Showing posts with label petroleum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label petroleum. Show all posts

Friday, April 09, 2010

There's been quite a bit of hype for a few years about corn-based biodegradable plastics. The simple solution to our throw-away culture was to create better things to throw away... or so they say. But the problems with these corn-based plastics run from the obvious to the not-so-obvious.


Photo by Dan Klimke
For starters, they're made from corn. In many instances, it's GMO corn. Even when it's not, corn is the most chemical hungry crop we grow: fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, you name it. So is it really better than traditional plastic? Maybe. Corn-based plastic supposedly uses less than half the energy that petroleum-based plastics use during production. According to an article by Elizabeth Royte in Smithsonian Magazine, corn-based PLA bags use 65% less energy during production, and emit 68% fewer greenhouse gases than their petroleum-based counterparts. Does that offset all of the chemicals that go into producing the corn as compared to drilling and processing oil? I haven't seen anything conclusive, but oil isn't going to be an option for much longer anyways. If we're going to continue to use plastics (which is another discussion altogether), we have to figure out something, whether corn is that something or not.

My bigger concern is with claims of biodegradability. Companies use this "biodegradable" packaging and present themselves as our saviors. Most consumers, not knowing any better, think this is the greatest thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind. But the fact of the matter is that PLA requires high-temp municipal and commercial composting facilities. These don't exist in most places, and a home compost bin just won't do. Home compost bins are aerobic, and they just don't get hot enough to break down these pseudo-plastics.

There are some exceptions, of course. There are a few producers of bioplastics that claim their products are compostable in a home composting bin. However, of these relatively few manufacturers, I've only found one that has actually been certified as home-compostable. That is Mater-Bi. Mater-Bi was tested by Which?, a UK consumer organization, and found that Mater-Bi composted under normal home composting conditions. The Village Bakery has been using Mater-Bi to package their organic breads since at least early 2008. We could use more companies with that kind of initiative.

Of course, the better solution would be to use no plastic at all. Buy from farmers markets where you can avoid packaging altogether, or grow your own food. Ideally, I wouldn't have a trash bin. I wouldn't even have a recycling bin. I'd only have what I could personally put into my body, compost, or reuse. The prevalence of urban sprawl and the dominance of big agriculture remain major obstacles to this goal. In the evolution to that ideal however, biodegradable plastics have a role to play. Perhaps we start with home-compostable corn-based plastics like Mater-Bi. From there we shift from corn to less chemical-dependent crops. As we lessen our dependence on corn we can diversify the crops being grown on those lands, and perhaps provide all of our food locally. Once foods are grown locally, our excuses for packaging them will disappear.

It's a dream, but a dream worth having.

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Thursday, March 25, 2010


I'm literally weeks away from graduating and I'm grinding to a halt--physically, mentally, emotionally, etc. At this point it's just a mad dash for the finish line that isn't accomplishing much of anything. It isn't teaching me any new skills or ideologies. It isn't preparing me for any job I will likely have. It isn't pushing me toward the future life I wish to live or the future world I wish to live in. It's all for a piece of paper that says I survived 4 years.

Whoop.
Dee.
Doo.

I'm not being the change I want to see in the world, as Gandhi famously suggested. I'm bending to the will of a world that I see as broken, a world where everything we eat is corn, where my generation may have a lower life-expectancy than my parents', where sea-levels are rising and islands are being consumed, and where people are forced to stay inside to protect themselves from man-made smog.

I don't want to be here. Do you?

Add to that a lack of community, a lack of connection to food and people. I'm supposed to be on "break" but instead I'm spending hours a day at a computer dreading a thesis I don't want to write. I get nary a text message, email, phone call, or knock at the door (except for a couple of Mormons who meant to convert me, and who I later regretted shoeing away in such a hurry).

Too much time inside. Too much time apart from people. It's frustrating.

TribeNot to mention that I watched The Tribe a few days ago. Certainly it was far from a perfect situation, but I connected with the situation: a modern group of people all depending on each other for their survival while living largely independent of the larger social structures.

Lets face it, we've created a system where it's easy to feel stuck.

If I don't go to school I won't get a good job. If I don't get a good job I won't make good money. If I don't make good money I won't be able to buy any land. If I don't buy any land I won't be able to grow my own food. If I don't grow my own food I won't be able to be self-sufficient. If I'm not self-sufficient I'll never be able to get out of this system which I detest.


We've made it even easier to get stuck by pouring concrete over land that was once abundant with food and by making it illegal to hunt or fish without the proper licenses. Our survival, our very instincts, are regulated.

But what if we worked together? What if we unstuck ourselves? What if we started a New American Tribe?

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, you should fill out this form.

Basically, I want to put together a group of 10-20 people from the Pacific Northwest with a diverse set of survival skills (foraging, hunting, fishing, trapping, shelter construction, first aid, etc.) and head south. And then north. And then south.

Our goal would be to cover all 48 contiguous United States on foot, moving with the seasons to avoid the most extreme weather. We'd forage, hunt, and fish for our meals and trade manual labor (like farm work or yard work) for shelter and food. When necessary, we'd sell handmade trinkets (perhaps you're a jeweler?) to earn money for food. Ideally we'd be eating 100% local food (wild or from local farms) and in turn avoiding additives like high fructose corn syrup which have become seemingly necessary components of processed food. We'd be getting back to our heritage as wholly as is possible in this broken landscape.

So often we're ground down by overwhelming abundance. We don't have to work for food. Surviving becomes trivial. Life becomes boring because we don't have to try in order to survive, but instead we worry about created stresses like phone bills and rent.

This experiment would allow us to be energized by the act of surviving. It would allow us to see the country in an environmentally friendly way. It would allow us to have a community amongst ourselves and to connect with our fellow Americans. Our interactions with different farmers and people with diverse backgrounds will help us develop a diverse skill set in a world where we're forgetting how to do many wonderful things.

Yes, this is a crazy idea. But I'm sick of worrying about what job I'm going to get when I graduate, and about how I'm going to be perpetuating a broken system. I need a break to do something crazy. I think you should do it with me.

If you're between jobs, just graduated from school, or are otherwise unsettled, this might be right for you. If you want to do something crazy, refreshing, educational,  and rewarding, this might be for you. If you want to see the country in an environmentally friendly way, connect with others, and be a part of something big, this might be for you. If you have the necessary hunting, foraging, and wilderness survival skills, this might be for you.


If you're interested, fill out this form and subscribe to the blog. If I get enough interest in the project I'll contact people to start discussing details.

Thanks for reading and your continued support. This crazy kid is now off for some shut eye.

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Sunday, March 21, 2010

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is part 1 of 2 in a series of posts on sustainability through nudism. Click here for part 2.

Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things (New Report, No 4)One of the things I like about Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things, is how well it breaks down each item it focuses on. A t-shirt starts out as a huge diamond drill bit, powered by an ungodly amount of diesel fuel, drilling for yet more oil on account of our energy hungry society. Why the oil? Two of the products from the highly-polluting oil refining process go on to be polyester. That polyester is coupled with cotton from highly fertilized fields. The fields are also heavily sprayed with pesticides and herbicides to eliminate any competition the cotton might have. Finally, right before the cotton is harvested, the plants are all sprayed with a defoliant to get rid of the leaves which would stain the cotton balls in the mechanical picking process. Up to half of these chemicals end up in local streams during application and even more end up there when heavy rains or irrigation leach them from the soil.

Once the cotton has been picked and the seeds have been removed it is shipped to a textiles factory where it is combined with the polyester and spun into yarn. From there it is woven into fabric and finished with a combination of chlorine, chromium, and formaldehyde before being dyed. As much as a third of the dye ends up in the wastewater because cotton resists coloring. These are all regulated toxic chemicals.

This fabric is finally shipped halfway across the world to be turned into t-shirts by women making 30 cents an hour in a Taiwanese factory. It's packed in an assortment of plastic and cardboard before being shipped back across the country where it will sit under the glaring lights of a department store waiting to be bought.

But that's not where it ends. A load of laundry in a conventional washer and dryer will use 40 gallons of water. An extremely energy efficient model will still use 20-25 gallons per load. Add to that the bleach and detergent which goes out with the wastewater and the electricity used to heat the water and then to dry the clothes. Over the life of the shirt, washing it ends up being a larger environmental concern than its manufacture, and that's even consider the amount of packaging and transportation that it underwent

The average household, according the Consumer Energy Center, does 400 loads of laundry per year. Thats as many as 16,000 gallons of water per year. 16,000! Based on the fact that experts recommend drinking 64 oz. (1 gallon) of water per day, the amount of water that the average household uses on laundry in just one year is enough to provide fresh drinking water to one person for almost 44 years. And this is in the face of the fact that our supply of freshwater (less than a percent of all the water on earth) is going to struggle to meet increasing demand as the world's population increases along with the standard of living for many parts of the world.

Am I suggesting that we go around naked? Yes. And no. First, I want to know why we wear clothes.

Of course, there's the practical concerns: protection from the elements. But for those of us who are forced to spend more time than we care to admit indoors, how much of a concern are the elements anyways? For those that do spend a great deal of time outside, the extremes of heat and cold tend to be the biggest concerns. But even then, we should be worried about function. Does it keep me warm, or does it keep me cool? The toxic dyes and chemicals are hardly a necessary component in a functional piece of clothing; clothes have been around for a long time, and the industrial use of these chemicals is relatively new. Even when clothing is practical, current manufacturing process are extraordinarily wasteful.

And those of us that don't need clothing to protect us from the elements 90% of the time? What is our excuse?

Shame. Shame is a big part of it, and a lot of that stems from our puritanical history.

I read an article the other day on a nudist website where a daughter found out that she would have to dress down for P.E. in junior high. She openly refused to do so because she didn't "look like a super model." I remember my own days from junior high and high school. I wore my gym shorts under my pants. I never showered. I never saw anybody else shower for that matter.

This is an era in which we are bombarded by airbrushed super models that inform what we're "supposed" to look like. We are made to fear the ways in which we are different from others rather than celebrating those differences.

The small amount of research that has been done on nudism suggests that children that grow up in nudist families and who interact with other nudist families have a much healthier self-image. It might be by accident that we are teaching children to be ashamed of their bodies, but it is clearly happening.

But, of course, there are always social pressures to don clothing. In Oregon, barring certain local ordinances, nudity is legal so long as it is done without the intent to arouse. There are two nude beaches in the Portland area. And even several nudist resorts. These places allow a person to shed clothes in a noncontroversial and nonthreatening environment.

Better for our self-image and better for our planet? I think we can all afford go naked sometimes. And I'm not the only one that thinks so.


Around your house, when you sleep... whenever you can, be naked. Think about the 40 gallons of water you could be saving for every load of laundry you save yourself from doing. That adds up.

And if you want to join a club, the American Association for Nude Recreation has annual memberships for $24.50 for students ages 18-25 years old, and $57 for adults. This provides discounts at various resorts as well as on services like car rentals... which I suppose is better than owning a car.

I just got a confirmation that my worms are on the way, so stay tuned for my post on making an indoor composter.

Until next time...

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is part 1 of 2 in a series of posts on sustainability through nudism. Click here for part 2.

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Another topic that is of interest to me as a would-be homesteader is alternative energy. Many will say that plants, that store energy from the sun, are our greatest sources of renewable energy. After all, people burned wood as fuel long before the explosion of the oil market.

When one thinks of solar power, one's mind probably first turns to photovoltaic cells, or solar panels, which stores the suns energy as electricity in batteries for later use. Photovoltaics aside, however, there are still many ways of harnessing the sun for filtering water, heating water, drying food and passively heating one's home. A Trombe wall, for example, utilizes a south facing window--which will receive sunlight almost all day as the sun moves from east to west--and a thermal mass to trap heat during the daylight hours and then let it out at night to keep your house warm. Books that I've read that give a good break down of using solar energy both actively and passively include John Seymour's The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live It and Robert Ristinen's Energy and the Environment. Other books I'm interested on reading on the topic of alternative energy include The Homeowner's Guide to Renewable Energy: Achieving Energy Independence Through Solar, Wind, Biomass And Hydropower (Mother Earth News Wiser Living) and The Renewable Energy Handbook: A Guide to Rural Energy Independence, Off-grid And Sustainable Living, which addresses people who live in rural areas and would like to provide all of their own energy.

In my particular location, I would probably have a wood stove for heating and cooking (as well as an earthen oven, which I'll cover in a different post), and then a combination of wind and solar would provide whatever electricity I still needed. Firstlook is a neat web app that estimates your wind and solar energy potentials, but there are professionals that can give you an assessment of your power need and potential. And in most places, if you have a surplus of electricity, you can sell it to the power company. Wind turbines are sold in kits for the real DIYer, or can also be installed by a local company, which is probably best for those of us that aren't electricians.

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Coming to college has taught me a lot, though not necessarily about the subjects I've been studying. But those too have helped shape who I am and what I'll will be doing with myself over the course of my life.

The climate is changing, whether you want to think we're causing it or not. I've witnessed more snowy days so far this year than I have at any other point in my 20 years here in the Portland area. Two summers ago I experienced the most intense heatwave that I've ever experienced, with temperatures well over 100 degrees for several days in a row, compared to our typical 80-90 degree weather. How are our large commercial food growers going to cope when the climate shifts in just such a way that they can no longer grow their prized crops?

Oil. Oil is a finite resource and we use it in everything. We're using it all up. You can see the evidence when you go to the gas pump and stare at the ever climbing prices. Supply and demand. When you have less of a resource, but demand remains constant, you raise prices. But it's not just gasoline. Plastics and many synthetic fibers are created from oil.

All plastic products, many of the materials used to make the clothes you wear, or the carpet you walk on, plus hundreds of the other products we take for granted, are made from petrochemicals. As the name implies, a main ingredient in petrochemicals is oil.
Can we even imagine a world without plastic? It has only found its way into everything within the past half century or so, but here I am, staring at a stack of CD cases, a couple decks of playing cards in plastic cases, the keyboard I'm plinking away at, and so much more.

I'm not trying to be mister doom and gloom by any means. I find myself reminiscing. Where I used to be is so much closer to where I want to be than I actually am. As much as my old man and I don't get along, I miss the little garden he would grow on a small plot in our backyard so that we would have fresh produce every summer. I miss going to my grandfather's each summer and canning green beans and carrots, pickling cucumbers and beets (my grandmother's sweet pickles are still the only ones I'll eat), and making jelly out of raspberries and strawberries. I miss the fresh grapes, corn on the cob, green onions, tomatoes, and so much more. And I miss going down to the river to pick wild blackberries for pies and cobblers. Especially cobblers.

The school work that I'm subjected to lacks meaning. I may learn something worthwhile from it, but I cannot look at a 10 page essay and say "I have survived because I have written this paper. It has provided me with warmth and sustenance." Providing your own food and clothing may be hard work, but at least at the end of the day you can sit down to a home cooked meal and know that you are surviving because of the things you have done. Elsewhere we are dependent on businesses and machines to provide us with simple things such as food, clothing, and shelter. It's scary to think that without them, it is impossible for me to survive.

I'm doing something about all of this. I'm learning the skills I need to survive. If I had to rely on what I know right now I wouldn't last very long, but in time I hope to require a parcel of land that I can farm with friends and family. Together we will have the skills to provide everything we need to survive, and have enough left over to barter for what we'd like to have.

This blog is here to document my research on the topic of self-reliance, as well as my real world accomplishments and failures. Wish me luck, and utilize the information I find in order to make yourself more self-reliant.

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