Share 'N' Voice: What am I?

So for this Share 'N' Voice I thought it would be fun to play a game.  The object is to discover what environmentally friendly item I am talking about.  There are 5 items.  Take a guess at one or two.  Good luck to everyone :)  I will post the answers in one week.

1. You can purchase me at most stores.  I can carry items from the store to your home.  I am usually able to fold up into a small size for compact storage and the ability to take me anywhere.  What am I?
2. I can light up a room just as well as my traditional friend.  I only use a fraction of the amount of electricity.  Some of us even get an Energy Star Label.  What am I?
3. I am not available for use at all times.  I am a renewable energy source.  I convert light emitted from the star at the center of the solar system into electricity.  What am I?
4. I am 95%-99% derived from mother nature.  I display the "Design for the Environment Logo".  Clorox is my maker.  What am I?
5. I am very tall.  I am a rotary device that extracts energy.  The movement of air allows me to do my job.  What am I?

Read 'n' Seed 4: Third Quarter of Plenty - Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet

1.  For this portion I read pages 129 - 192, which were the months of September, October, and November.

2.  For the first time I was not that impressed with this section of the book, at least the first chapter.  During the month of September, pretty much all they talked about was how there was an accident in the Cheakamus River.  A Railway train rain off the tracks straight into the river dumping sodium hydroxide solution.  This killed all the fish in the river system, which affected James and Alissa because they planned on eating those fish all winter.  This section they mainly addressed history and other food crises that occurred.  The next month, October, turned out to not be a bright one.  James and Alissa were facing some major relationship issues.  They have been together for 13 years, and the 100 Mile Diet was really pushing them to their limits with each other.  No conclusion yet how their relationship will play out, so I will keep you posted.  In November they started to learn what a hit they were becoming.  People in France and Norway wanted their secrets, recipes, and wanted to hear them speak.  Their blog was booming.  And finally, they got flour.  November had started another potato month with summer goodies fading away.  The wheat they had gotten previously but weren't eating a lot of due to mouse poo had been infested with bugs so it was definitely a no go. It was heaven when they got flour.

3. In my chapter of a history lesson, I stumbled upon the word paleoecology.  Paleoecology is the study of fossils and subfossils to determine past ecosystems.  It actually sounds really interesting to me.  Another new word I found was shuck.  Simply put, a shuck is the husk of an ear of corn.  I had never heard this term before though.  Some significant things I learned about in this section include that they have been at this for 9 months and are actually doing it.  One point that they make is that they had no idea some things were grown locally.  I think this is the case with most people.  They have no idea what their local environment actually has to offer.  This is something all people should start to pay attention to.

4.  I do not think it could be any more obvious how awesome what they are doing really is.  They are living off the earth how it is intended to be.  No processed foods, no shipping and transporting of goods, simply living on whatever nature provides for them at that given part of the year.  I wish we could all take this and make a small step towards implementing this into our own lifestyles.  As I pointed out in the beginning of the post, people all over the world were hearing about this 100 Mile Diet and were curious about it.  Thus they wanted to learn more and try to be apart of it.  Hopefully we can create a snowball effect with this.  Someone tries it in a different area, and then they encourage someone else to, and they encourage another to, and so on.   This is a way that we can have a real beneficial impact to our environment.  I can only hope others catch on to this the advantages for themselves and the Earth. 

New Header

Today we created New Headers using Picnik.  It was a fun and creative way to edit pictures.  It was really easy to use.  You can do a lot of different things to your pictures including adding borders, stickers, and changing the border.  If you have never used it before, I encourage you to check it out.

Share and Voice: Erin Brockovich

So I went searching for some environment related movies to share about, and one of my favorite movies popped up: Erin Brockovich.  Granted this movie is a few years old now, it is still amazing.  For those of you that have never seen it, it is basically about a woman who works her way up in a law firm and uncovered that a water system had been poisoning its residents for over thirty years.  Through courage and determination Erin was able to help these residents in ways no one ever dreamed possible. 


I never even thought about this movie in an environmental way, but it definitely relates to the environment.  Erin Brockovich is a real woman in the United States.  She didn't have a law degree or anything fancy, she was just a normal person that saw an environmental issue and decided to take action.  This is something any one of us can do.  If you haven't seen this movie, I strongly encourage it.  Please feel free to ask me any questions about it as well, I have seen it many times.  Let me know what you all think.

Share and Voice: Solar Power Plants to Rise on US Land

This is a news article I found from the New York Times titled Solar Power Plants to Rise on US Land.  I thought it was a really fitting article after reading some of my web groups Read 'n' Seed posts.  These solar plants were just recently approved to begin building in California.  They estimate the plants can produce enough solar, wind, and geothermal energy to power 566,000 homes.  Another cool thing this article discusses is that the White House plans to install solar panels.  The article even talks about how these things are reducing their ecological footprint.  It is so funny to me, because before this class I had never heard of an "ecological footprint" and now I feel like it is everywhere.

Here is a final quote from the article that I feel is very beneficial, and I sure hope that it becomes a reality:
“This project reflects President Obama strong commitment to U.S. leadership in solar energy and the jobs it will create here at home,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement. “Deploying solar energy technologies across the country will help America lead the global economy for years to come.”   I hope you all find this article interesting too!

Read 'n' Seed 3: Second Quarter of Plenty - Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet

For this section, I read the months June, July, and August which also are the summer months.  The pages covered were 65-128.

The main topics covered during this section was how to find local farmer's markets within their 100 mile area and getting all the main food groups.  Since it is summer, and many products are blooming they were on the hunt for wheat, greens, and anything other than potatoes.  They travel all over to find new varieties of thing.  The best example I thought was when they drove to Seattle, WA (they crossed the border), and went to local shops.  They feel in love with nuts and cheese and other goodies they hadn't seen in who knows how long, but they remembered that they would have to cross the border to get back into Canada, and the border patrol was not too fond of the transportation of food products.  Through much debate among James and Alisa, they finally settled to "smuggle" cheese into Canada.  I just found it to be an entertaining part of the story, because who would ever think that it would really be an issue to bring food to eat to your home, big deal that you drove through an imaginary line to get there.  Another topic discussed in this section, was during the month of August they went to their cabin in Dorreen.  This cabin was essentially isolated from the world.  So they lived off the land and one farmers market they went to on day one.  Thus they bought things that they hoped would last for 30 days in the heat because they did not have a refrigerator at their cabin.  Their neighbor gave them canned salmon and they had cherry trees.  It was interesting to watch them adjust to another environment in the story.

This section provided a lot more words that were new to me.  The first being prawns, which seem to be a form of shrimp.  James and Alisa were very excited when they were able to get prawns since it was something different and something they enjoyed.  Another interesting term I learned is succotash, it is a dish with peppers, beans, and tomatoes, and was popularly during the Great Depression since it was readily available.  Lastly, I learned the term autochthon, which is referring to the indigenous people to the area.  The most significant thing I have learned thus far in this book is that it is possible.  You can eat locally, yes it may be difficult and you may not always get exactly what you want, but you can do it.  You improvise and come up with new creations and have a fun adventure in the process.

I think it is important to pay attention to what is produced locally around you.  In the end, you and entire world benefits from your decision to eat locally, sure it mind be hard at first, but James and Alisa are six months in and they are really getting the hang of it.  I definitely think it is possible.  I already catch myself questioning what is or is not locally grown foods.  They are learning local farmers' names and in return are told when certain crops come in so they can get the first pick.  It is really fun reading about how this transformation is taking place and I hope I can instill enough knowledge in you, so you will attempt to eat local foods too.

Eye Opener: CSPI

I took the Eating Green Calculator.   I chose to do this one because I am most concerned about what it is I am actually eating. 

I generally consider myself to be a person that eats few meat and dairy products.  I typically only eat chicken, and don't drink a lot of milk.  But I do consume a good portion of eggs, cheese, and yogurt.  I was shocked to see what kind of impact I was having from my servings of meats and dairy.  I was absolutely disgusted to see how many pounds of manure was created by the animals I eat.  I was also not fond of the amount of pesticide needed for the feed for the animals, because I ingest those as well.  I definitely took the pledge.  One thing I always try to do is incorporate more fruits and veggies into my diet.  This pledge should help me do that.  It also says that when you do eat animal products, choose those that are less in fat.  I think that will be an easy fix to do.  I am excited about eating more fruits and veggies because it will be beneficial to my diet and the environment.  Overall, I think experiences like this are good ones to have.  It makes me more aware of how things I have been doing for all my life affect the environment.  I never would have thought what I eat actually matters to the environment.  I am learning so many new things I can do in my life to help the environment and that makes me really excited.

Just for fun, I checked out the Tour of Food Supply.  The statistics offered on this site were shocking.  It makes me not want to eat meat at all.  I feel like we are so wasteful with so many products.  And I do not support abuse to animals which sometimes we forget what goes on because we only see the packaged items or the finished product.  I am glad I checked out this site too because it provided a lot of useful information.