I spent my first Earth Hour with good friends, enjoying a candle and gas lamp lit meal complete with thoughtful conversation. As far as energy usage goes, Earth Hour was probably just a drop in the bucket. But the hour with no lights really allowed us to think profoundly about our consumption of energy and how our decisions affect that. I’m grateful for friends who are not afraid to consider these concepts and for their willingness to participate in an event like this.
We were making morning glory muffins. Being early March, no local veggies and fruits were available so I went to our local supermarket and loaded up on organic carrots (probably from Chile), organic apples (probably from Washington — stored cool with nitrogen pumped into the shed to slow respiration – ripening) , walnuts, picked up some orange juice (from oranges grown in Florida and not in South America) and was feeling good about the amount of “good” food I was purchasing but not so great about the distance that all of it had to travel. “The average bite of food has traveled more than 1500 miles before it reached your lips, changing hands an average of six times along the way.” – Bill McKibben – Deep Economy
It has become apparent to me in the past few years that just buying organic at the grocery store is not enough. At this point in my eating habits, I’d much rather feast on fresh vegetables from Seth and Caitlin or Erin’s greenhouse. I’d rather understand exactly who grazed my cow, what their education has been and which land management techniques were used. I’d rather know that the eggs I buy were laid that week from hens that have a choice whether or not to stay in their roost or go out and discover yummy bugs.
That being said, I still frequent our local supermarket, still buy lots of veggies out of season (had to make the expensive and damaging trip from South America), and still consume packaged food. I have mixed feelings about this…I really am striving to change my habits, but it is too nice to open a cold carton of orange juice and begin gulping.
So today, as always, I’m waiting in line watching the people ahead of me finish their transaction and the people behind me unloading their cart and I begin to feel very sad. Box after box of processed food hits the conveyor belt along with cans of soda, packages of candy and bags of chips. The people were obese and the food in their cart reflected it. My sadness came from a deep desire to help people realize that we make choices every day about what we eat.
This affects not only our world as we think about farming practices, processing plants and chemicals needed there, transportation, storage and waste, but also our health, the way we look and feel. The food industry (producers, refiners, processors, transporters, resellers) equates to a trillion dollar industry. Likewise, this same processed food grown with pesticides, fertilizers and genetically modified seed produces health problems that only a trillion dollar health care industry can fix. Why wouldn’t the government love the idea of food related health issues then? Think of the economy and the tax revenue. Could it all be solved by eating food from our local sources? No, but perhaps we could put a big dent in it anyways.
Well, these are simply the thoughts racing through my head at the checkout line. Lets think about what we eat, where it is coming from, what is involved in getting the food from the ground into our mouths.
I want to thank Edward Burtynsky for his profound view of the waste that we create and the energy that we consume. His piece, Manufactured Landscapes, affected me deeply, causing me to truly consider my life and realize that most every luxury and comfort that I experience is provided for by someone doing something to offset it in a faraway place. The computer that I’m typing on at the moment will someday become e waste and be shipped to a small village in China where people will heat the mother board to remove any valuable metals. The people of the village will then import water because the pollution in the rivers from the piles of broken computers makes local water undrinkable. All the while, I will be enjoying my brand new computer that is oh-so-much sweeter than the previous. Now I can keep in touch with my friends on Facebook even easier (because my new processor is so much faster). We are not thinking this through. Because all of our waste is out of sight, we are not caused to think about our decisions any farther than we can see. Mr. Burtynsky presents a view of this process through his beautiful photography of waste sites and energy sources.
It makes me think, is my lifestyle worth all of this? It sure feels nice to get in a car with heated seats (especially this winter), drive wherever I want to go with my iphone so we can google all of the best restaurants in town, do some shopping at Williams-Sonoma for kitchen implements manufactured 2500 miles away, watch a movie then drive home. To consider the true cost of this little adventure turns the dream into a nightmare. We are excessive. And we are addicts to this consumption. Can we change? I urge you all to look at this movie and decide for yourselves what it means to you. Here is the link to the production studio that made this film and below is the link to his inspiring TED talk.
Edward Burtynsky’s TED talk:
I figure why not start this thing off with a bang.
I hate plastic water bottles. Really. I do. It feels so ungrateful to me to live in a country where tap water is clean and abundant to wastefully consume energy and resources to supply ourselves with bottled water. Huge companies are laughing at us…SUCKERS!!! Go ahead and pay for us to take a normal resource, add no value, consume energy then create waste that your children will live with. Sounds like logic to me. All I ask is that you think about it next time you grab a bottle of water. Ask yourself why. Is it absolutely necessary in this situation to use a plastic container that will only be used once? Where will this bottle go when I am done with it? Can I put a filter in the fridge if I want clean, cold water on hand? We need to start asking questions like these in regards to every decision we make.
