Music Festivals – Beasts of Consumption and Waste

A seventy year old woman collects aluminum cans at the Jazz Festival in 5 Points, Denver while local police look on. No other visible recycling was available at this event.

It’s the beginning of summer in America and that means it’s festival season. Festivals are great ways to get members of the community out of their homes, into common spaces where mass quantities of food and beverages are made available for purchase at inflated prices and music fills the air so that people don’t mind so much. Underneath the pretty layers of Sun and Fun for the consumers are teams of laborers who’s responsibility is to ensure that the waste disappears from sight so that event goers have a wonderful time without the hassles of dealing with real world issues for a few hours.

In Denver, Colorado; the topic of trash became big news in 2017 when the expectations city planners envision when an event is held did not align with the specific permit code requirements. The original ‘420 Organizer’ Miguel Ortiz lost his permit battles and received a 3 year ban from getting permits in the city. The major event that has drawn out this conversation about permit holder responsibility. April 20th celebrations of Cannabis that occur in Denver – the first state in the US to authorize consumption of ‘Marijuana’ since the US created a global effort of prohibition in the 1900’s. Local organizers and permit holders who managed this event for years- have not had effective solutions for waste management and in 2017 had the authority to hold this permit removed. The 2018 event proved to be just as ineffective even though corporations took over the permit and responsibilities.

Wasteful consumption such as these plastic rings on alcoholic beverage tickets are an example of avoidable waste and

Complaints of trash in recycling systems are highlighting the issues specific to not having a standard of clear standards for recycling in the US. Since China’s 2017 ban on plastics that aren’t 99.5% pure, this issue is becoming more prevalent in the local conversations. Many communities have single stream recycling systems that are contaminated with materials that aren’t actually recyclable, a process called “Wishful Recycling“. This issue is why many events struggle to even attempt any form of recycling at music festivals.

What is the solution to solving this issue? There are several types of ideas that are presented. One of the most successful types of ideas is for concertgoers to get a single cup to use on arrival.

FloydFest hands a Klean Kanteen–conceived stainless steel pint glass to each ticket holder when they enter the festival, a move that nixes 100,000-plus cups or bottles that would’ve been used in their stead. Lollapalooza encourages attendees to bring their own bottles, and a whopping 1,136,313 of them were filled over the course of the festival’s 2016 run. (MTV,2017)

Organizers have placed samples above each waste disposal bin station to show users where items belong.

This type of model reduces the quantity of plastics used by the tens of thousands. We need to establish an understanding that one cup per person for the event is viable, logical and not a violation of health codes.  Through this effort alone, massive amounts of single use plastics can be eliminated. Other efforts festival planners have attempted is single stream recycling, composting and landfill stations that clearly identify what products go where. In combination, some events are moving from plastic to biodegradable plant based beverage containers, providing water refill stations and eliminating straws from being used.

One problem that organizers face is that even among waste management companies there aren’t unified standards. Trash haulers like Waste Management and Allied Waste are still struggling to develop standard offerings for events and festivals as well as getting people to be effective at home. As these companies catch up to having standard offerings to educate people how to manage waste materials, they are providing single stream trash hauling from event sites. Recycling is generally not an option and sorting the waste after the event is not part of these services, sending most of the materials directly into the landfill.

Solutions for these issues must begin months before the events. To make public festivals sustainable events, partnerships between organizers, performers and corporations must be formed. Efforts to promote shifts in practices have to be promoted through both social media and direct communications to event goers at the time of ticket purchase. In addition educational signage at ticketing/entrance gates, at vending locations and at waste disposal sites are required. Provisions to have water refill stations are much less profitable than selling 12 oz bottles at $2 or more, but the bring real reductions in environmental impacts. As discussed in our earlier post, “I drink bottled water and recycle my bottles, isn’t that good enough?” , each case of plastic water uses an average of 2.25 quarts of oil just to manufacture and distribute.

These solutions are not always easy to implement either. In addition to acquiring equipment to meet the needs of thousands or tens of thousands of event goers, education of both attendees and security personnel is also key. Ensuring that all participants are aware of these efforts is also a real challenge. One advantage for many festival organizers is that participants tend to be environmentally contentious. This will be an advantage in helping Americans in shifting the conversation and practices of consumption.

Hopefully in the years to come, this will also shift the way we consume, helping Americans be more responsible in how we use the resources of the planet.
In the meantime, you can help. Write to local organizers requesting water refill stations, that permission to bring water bottles into venues and encouraging them to eliminate wasteful practices. Encouraging events to allow for multi use beverage containers, be it beer or water, changes the quantity of consumption at any event immediately. Most importantly, either by joining the event teams or by direct communication, stay actively involved in the discussion so that you will reflect the change you want to see in the world!

Changing the Narrative – a look at our collective responsibility.

Cut The Plastic Environmental Mitigation Solutions  – Colorado / Fiji / Samoa
Plastic Pollution information to change your life Solutions to change the world

Plastics and our planet Urgent action is required by all consumers to reverse the course of destruction

 

Styrofoam, several types of hard plastic, aluminum foil, tires collect among banana, taro, mangoes and more at villages in Apia, Samoa.  This scene is common among islands where recycling does not exist.

 

by Brian Loma – Founder Cut The Plastic EMS

If you’re reading this either in it’s original English, or translated into your local language, you have consumed, or purchased, plastic at some time in your life.  Plastic was used to store the ink this is flyer is printed on. Plastics have, for better or worse, changed the way humans consume and have allowed for major improvements in advancements for all of humanity.  Unfortunately, as humans continue to increase the quantities of plastic that we use year after year, the methods and amount of plastic that is recycled or used again to make new things does not keep up with the demand for plastic products.  

The role of Cut The Plastic EMS is to bring a closed loop consumption process to end users, reducing plastic pollution into the environment. By using modern technology to reprocess plastics on the very islands around the world where plastic is burned into the atmosphere or directly enters the ocean.  Instead, we can develop enhanced infrastructure to eliminate dependencies on single use water while creating jobs, and enabling villages to have sufficient water for drinking and crops.  By providing these resources, we close the gap in consumption, impacting health, poverty and long term impacts of poisoning by plastic.

Simply put, we use the post consumer plastic to improve the lives of people who don’t have the means to get rid of the waste.  On islands, like most places in the world there is no extended manufacturers responsibility.  In the United State we call them Deposits and they are only available in 10 of 50 states.  Paying to have the plastics removed by boat from one island to the next in reverse order is currently not an effectively practiced idea as it can be where things like glass bottling exists.   By incorporating a multi level community focused approach we have begun plans for providing long term solutions through strategic partnerships in Fiji, Samoa and beyond.

Plastics can be found on serene nesting grounds on the shores of beaches around the world, but they are not yet seen from views like this between the islands of Samoa

Closing holes in the consumption process to prevent environmental pollution is a social responsibility.

Microplastic, considered less than 3 mm in size, is already contaminating most of the world’s oceans, great lakes and many of the worlds water infrastructure.  The plastics are found in soaps, sanitizer, shed from clothing and come from larger pieces of plastic as they deteriorate in the environment. Plastic now contaminates all levels of ocean life, beer in Milwaukee via the Great Lakes, and Salt around the world.  Most microplastic comes from large plastic that breaks down into smaller pieces. These pieces attract chemical pollutants to their surface. The pollutants are then transferred up the food chain as the plastic is eaten and bio-accumulates up the food chain. To read more about plastic pollution and the environment read my piece : The Midway Atoll, an example of Plastics Destructive Power

Solving plastic pollution requires local clean, potable drinking water

Since Princess Diana first call for united change to impact the needs of water and food for those in Africa in the 1980’s, the urgency to ensure clean water access for all around the globe continues to grow.  Unfortunately, so does the planets dependence on plastic single use water. Each case of bottled water consumes approximately 2.25 quarts of oil – burned into the atmosphere, just to manufacture and deliver it for use in the United States.  If you drink a case of bottled water a week, that is ONE BARREL of oil burned into the atmosphere per year – just to drink water.

Global climate change is about increases in frequency and intensity of storms or weather patterns.  They are occurring because of the quantities of carbon we burn into the atmosphere, for things like plastic bottled water.  This is having long term impacts on island nations around the world. In Puerto Rico, like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; access to clean water is an issue more than 6 months into the recovery relief.  It is for these reasons that communities throughout the world need to become self sufficient in ensuring that they have adequate access to clean water. Unfortunately, many in these far reaching places of the world, also buy and drink plastic water.  In these places most people don’t earn two dollars (US) per hour, a version of poverty is rampant.  In these places the plastic is burned into the atmosphere or ends up in the ocean.

Classroom programs engage students in the conversation about Social Responsibility, Consumption Practices and how plastics need to be managed effectively.  These students from Robert Lewis College (High School) are well versed in plastics, pesticides and our bodies.

Recycling old plastic into new water collection systems.

In order to change this culture and to shift island villages into places where clean water brings greater economic freedom Cut The Plastic Environmental Mitigation Solutions.llc is designing a micro recycling factory to take to island overseas, as well as to encourage changes here in the States.  Previous articles like Issues Island Nations face with Modern Consumption Practices  look at some of the issues I’ve already examined by living in the South Pacific.  Based on these experiences I am on a mission to transform the post-consumer or ‘waste’ plastics into a clean water infrastructure.  By combing a variety of existing technologies like spooling, 3D printing, shredding and injection molding we can take old plastic and make new items out of it.  To learn more about plastic recycling and the processes we’re incorporating into our project be sure to check out Precious Plastic.   In addition to the shared global vision they bring, we are incorporating additional technologies and practices observed while researching life on islands south of the Equator.

This projects long term goals are: to reduce or eliminate dependencies on imported water supplies and single use plastics, crate jobs through the development of new recycling infrastructures and to close gaps in plastic consumption by utilizing manufacturing as the method to export post consumer plastics off the islands they are shipped to.  Additionally we’re hoping to improve the world around us, sparking the conversation around how we consume and what our social responsibilities are. We’re already engaging in the conversation and teaching people around the world to use less plastic and to be smarter in how they dispose of it.

Building a better future together

The next stage is rolling out the design and fundraising campaign. Later this summer we will be rolling out several campaigns both here in Denver and across the globe.  Our effort is to design and manufacture  portable wind and solar powered recycling facilities here in Denver utilizing ideas I gathered from a project in Swains Island that processes green bananas into flour using a shipping container factory and later found similar ideas in the Precious Plastic global community.  At the same time launching several partnerships through sponsored beach cleanups, teaching recycling practices and developing new locations where plastic materials will be sorted and stored, awaiting the micro factory arrival.  Our campaign will be teaching proper recycling techniques, which include eliminating consumption through responsible practices. The goal is to have facilities destined for the South Pacific Ocean and the island nations of Fiji and Samoa. We’re currently working with ministry and community leaders in both countries to approve initial target locations and to coordinate further education and mitigation projects.  

The entirety of these projects will be funded starting with social resource funding and targeting strategic partnerships with corporations that should be financially liable for the mitigation of the materials they sell that pollute our planet.  There are existing Social Responsibility entities whose coordinated relationships which will be announced also.

Why we need to rinse or wash plastic before recycling.

This Starbucks beverage container found in Denver, CO is an example of contaminated plastic.

Have you ever purchased a car before?  Was the interior full of dirt, food crumbs and the debris of life from the previous owner?  How about your apartment or home?  Was the outside or floors covered in mud? The answer is likely, “No”.  When we buy cars, clothes, food or whatever – there is a general expectation that the item we purchase will be in good condition free of excess debris or dirt.  When most people are presented the same idea regarding the plastic and paper packages of waste from their food purchases, for some reason the idea doesn’t correlate.  However, this is a very real and basic reason that China set stringent conditions for contaminants in the plastic and other recycling that we create for processing overseas.

Reporting on a statement made to the World Trade Orginization in 2017 China, Waste 360 reported that US plastics are to dirty for use.

“To protect China’s environmental interests and people’s health, we urgently adjust the imported solid wastes list, and forbid the import of solid wastes that are highly polluted. Protection of human health or safety; Protection of animal or plant life or health; Protection of the environment“

These changes are causing the waste and recycling industries to look internally at the processes need to re imprint the culture. in order to create a cultural shift in our understanding. For now, the reality is that some states are telling consumers, this is garbage and you cannot put it in the recycling indicating that the inefficiency of our current system. In this January 2017 USA today article one single steam recycling faculty operator describes the problem-

“…all day every day there are plastic shopping bags (recyclable at a grocery store but not from a household), chunks of Styrofoam, diapers, syringes, food-contaminated containers … a nearly endless litany of things that residents throw into their curbside recycling carts figuring they are or ought to be recyclable.”

Contamination like straws, liquids and plastic bags are a daily problem for recyclers.

National waste management companies (USA) like Waste Management, Allied Waste as well as government and non government entities throughout the world are struggling with this problem as our populations continue to grow.

The problem in the US stems from the way beverage companies who oppose bottle bills or programs that ‘pay people to recycle’. According to the Container Recycling Institute, between 1989 and 1994, 14 billion was spent by the beverage industry to fight these laws.  This battle, fought by the beverage industry to deflect responsibility for the packaging materials they push into the consumption stream.  The fact that only 1/5 of the United States has a system of returning beverage containers in a deposit program says a lot about our basic cultural practices in considering the waste we generate.

In most industries, just like in recycling, the are basic standards. Those who are in the industry, including the scrap metal collectors who pick up appliances and metals off the roadsides and trash piles; understand that the “cleaner” the metals are, the more valuable they are. In my post, “Recycling household items- the fan, is it really worth it” I cover more on separating metals for increased value.  The cleanliness standards for plastic being set by recycling giant China, are too stringent to meet our cumulative  cultural understanding.  This means that when bales of recycling arrive in China, they can be returned to the US for being to dirty.

In the United States there is not a standardized national set of guidelines that are being taught as the proper process to organize and dispose of the ‘ things of life’.  Talking about our how we manage or process the ‘trash’ isn’t an exciting topic for most people.  This problem is one that organizations large and small alike struggle with.  How do I process this packaging so that its ready for the next step, and engage in the conversation so that company or community wide, people are working within the same standards.  Considering that for most people around the world, this isn’t a conversation that has ever occurred. The interaction between our consumption and its processing is currently, just beginning.  Because of these standards, as well as other struggles in ‘wishful recycling’ practices; Waste Management is among the entities driving the conversation. ‘Wishful recycling’ is putting things in the recycling that cannot actually be recycled via single stream. These include plastic bags, batteries, dirty plastic, Styrofoam (by community) and soiled food packages. Check out the video and hey, let me know your thoughts.

Climate Change, Plastics and social responsibility, more lessons from my trip to Fiji

Plastic debris litters a shoreline in the capitol city of Suva, Fiji.

As the world gathers to take account of the ways humanity has made an impact on the global climate, and the ways we can work together to reduce our impacts on the world I want to look back into more of the lessons and experiences I had while in Fiji.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the activities I participated in was Climate Week events in Levuka, Fiji.  These events were in preparation for the ongoing climate talks happening in Bonn, Germany.  the purpose of this meeting, “under the Presidency of the Republic Fiji to negotiate the implementation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.”

Impacts from climate change are affecting Fiji in many ways.  As the temperatures change along with the frequency of rainfall, concerns about water and food security are a real and active issue being faced by villagers in the 106 inhabited islands of Fiji.  Throughout my 2 year tour in the South Pacific I was overwhelmed by the dependence on imported food and the quantities of plastic that were consumed in remote areas of the world.  Much of this plastic is from water transported to the various islands on a one way trip of wasteful consumption and environmental pollution.   For most of the world, consuming plastic water is one of the greatest way individuals collectively pollute the world.  Additionally, due to the great awakening brought on by the Standing Rock Sioux, the indigenous people of the world are awakening their great and united voice, declaring that now is the time we must tend to the needs of Mother Earth.

While I was with the delegation members of the COP23 climate change week activities in September 2017, I engaged in a variety of conversations with village leaders and government staff.  Many were shocked at how the pieces of plastic water combine.  We talked about life on the islands, where for most needs, villagers are often required to grow their own foods, to work the land by hand and through a relationship with the Earth, eek out their livings.  We talked about plastic and it’s roles in global climate change.
I began by showing them how a bottle of water damages the environment through carbon pollution.  I explained how essentially, drinking plastic bottles of water burns oil into the atmosphere.  According to the Pacific Institute, the combined energy of creation and transportation of plastic is equivalent to 25% of the volume of the bottle in oil burned into the atmosphere.  Essentially for every 4 liters of Fiji bottled water one consumes, one liter of oil is burned into the atmosphere.  For a case of plastic water consumed in the United States that’s 2.25 quarts of oil per case of 12 oz (500 ml) bottles.

There are no Target stores in Fiji, where both of these items were cleaned off a beach next to Votualalai Village off the Coral Coast where a key reef protection zone exists.

Through my time in working with those across the islands, many islanders will recognize their plastic water consumption as unnecessary.  I continuously asked people on the islands, what do they do with the plastics after they use them?    Please remember that left on the island, they will take up quantities plastics that left in the ocean will take up to 500 years to degrade into micro-plastics the size of grains of sand.

The reality is that across the islands of the South Pacific, including the island of Ovalau, Fiji – and the old capitol city of Levuka (a World Heritage Sitea World Heritage Site) plastic waste is often burned into the atmosphere.  Burning plastic has some impacts both global climate change as well as emissions that the ozone hole.  Unfortunately, every island nation that has people on it, consumes plastics in one form or another.  Many, like Fiji are phasing in plastic bag bans, generally with a fee or are introducing biodegradable plastic bags.

Sitting around a bowl of grog on a Wednesday evening in September, I was blessed to sit with people facing this issue first hand, where the problem is a daily part of life.  They have mixed water quality issues because some piping is starting to rust.  The infrastructure, laid in the ground 50-60 years ago; is beginning to deteriorate.  Many villagers are concerned that the replacement pipe is plastic and not metal.   Additionally, Ovalau was hit by a hurricane in February- 2016 and is still recovering from the storm. There are houses and buildings in every village that are not repaired.  By my observations I would estimate that less than one in twenty houses have rain water storage.

How do we solve this problem?  In most villages people don’t understand that carcinogens and heavy metals are released when they burn plastic trash. For two months I have been pondering this question.  If you’ve read my waste management paper on converting plastic to fuel, you know that there are many ways we can repurpose the waste from our consumption practices.  Currently I’m working on a feasibility study regarding a specific way to utilize post consumer plastics to create new molded or printed plastic containers.  This concept would allow local consumers to transform their waste into environmental preparedness and protect themselves from water scarcity as well and divert from the developing  practice of drinking water purchased from another place in the world.

As we look at what processes and ideas we can come up with to reduce our carbon footprint and the stresses upon mother earth, I for one am paying close attention to the conversations coming as Fiji leads COP23 in Bonn, Germany.

Littering and pesticides damage your food and drinking water

To top off my journey of the islands known as Samoa, I was blessed to have a chance to speak to about 40 Robert Lewis Stevenson College (years 10-12) students about the work and passions of being a water protector and environmental scientist. 

The presentation started by showing how much rubbish I gathered just walking on the sidewalk of the campus. Really just a handful of bottle caps and a few pieces of plastic. These students were quite sharp when I asked how long does plastic last in the environment. “500 years!!”

The majority of these young minds wish to be doctors and scientists.  Big goals indeed! So I figured this would a good platform to explain for them the methods of animal and human toxic contamination from plastics discarded into the environment.

My presentation began with explaining how plastics are made from the same oil we harvest to make gasoline, kerosene and jet fuel; adding chemicals in the same way one might bake a cake.

We then carried through to how these pieces of plastic break down leaking chemicals into the water as the sun beats down on them. The most known toxic chemical is BPA which impacts both humans and fish because it acts like estrogen in our bodies.  For spawning fish, high quantities of BPA in the water can cause a minimum amount of male fish to be born.

The chain of contamination goes even further than just leaking chemicals from the plastic into the water on land and the ocean.  As plastics are leaching chemicals into the water, they are also collecting these chemicals on their surface. These tiny plastics also begin to grow alge, which causes fish to eat them.  As the fish eat these tiny plastics, often less than 5mm in size, the chemicals on their surface are absorbed into the fish.  As small fish get eaten by bigger fish, or grow into big fish themselves; a process called bioaccumulation occurs.  This means that larger quantities of toxins will be found in the food we eat.  We see this already in salmon found in Washington State, USA.
In addition to contamination from plastics, other forms of human consumption are adding toxicity into our food and water.  Medicines like antibiotics and birth control join chemicals like pesticides from farming; niccotine and formaldehyde from discarded cigarette filters and a whole host of items that pass through drinking water systems.  While many of these are part of life in large urban areas, much of the contamination is preventable.  

One of the most important ways to prevent this from happening is by cleaning up the rubbish polluting the Earth and by keeping trash in it’s place. Without managing the way we eat and consume ; chemicals from plastics, medicines and poisons will continue to spread through our water and  food supply.  In just a few generations we’ll have made this planet into a wasteland as seen in science fiction, including the popular Pixar movie –Wall-E.

But much of this is preventable, by doing your part you can become part of the change this and future generations need to have a beautiful healthy planet. Learn to shop and eat organic foods, practice sustainable consumption, avoid plastic bottled water and always tell your friends to clean it up when they litter and pollute the Earth. 

Diabetes and High Blood Pressure from drinking bottled water?

Plastic pollution is a big deal.  Our oceans, green spaces and city streets are full of it.  Beaches around the world find plastics upon their shore, including ones where no humans live.  There are hundreds, if not thousands of species who are directly impacted by plastic in their diets on a daily basis.  Ironically, humans are one of those species.

If you are like most people you have heard of  bisphenol A  most commonly called BPA.   .  Many people know it’s bad but they don’t understand exactly how and they make efforts to shop for plastics that are BPA free.  That’s a good thing, but not all plastics are labeled effectively and BPA isn’t just found in plastic.  It’s also found in the lining of Aluminum cans and many major water supplies throughout the United States.

Fighting effective labeling of products is something corporations have been doing for decades.  One primary example of this is the cigarette industry.  While there has been a change over the last 100 years from Doctors and Actors actively supporting this “healthy habit” to education and understanding of the toxicity of manufactured nicotine to labels stating that cigarettes can cause cancer, birth deformities and more.

This is no different in today’s manufacturing industries.  According to the International Bottled Water Association, a conglomerate of corporations who profit from the privatization of water; BPA is a safe chemical for adults to consume.  They even provide links to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) papers and website while painting a rosy picture of the chemical, which has been regulated out of packaging and uses for infants while being allowed in the adult human supply chain.

Why is this an issue, consuming BPA?  According to a report in Reuters, researchers, “using government health data, they found that the 25 percent of people with the highest levels of bisphenol A in their bodies were more than twice as likely to have heart disease and, or diabetes compared to the 25 percent of with the lowest levels.”  One study that links it to diabetes also indicates; “People ingest BPA that leaches from containers into foods and drinks. Studies in the United States showed that BPA appeared in the blood and urine of 95% of people tested.”

In a 2016 study, researchers found,”The present study showed that BPA could lead to chromosomal aberrations in both ER-dependent and independent pathways at some concentrations or in cell types yet not reported. Also, BPA could probably be considered as a facilitator for some predisposed cells to be cancerous by raising the chromosome instability levels. Finally, estrogen receptor seems to have a different role in cytotoxicity and genotoxicity effects” http://www.ijmcmed.org/browse.php?a_id=335&slc_lang=en&sid=1&ftxt=1

Plastics have a history of being this great invention that has turned out to have many negative effects.  Pollution litters our planet and we now know it pollutes our body.  What is can be found as astonishing is that it takes very little plastic in your life to be put at risk for health issues.  One of the major carriers of “sick plastic” is water and soda bottles.  It’s a hot day and you want a cold beverage, so you stop in to a convenience store and grab a plastic bottle of water or some carbonated beverage.  After a few swigs and a few miles down the road, you head into a business for work, shopping or other reason.  But its a sunny day and that beverage you purchased in warming up, and so is the plastic that it comes in.  Maybe you drink some more when you get back in your car, maybe you put it in the fridge and drink it when it gets cold again – either way, you could be consuming toxic chemicals that have leached out of the bottle and into your drink.  No harm in that right?  Wrong.

Researchers indicate that, “Rate of growth and sexual maturation, hormone levels in blood, reproductive organ function, fertility, immune function, enzyme activity, brain structure, brain chemistry, and behavior are all affected by exposure to low doses of BPA. Many of these effects are due to exposure during early development (gestation and/or lactation), but effects due to postweaning-through-adult exposure have also been reported.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280330/

This means that drinking plastic beverages can increase the age of puberty, impact the function of your brain, impact one’s fertility and more.  While these factors are scary, many people would believe that the solution is to avoid drinking these beverages after they have become warm.  While this is a nice idea, the truth is that many of these chemical impacts can occur to the beverage before we purchase them. Most of the shipping containers and semis hauling these manufactured goods from the factory to local distributors do not use cooling units, so the risk of exposure begins at the initial transport to market.

The same study also indicates one unfortunate fact – the government and businesses that use BPA don’t research it’s impacts.  From the same medical report we see this chart showing the lack of studies by corporations and government entities on the impacts of BPA.

Government /Corporate Studies on BPA

Biased outcome due to source of funding in low-dose in vivo BPA research as of December 2004.

	All studies		CD-SD rat studies		All studies except CD-SD rats
Source of funding	Harm	No harm	Harm	No harm	Harm	No harm
Government	94 (90.4)	10 (9.6)	0 (0%)	6 (100)	94 (96)	4 (4)
Chemical corporations	0 (0)	11 (100)	0 (0%)	3 (100)	0 (0)	8 (100)

Values shown are no. (%).  (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280330/)  To back up this stance, one simply needs to look at the Coca Cola FAQ page.

What’s the solution?  There are two basic solutions to avoiding BPA in your life.  Avoid single use plastics like water and soda bottles.  In addition to protecting yourself, you will have a positive impact on the world around you.  To travel with beverages on a regular basis, purchase a Stainless Steele insulated beverage container.  Insulated containers last a lifetime and help keep your beverages cold for long periods of time.  This will eliminate any concerns about being forced to warm beverages on a hot day.  Also, you can take your insulated container and purchase fountain soda from many chain and convenience stores.

While direct links establishing the permanence of impacts from BPA in our bodies are needed, it’s clear that corporations will not notify us the general public when they provide chemicals in our environment that have negative effects on the human body.  While Diabetes and Heart Disease are just the tip of the iceberg in the potential for permanent damage to our bodies, issues like breast cancer and advanced puberty onset are known.  For these reasons alone it’s best to eliminate single use plastic water bottles from your diet, but not fresh clean water.   For more information on types of plastics and the ways they pollute our body, check out page 2 of this printable PDF from the Ecology Center in Berkley, CA.

Sources:

1. Aghajanpour-Mir S M, Zabihi E, Keyhani E, Akhavan-Niaki H, Bagherizadeh I, Biglari S et al . The Genotoxic and Cytotoxic Effects of Bisphenol-A (BPA) in MCF-7 Cell Line and Amniocytes. Int J Mol Cell Med. 2016; 5 (1) :19-29
   URL http://www.ijmcmed.org/article-1-335-en.html
2. Vom Saal, Frederick S., and Claude Hughes. “An Extensive New Literature Concerning Low-Dose Effects of Bisphenol A Shows the Need for a New Risk Assessment.” Environmental Health Perspectives 113.8 (2005): 926–933. PMC. Web. 13 June 2016
   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280330/
3. Washam, Cynthia. “Exploring the Roots of Diabetes: Bisphenol A May Promote Insulin Resistance.” Environmental Health Perspectives 114.1 (2006): A48–A49. Print.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1332699/
4. http://www.coca-colacompany.com/contact-us/faqs
5. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-chemical-heart-idUSLF18683220080916
6. http://www.bottledwater.org/health/container-safety/what-is-bpa
7. http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm064437.htm#regulations
8. http://www.bottledwater.org/health/container-safety/what-is-bpa
9. http://ecologycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/eliminate-plastic.pdf

Don’t believe the Trump – water shortages are a reality in California

Don’t Believe the Trump!

Despite recent comments by the filthy rich and egotistical Donald Trump indicating that there is no drought in California, scientific data is here to save the day.  The truth is that there has been severe shortages in California’s water supply for a decade, and the problem isn’t going to go away anytime soon.

To begin with, let’s take a moment to look at where California stands today.  This is a map
shows the conditions of the water supply in California from 5.24.2016 as reported by U.S. Drought Monitor.  As you might guess, the darker the color, the more severe the need for water is.

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This data shows also shows how the trend over the last year is not going away!  There are a combination of reasons that shows why California has a water shortage.  One of these is the overall precipitation that occurs each year.  An important source of precipitation in the western part of the United States is snowfall.  Water content stored in mountain ranges provides long term water supplies through snow melt in both surface and ground water flows that have historically provided fresh water through the summer months when water is needed the most. As temperatures have continued to have a general trend of increasing over the last two decades, snowfall in the mountains has decreased.  According to this podcast, from the California Department of Water Resources (Ca. DWR)- the water content stored on April 1st is important because it’s the general indicator for how much water content will be available for that year from snow melt.  While the Ca. DWR executive report shows that currently water quantities are currently above average and greater than last years levels, this does not mean that everything is back to normal.  Temporary water surplus availability is needed to recharge reservoirs and groundwater tables which have been at historic lows.

In his speech Donald Trump also indicated that one way to solve this problem is to stop allowing fresh water to flow into the ocean.  This has been a hypothesis held by many over the years.  The main reasons this thought process doesn’t work is call Salt Water subsidence and ground water recharge.  When farmers, communities and private corporations like Nestle use wells to pump water out of the ground, replacement water is needed to replenish the supply of water.  The primary way this water is replenished is by water that leaks into the ground from nearby rivers and streams.  Without this source of water water sources would simply dry up.  In areas where these wells are near the ocean, drying up the ground water  allows for salt water intrusion, where the water from the sea literaly takes the place of the fresh water supplies that are no longer there.  This often happens because wells cause a cone of depression that brings the water levels in lower than the water table around it.  This map also shows how depleted ground water supplies can cause many wells to go dry, not having access to the water below them anymore.  In this image by the United States Geologic Survey we can see how salt water can intrude inland.  You can follow this link to read more.

While farmers are often given a bad reputation for overusing the local water supply to grow their crops, the opposite is often true.  Farmers, dependent on a constant supply of water for food production often at the forefront of research and responsibility in water conservation techniques.  While it is true that open air irrigation has significant losses of water to evaporation, techniques and technology are improving these numbers.  Additionally there are many reasons for irrigation, including the recharging of the local water tables, as this wonderful powerpoint by Blaine Hanson Department of Land, Air and Water Resources University of California, Davis shows.  This powerpoint covers a wide variety of positive ways that agriculture is making strides in water conservation and brings up one very good point.  Urban communities and farms cannot compete for water.  However, it is important to recognize they are dependent on one another.  Without people to eat the food the farmer doesn’t have a reason to grow food, and without the farmer the community cannot exist.

This being said there is one major culprit of water consumption that can be avoided and eliminated completely.  The plastic water bottle industry.  In 2015 Californians learned that corporate giant Nestle was pumping millions of gallons of water out of a highly impacted aquifer virtually for free, while making millions on the water they sold!  While the International Bottle Water Association claim in this CNN Money report that it’s 3.1 Billion gallons of water placed in plastic bottles is a drop in the bucket compared to overall water use in the state, many agree that it’s 3.1 billion gallons of water that should never leave the state in the first place.  Additionally, the Pacific Institute indicates that 3 liters of water are used to make a singe one liter water bottle!   One of the best ways to eliminate the impact of plastic water in drought ridden states is to avoid buying water bottled in California.  However knowing about the global problem with plastic pollution, it’s much easier to just buy a sustainable stainless steel bottle from a reliable company like Kleen Canteen who contribute to organizations like 5 Gyres who are actively fighting issues with pollution in the oceans.

So, now you know the facts.  There is a water crisis in California.  You can enjoy the quality foods that come from this wonderful state, but understand that the drought is real.  Avoiding plastic water bottles is one way to help with drought conditions.  Cutting off water from streams and rivers from flowing into the ocean is not.

 

Water – the ups and downs in American Samoa

Fresh clean unadulterated water, there’s nothing like it.  Unfortunately this natural resource is becoming scarcer and scarcer and the years go by.  Now you have to live in the right places to get access to the best water.  As a citizen of the United States of America, I admit that I’ve grown up with the privilege of clean water to a degree that I never thought twice about it.  It didn’t matter where I lived or visited in the states, clean water was always available and for most of my life, it was free.

With the advent of the plastic bottle, this has changed considerably.  Instead of free access to water wherever one goes, water is a high profit commodity.  Virtually every store or market has plastic water for sale and this water is causing communities to eliminate their access points to free water using infrastructure like water fountains for public use.  The concept of free water from water fountains is one that many of the latest generations don’t understand.

Now corporations like Nestle are making millions of dollars and are draining the water supplies of drought stricken areas like California.  Currently there is a petition to tell corporations like Sprouts Market to stop selling plastic water bottled illegally and in places where it takes away from the needed and scarce supplies locally.

Here in America Samoa, plastic water is a way of life.  This is an unfortunate reality based on several factors, the primary being the way the islanders have tended to their natural resources.  While things are getting better than they were two decades ago pollution is still a problem here and littering is a way of life for many.  Water quality is impacted by a lack of infrastructure and for decades piggeries (pig farms) polluted the water with fecal matter that went unchecked.  Here roughly 10% of homes are missing either running water or a toilet.  Additionally, the average annual income is only $13,000 according to the CIA’s website.  So things are not very good here when you look at pollution and income.  What’s shockingly worse is that the water quality is atrocious.

Taking a look at the American Samoa EPA Integrated Water Quality 
Monitoring and Assessment Report will leave one with their jaws dropped wide open.  With approximately 250 miles of inland fresh water pathways, and about 150 tested – none were deemed safe for drinking water with pathogens being the primary culprit.  Additionally, 15 beaches were tested as unsafe for the Memorial Day weekend.    These beaches are primarily located within the inhabited portions of the island where human impact has a negative effect on the water.  Fortunately there are pristine areas where most natives don’t travel.  These are generally found at the end of mile or longer hikes through national parks land and are definitely a winner for the traveler to enjoy.  More on these beaches can be found here, thanks to Lonely Planet

So what do people on this island do for water, one might be asking by this time.  The reality is they import it.  Some have installed rain water collection systems to provide fresh drinking water, others put out buckets to collect water when it rains.  The one thing on the main island is that people don’t drink the tap water.  Instead they buy plastic bottles of water.  With the average income of $13,000 and a gallon of water costing $2.50 at the store or about $1,000 year per person at a gallon of water per day or between 4 and 6 thousand dollars a year for the average family.  Additionally, this represents a quantity of imported water from California that is staggering to quantify.  With the average case of bottled water utilizing 3 quarts of oil to manufacture and transport, the CO2 expense to supply water has some serious impacts on global climate change.

As the EPA, American Samoan Power Authority and Government officials work together to improve infrastructure hopefully we will see drastic changes in these facts over the coming decade.  But for now, American Samoa is tragically addicted to plastic water and this habit is directly connected to keeping her people in a tragic poverty cycle.  Combined with the fact that there is currently no national recycling program leaves much to be desired here in solving problems with pollution and trash management.

It’s all about the MRF (merf) unit, A look at the potential growth of recycling in Kauai, HI.

One of the blessings of this trip is being able to have educated conversations with one of the people responsible for recycling programs out here in Hawaii.  It’s been a great warm up on this journey to reengage in the discussions of waste management that I enjoyed in the classes and interviews leading up to my graduation from Metropolitan State University in Denver, CO.  In my conversations and visual touring of places around the island of Kauai, there have been several things that point in one direction – to the effective capture and separation of consumed materials as a key factor holding back increased recycling rates.  This is a bold statement, and one many readers won’t understand off the bat; so let’s take a minute to break this down.

This is an example of solid plastic recycling accepted in Kauaii County. Because there is no separating unit, only the most valuable of plastics are accepted.

One of the first things I recognized about being in Hawaii is that the types of recycling accepted is far out of proportion to what I am currently accustomed to. In the majority of North America, recycling systems accept the majority of plastics, including Styrofoam products.  The reason for this ties into several global factors.  The first is a concern about the value of shipping things in adequate quantity.  When a manufacturer or point of sale location orders product, they generally follow principles of economics where the products will be delivered ‘on time’; or when they will be needed for the purpose of the specific operation.  These quantities are required to fill demand, in this case the second concern – sufficient quantities of source separated product.  For post-consumer plastics there are many aspects of the brokerage requirements, including minimum packaging requirements, generally at minimum – one shipping container of source separated product.  This requirement is the same in Denver as it is in Kauai.

I have been pleased with the interaction I have been able to have with the Kauai Solid Waste Management representatives and the level of presence they have attained here in Kauai.  I have found many aspects of the recycling program quite interesting.  The first is that there is a Bottle Bill in place, and actually it is the last one passed in the US, “celebrating over 6.6 billion containers in the last decade”, according to the official government’s info website.  That’s a lot of plastic!

In addition to the idea that only #1 and #2 plastics are currently processed through a recycling stream,  at the county’s government building in Lihue, HI for example there are 4 separate recycling containers! They are for: a) 1 and 2 plastics only (no black plastic allowed), Glass and Aluminum, Cardboard, and Steele.  This system is designed to allow members of the community access to drop of materials should they so decide.  For businesses, this type of separation will prove cumbersome.  In order to increase the overall effectiveness of closing the loop between purchase and capture of consumable packaging single stream recycling will have to become available for this island nation.

For many, the culture of recycling on the island is becoming one that has the look and feel of a natural process.  Throughout the communities are recycling drop of stations where HI5 and other materials can be dropped off.  There are accessible containers in many parts of the community and overall the towns I have been to all have minimum micro trash issues.  It may be due to the lack of single stream systems, but I have noticed that the majority of business spaces do not have public recycling.  Businesses like the ABC Stores, banks and restaurants may have in house systems for their employees to use in the back of the house, but the access to the common public is sorely lacking.  Municipalities will find this struggle to be one that cannot be won unless the process is easy to manage – like single stream recycling offers.

In order to build this type of facility, there are going to be many steps to the process. Fortunately for the citizens, many steps of the process are well under way.  To have a closed community with both a plastic bag ban and a bottle bill is a wonderful thing to find.  Unfortunately there are battles that still have to be fought.  Corporations seeking to sell mass incineration systems regularly press municipalities attempting to convince government officials that purchasing this incineration management system is the solution to their problems.  We already know that burning anything leads to excess greenhouse gasses, something that is bad.  ( If you want to know more – check this page out – it’s great for your whole family!)

For more information on recycling programs in Kauaii, HI please check out this awesome page!

http://www.kauai.gov/Government/Departments/PublicWorks/SolidWaste/RecyclingPrograms/TheKauaiResourceCenter/tabid/108/Default.aspx

Dead white corral and no sea shells – a first observation

On September 6, 2015 I left for the “other side of the world”, to places I have never been but have read about in books and online.  The anxiety and angst of leaving the comforts of home, exhaustion from spending the last week packing over and over again, and the stresses of being in a horrible automobile accident where the at fault party could have very well lost his life had all taken a toll on me, but life and time move forward.  The process of experiencing change is very important to me.  To be in the midst of changes in the global processes means that the battlefront is exactly where you and I are at this moment in time.  According to many including 5 Gyres, our first challenge is to REDUCE the amount of manufactured goods we consume on a daily basis.  Here are some important words from “The Dude” – Jeff Bridges about this specific issue via his partnership with the Plastic Pollution Coalition.

Having arrived on the island of Oahu and have been on the island for 24 hours, I have had the pleasure of touring the island, seeing many beautiful locations.  The beaches we swam in were beautiful, but turbid (cloudy/murky)   from recent tropical storms and hurricanes that have been traveling through to Pacific Ocean.  There were not large quantities of plastics or any waste on the beaches I went to.  Much of the beach had storm debris and dead corral that has come in from the storms that have been occurring. Based on tidal patterns, the north shore of Kauai is relatively immune from ocean plastic.  Today I anticipate going to see some of those beaches.  I was quite intrigued to learn about the hurricanes and had to do some research of my own this morning.  This brief article by Mother Jones will provide some greater insight to both the weather and an some of the leading agencies indicating why this trend will continue to grow. In addition to going swimming and snorkeling in the Pacific Ocean, we took a tour of some of the places on the North Shore like animal sanctuaries, recycling drop off locations including places where Jurassic Park was filmed like this scene!

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking to one of the island’s civil servants, one whom is responsible for much of the island’s recycling efforts.  With effective recycling at about 40%, with directional movement towards 70% – I enjoyed an insightful, and very tired, conversation about the issues and struggles facing creating regulations to require effective solutions that are integrated into all parts of culture.  Many of the classroom discussions from the last 2 years have popped into my head over this time.  The visits and interviews with the operators of MRF units in Denver like that of Alpine Waste.  MRF Units are where single stream recycling occurs.  This system is not currently available on most islands, but is a type of facility that more and more communities are developing, as the greater demands for reclaiming natural goods instead of filling landfills.  Here is a quick video about how these units work.

As I awoke today, I spent some early morning time to meditate on the things I have experienced.  The strongest of all yesterday’s activities was the fact that while swimming and snorkeling, I recognized lots of bleached, dead corral in the water and on the beach.  This occurs when the acidity of the water, CO2 concentrations and other factors cause corral reefs to die.  In addition to the dead corral, I noticed the lack of sea shells.  We did find 3 yesterday, ones that were on the inland side of the beach, at the farthest reaches where waters could come ashore.  The real and lasting impact of carbon emissions, waste management and agricultural processes and tourism are visible already, and the vision of the dead corral awakens me.