wildlife professors Clark Adams, Sara Ash and Kieran Lindsey wrote a book called Urban Wildlife Management that talks about these strategies. They explain how distress calls can be used to lure dangerous animals outside of the city walls. They also suggest having designated areas that can be used to attract animals. This way, they explain, we can all live symbiotically.

                These thoughts might be idealistic but they offer some solution to the growing trend of urban wildlife. 

Composting

Composting is one of the simplest ways that people can help make their homes greener. By not throwing away food scraps and instead creating a compost pile (or giving their compost to the city), people can help regenerate soil by introducing bacteria and fungi that help break down organic matter, help prevent pollution by reducing the amount of trash that goes to landfills (which eventually results in large outputs of harmful gases like methane), and can reduce their own spending by not having to buy fertilizer or pesticides.

Do you know what goes in a Yard Waste Bin?

The above article discusses participant levels in King County's compost program; they are lower than hoped. King County itself is the national leader in composting, but when it comes to composting at home, many citizens are not willing to make the extra effort.

Composting is simple and easy! Seattle should work on trying to compost more and throw waste into the garbage less. It's only one extra bin on your curb that makes a huge difference to the environment and especially the soil.

This article details what to put in each type of waste bin. Do your best to separate your waste accordingly!

Carbon Footprint App

As our population is steadily on the rise, so have become our concerns on our natural environment. With increasing levels of pollution and decreasing amounts of resources, ecology is one thing that effects us all. Ultimately, it is up to us to change our lifestyles to incorporate things we can do daily to save energy and save our environment. Here is one way to get started!

One of technology's greatest inventions in our current generation is the smart phone. Most of us use this handy device for its amazing convenience wherever we go. The link to the iPhone app below allows us to measure our current eco footprint and help us to be aware of how much we are using on a daily basis. By knowing these simple numbers we can then make adjustments to our daily activities so we can use less and save more!

http://www.apple.com/webapps/calculate/carbonfootprintcalculator.html