Personal Project Progress #2

Tonight I would like to talk about orange juice.

First off, I want it made clear that I don't drink coffee. Ever. Well, almost never; this summer, while I was in England, I had maybe half a dozen cups in the span of six weeks or so, which was unfathomable before I got there. But I haven't had a single cup since. Gone cold turkey. No side effects.

No, instead of coffee, I drink OJ every morning. My coffee mugs don't hold coffee; they hold orange juice. So perhaps it's no surprise that one of the things I've done for my personal project about food is to start buying organic OJ. Why organic juice? The absence of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, basically. I don't think we've talked much about farming and land use in V515, but in V643 (Natural Resource Management), we've been reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which is all about how the pesticides we used in the 1950s wreaked such ecological havoc throughout the country. That's bad, so I figure anything that can be done to reduce their use would probably be helpful.

I don't know exactly what I was expecting when I started buying organic OJ. But one thing I've found: it actually tastes better than the stuff I used to buy at Kroger. It's thicker and richer, more of a full taste. I'll bet that if I go back to supermarket juice now, I'd probably find it a bit watered down. So far, so good on this front.

Other things I've done:
--Buying mostly local and/or organic produce. I would say almost all of the produce I've bought in the last few weeks has been either organic and/or purchased at either the farmer's market or Bloomingfoods. Not that I haven't purchased anything from the grocery store, but it's definitely been less than I had been before. In this way, I'm hoping that I'm eating more environmentally-friendly produce and supporting local businesses at the same time.
--Green beans for lunch: In my effort to break my addiction to deli lunch meat, a few days ago, I made some green beans (purchased at the farmer's market) for lunch, accompanied by a cup of organic yogurt. This seemed like a good way to break the monotony of lunch sandwiches. It went okay, I guess.
--Eating less red meat: I can on one hand the number of times I've had ground beef this semester. The one meal I've made with ground beef has been a big pot of chili I made several weeks ago. However, even that meat was locally, grass-fed beef. Not only was it healthier (as advertised), but it also was cheaper than the lean meat at Kroger. Didn't notice much difference in taste. That's not to say that I haven't eaten other meat; I have a couple of recipes that call for kielbasa, and my "I'm way too tired to cook tonight" meal is generally still grilling up a bratwurst and slapping some mustard on it. So I guess I still have some changes to make.

Future steps include:
--More research: Honestly, this is the part I'm falling way behind on. I need to delve into the details on why local and/or organic produce can be better for your health and the environment than mass-produced food. This includes digging into some journal articles and other studies that document the advantages (and disadvantages) to changing what I eat. Unfortunately, what I've read so far is not all pretty. Take this, for instance: a short blog post from the Nature Conservancy about the environmental impacts of organic food. One of the things it states is that organic produce may require more land to grow on a large scale, which, since I'm interested in land use issues, may not necessarily be the best thing. I'm also interested in looking at some of the climate change effects of local produce; some of the things I've seen thus far seem to hint that there's actually more greenhouse gas emissions involved in local food than non-local food due to the efficiency of the delivery methods. But I need to study that more. I also obtained a copy of the book Food, Inc. from the library and need to go through some of that in the next few weeks.
--Discussions with local enthusiasts: I have some plans to talk to local farmers and business owners (such as the chef at Farm) to talk about the costs and benefits of both local and organic food.
--Food experimentation: One of the things I'd like to do is make some more of my own food instead of buying packaged stuff. To that end, I'm thinking about trying my hand at homemade pizza dough and sauce, spaghetti sauce (because I eat a lot of pasta), and possibly salad dressing.
--Beer & soda: I'm thinking of looking more into locally-brewed beer and organic soda. This latter might be most important because, while I hate coffee, I am a bit of a Dr. Pepper addict. I'm wondering if organic colas might be better for me.

That is all.

It's interesting that we are talking about transportation this week. I say that because I've had to struggle with this issue a lot lately. Here is my (sad) story:

Three weeks ago, I got in a car accident. I was driving my '06 Corolla east on 3rd St., out past the mall, on my way to Brown Co. State Park for some hiking one Saturday morning, when a girl came from a side street on my right (the south side of the street), and tried to make a left turn to go west on 3rd. St. Well, when she did that, she either looked and didn't see me or didn't bother looking at all, because she pulled right in front of me. I barely had enough time to register what was about to happen before I hit her. Fortunately, we were both able to walk away from the accident. I don't know about her, but I ended up going to the emergency room right afterward, where they X-ray'd my back and neck and found nothing amiss, so they sent me home with some pain pills and told me to expect some soreness over the next few days. A couple days later, though, I was back in the ER with the worst headache I've ever had, and that's when they told me I probably had a concussion. Since then, I've been dealing with some back issues; it doesn't hurt too bad, but it's enough that I'm going through some physical therapy to try and get rid of it.

My car, on the other hand, did not fare so well:

The damage doesn't actually look that bad, but apparently it was bad enough for the insurance companies to total it. So now I am sans vehicular transportation, and this is where the dilemma occurs.

Among the many issues I'm trying to sort through is whether I even need a car at all. In the fourteen months I lived in Bloomington before the crash, I put probably no more than 3,500 miles on my car. That makes me wonder if I could survive without a car at all. While I would love to say "yes," I think the answer is no. As our reading this week attest, a great many of us in the States are addicted to our cars, and I think I might be one of them. Even though Bloomington is a pretty bike-friendly city (as the awards it has garnered will attest), there are times that I definitely want to drive instead of bike places. That's only going to get worse as winter sets in, because I'm a winter wuss.

My second decision is whether to buy new or used. Once again, while I know that the planet would probably thank me if I bought a used car, I'm really leaning towards new. I have a hard time justifying buying a used car with sixty or seventy thousand miles on it when I can take the insurance money and add a small interest-free loan from...*sigh*...my mother to finance a new car.

Not sustainable of me, I know. But to bring this story back to our readings, I think my story illustrates a couple of points about our attitude towards cars. One is that we feel like we can't live without them. With how little I drive these days, it's hard justifying buying any car, but I would much rather have one for the convenience of not having to wait for a bus in the snow or being able to drive when I'm just too lazy to bike or walk somewhere. Besides, I don't know where I'm going to be living after graduation, and while I'm planning on looking for something close to public transportation or some other way to get to work, I can't guarantee that that's going to happen. So better to error on the side of caution and get a car, I think.

Second is my preference for a new car. As Americans, I think we're conditioned to want the new, shiny toy as opposed to the pre-owned, less-shiny toy. This is one of the things that makes ours a not-so-sustainable society. It's analogous to the stigma against public transportation noted in the Wheeler readings this week, where riding the bus is considered a sign that someone just doesn't have the money to own a car: "Oh...you bought a used car?...You poor thing." Our attitudes towards public transportation and new cars seem to be pretty much the same, as they are both status symbols.

All that being said, regardless of what I end up with, I'm planning on making my auto purchase as "nice" to the environment as possible. The cars I've been test-driving have all been compacts that average nearly 40 mpg on the highway. Gas mileage is probably the one thing I won't compromise on with this purchase. So see, I'm not a completely horrible person.

(http://green.autoblog.com/2011/10/19/banning-hybrids-from-hov-lanes-slows-down-everyone/)

A couple of links to recent news articles seem relevant to this week's readings. Here is an NPR story about how more roads generally lead to more traffic. I think both Wheeler and Roseland hinted at this connection. And here you can read about how California's recent banning of hybrids from carpool lanes throughout the state actually slowed down all traffic, instead of speeding up traffic in the carpool lanes, which was the intent. Once again, our readings this week discuss how such decisions can impact the way we plan and use our transportation system. In this case, it seems like the state's decision created some unintended negative side effects.

Ta.

Quick Hits

So I came across a couple of links today that might be interesting.

Here you can read about a Canadian program that lets people invest in bonds where the money is used to buy solar panels. These types of financing are pretty rare here, but it seems like they're increasingly popular elsewhere. The best part? A rate of return that gets you more than $200 more than you would if you invested in a crappy savings account these days.

Here you can read about how Disney Paris is instituting heat co-generation, where they use the heat generated by all their computers and servers to power nearby buildings. We just got done reading about this, and seems like a very creative (and, I gather, efficient) way of generating electricity. If more big businesses do things like this, we may be on to something.

TTFN

Unanticipated Effect of Climate Change

I just came across this, and thought everyone might like it. It's about the unanticipated Arctic (as opposed to Antarctic) ozone hole, and how it may have affected Europe's crop output this year. It touches upon the types of things Dr. Brabson talked about today, so check it out.

The Quest for Energy Efficiency

This week's reading on energy efficiency contained some good ideas and touches on other topics we've talked about in class. To wit:

*Making vending machine companies pay for the electricity their vending machines use: This one I like. Apparently in Japan, vending machine companies have to pay for the amount of energy the vending machines use. To me, this is a great idea to overcome the principle-agent problem and force the providers of a service to bear the full costs of providing that service. What other areas of life could this be extended to? What if we instituted a tax on the owners of apartment buildings and other rental properties if they did not install things like energy efficient appliances, CFL bulbs, etc.? I guess the ultimate internalization of an externality would be forcing automakers and oil companies to pay for the marginal environmental damage caused by their products. It does not look like we're going to be taking this step anytime soon, though.

*The lessons we've learned abOut community-based social marketing are woven throughout this selection. A couple of things I picked up on involve messaging, such as getting key early stakeholders involved in publicizing an energy efficiency campaign and using electricity bills to show customers how much energy their neighbors are using. As our community-based social marketing book shows, these types of actions (combined with others) can really help convince people to adopt more sustainable behaviors. It also shows how such actions can backfire, with the example of the Sacramento MUD customer who wrote in telling the utility to leave him alone as long as he pays his bill on time. I guess you can't please everyone.

*The article doesn't go into much detail, but I'm curious about the disincentives to builders to build efficient buildings. Is this just a matter of standards not being high enough? The article mentions that many buildings could obtain 40% energy efficiency by adopting some simple, off-the-shelf solutions, but is the problem just that they are not doing that because they don't have to, or is there something more to it? If it's just a matter of them doing only the bare minimum, then I would return the point made by one of the experts quoted in the article about mandating as much as possible. The way I see it, sometimes we do just need to mandate certain things. There are times that, because of economic incentives or other reasons, society just takes forever to do something that needs to be done, and maybe that's where government needs to step in. If mandating higher standards is what's going to change the situation, then maybe we should go ahead and do it. But at the same time, I wonder if there are other ways that higher standards could be incentivized. For instance, is there any incentive for LEED certification, beyond the certification itself? I'm thinking there isn't, but I might be wrong. Or perhaps there could be more extensive subsidies provided to defray the up-front costs of building a LEED-certified building. It's a thought.

Personal Project Progress

So...my progress on my personal project. Let's talk about that. Honestly, there isn't any yet. I've been struggling to conceptualize what I want to do with this project, and how big the changes are that I want to make right now. At the moment, I'm looking at making small changes. In particular, I want to do things like replace canned/jarred/pre-packaged food with something fresh, but right now, my conception of that is just to replace the frozen waffles I eat for breakfast with something fresh...maybe try and make my own spaghetti sauce...using more fresh fruit/vegetables as side dishes. To complement this, I'm planning on doing some research into the benefits of: locally-grown and/or organic produce and other food; the advantages of locally-owned restaurants cooking locally-produced food; maybe even looking at the benefits of locally-brewed beer as opposed to mass-produced crap. Today I had the idea of examining organic cola to see if it would be healthier than my Dr. Pepper/Mr. Pibb addiction.

These are kind of the vague ideas I have for this project, but I'm still...having trouble getting started. Ideas/comments would be appreciated. Thanks.