Charged 2026

Tag: environment

  • Baaah Bye, Kudzu!

    Would you ever think sheep could be used in the place of a lawn mower? How could an animal do the same job as a piece of lawn equipment?! Well, in the case of managing kudzu, sheep (and goats) are doing a great job of keeping the invasive species at baaah. Uh… I mean bay.

    A couple of weeks ago, I joined a few members of my learning community on a trip to visit some live action kudzu eating. The sheep we visited were part of a company named Ewe-niversally Green (clever, eh?) which specializes in the removal of invasive plants, particularly kudzu. The company is currently working with Trees Atlanta, clearing multiple acres of kudzu from the metro area each week.

    What is an invasive species and why are they bad, you ask?

    An invasive species can be any organism (both native and non-native) in an environment which grows at a rate which impedes the natural order. Every ecosystem is comprised of multiple types of organisms in balance, and if a new species is introduced or if a native species begins to dominate the system, this balance can be thrown off. Kudzu, like other invasive species, intrudes on the naturally occurring species by out competing them for resources. Over time, if the invasive species is left to prosper, a decrease in biodiversity could result and the ecosystem could crash if the invasive species caused too much damage to the natural order of the ecosystem.

    So how are invasive plant species typically removed?

    Usually, kudzu is maintained via mowing or by the use of chemicals. By using sheep instead of traditional methods, the natural habitat is conserved in a more sustainable, “eco-friendly” fashion. The risk of funky herbicides seeping into the soil or water supply is greatly decreased, or potentially eliminated completely. Plus, the sheep are supplied with yummy vegetation which makes them quite content.

    Sheep Fun Facts:

    The sheep we visited (there were about 100 of them, including a few goats) could easily clear an acre of kudzu a day! They can also clear foliage off trees up to about seven (7) feet from the ground!

    One sheep dog (a super cute Border Collie where we went) can herd around 1,000 sheep/goats by itself. The shepherd uses different whistle patterns to direct the well trained pup where to go and what to do. It’s quite spectacular!

    And poison ivy? They love it! It’s their equivalent of a tasty candy bar! Azaleas and rhododendrons, though, are poisonous to the sheep.

     

    If you would like to learn more about the sheep we visited, check out Ewe-niversally Green’s website here, or find them on Facebook here.

     

    Sources:

    Brian Cash at Ewe-niversally Green

    http://eweniversallygreen.com/home

    http://www.treesatlanta.org/SheepProgram.aspx

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species

    Photos taken by Taylor James

  • Tap That

    Conservation is not a commonly exercised word for most Americans.  A booming economy once offered us blissful ignorance from contributing our share of frugality and it prevented us from joining the rest of the world in maintaining a conscience.  However, as vital resources such as freshwater diminish and global population continues to propagate, Americans should begin to choose conservation despite the fact that most financially don’t need to.

    Drinking water is already a precious resource in some countries and climate change will only increase pressure on freshwater supplies1.  The city of Delhi is short on water supply this summer by about 50 million gallons2; children in sub-Sahara Africa drink out of waterholes where animals bathe in from lack of any other water3; and the UN reports that a third of the world’s population is enduring some form of water scarcity4.  Considering other looming water wars across the globe, it seems immoral of us to purchase a plastic water bottle that takes 3 times as much freshwater to produce than what’s in the actual bottle5.  Now more than ever, every drop counts.

    The bottled water industry, although perhaps not the most environmentally hazardous industry in our country, is one of the cleverest for it seems to have duped us all. It made a $10.6 billion profit in 20106 on something we can all attain for free.  It has managed to “manufacture a demand for water as a commodity to be bought and sold for profit,” stated Gigi Kellet5, director of the Think Outside the Bottle Campaign, by costing consumers $1,400 per year for eight glasses a day versus the $0.49 per year that eight glasses of tap water a day would cost7.

    Not only are bottled waters sneakily detrimental to bank accounts, their production uses 17 million barrels of oil annually – enough to fill one million cars for a year7.  Extracting water for bottling places strain on flows to natural rivers, streams, springs, as well as ecosystems and groundwater levels5.  Also account for the fact that plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose and only 13% of the 29 billion purchased water bottles annually are recycled8, and one might ponder choosing tap water over bottled.

    Most Americans are aware of the world’s water crisis and the environmental consequences of consuming plastic-encased water, yet some still adamantly refuse to drink anything but bottled water.  The largest misapprehension for most people is that bottled water is cleaner than tap water.  Consider though that the bottled water industry spends tens of millions of dollars a year ($162.8 million in 20065) advertising their pristine water sources, falsely leading consumers to believe that it must, in fact, be cleaner than tap.

    The fact of the matter is, 47.8% of all bottled water is derived from tap water9, including Glaceau SmartWater, Nestle Pure Life, Alaska Premium Glacier and Yosemite10.  Pepsi was forced to change their Aquafina label in 2007 to accurately describe that their source came from a public water system11.  Coca Cola’s Dasani is also derived from a municipal source.  In 2003, Nestle’s Poland Spring was sued for false advertising in a class action lawsuit charging that their water, which supposedly came from springs, was actually just heavily treated ground water12.  The suit also stated that another Nestle source “stands over a former trash and refuse dump, and below an illegal disposal site where human sewage was sprayed as fertilizer for many years.”

    The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reports that the source for Spring Water, the bottle with a picture of a lake surrounded by mountains on the label, was from an industrial parking lot next to a hazardous waste site.  Brands such as Artic Falls Bottled, Glacier Mountain Bottled, and Everest are all bottled in New Jersey, Ohio and Texas, respectively10.

    Not only does bottled and tap water generally come from the same place, the municipal water board purifies these sources more than the bottle manufacturers.  Regulated by two different agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires more stringent testing and purity standards for tap water13 than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does to bottled water.  In fact, bottled water rules actually allow for some contamination by E. Coli or fecal coliform while tap water rules prohibit any contamination.  There are also no requirements for bottled water to be disinfected or tested for parasites, unlike the rules for big city tap water systems.13

    Several cases have been made for contamination in bottled water, including carcinogenic chemicals.  The NRDC tested 103 bottled waters in 1999 and concluded that 4% of the bottles violated the excessive coliform bacteria standard, 21 bottles contained more bacteria than allowed, and 8 bottles had levels of arsenic that tested at a level of potential health concern.13

    According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), lab tests for Walmart’s Sam’s Choice brand conducted in 2008 found bromodichloromethane, a cancer-causing chemical, at levels that exceed safety standards under California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986.  The analyses conducted by the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory revealed disinfection byproducts, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes, fertilizer residue (nitrate and ammonia), plasticizers, and propellants within 10 popular water bottle brands they tested, reported EWG.

    The FDA’s seemingly negligent rules are completely exempt for waters that are packaged and sold within the same state, which account for 60-70% of all bottled water sold in the United States13.  If the product is declared on the bottle simply as “water,” “carbonated water,” “filtered water,” “seltzer water,” “sparkling water,” or “tonic water,” then it is not considered drinking water by the FDA and their quality standards are not required for these labels.13

    On a side note, the vice president for communications of the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) is Tom Lauria, the former lobbyist for the tobacco industry.  EWG points out that he “has had extensive experience distorting the facts and misleading consumers in an attempt to hide the truth about the industry that pays his salary.”  The man who once denied that smoking was addictive14 is now communicating that bottled water is a beacon of health.  Do you see the parallels?

    Others argue that bottled water is just more convenient than tap water.  Sadly, we have come to confuse a plastic bottle’s disposability with “convenience” but there’s nothing more “convenient” than clean EPA-regulated free water running from your kitchen faucet.  Is the issue an unwillingness to stand at the sink with a reusable bottle for 10 seconds?  Bottles such as Hydros come equipped with a filter so that you don’t even have to pour from a Brita filter pitcher anymore.  Being on-the-go is not a noteworthy excuse either since there are public sources in every park, school, office, and stadium in the United States.

    Although taste is highly subjective, arguments were also made that bottled water tasted better than tap water.  Consumer’s tastes have been shaped by cunning marketing and the erroneous belief that bottled water is healthier than tap water.  However, in taste test after taste test, people can’t tell the difference between the two.  The University of Maryland’s Student Government Association (SGA) conducted a taste test between tap water and Pepsi’s Aquafina, their school’s official bottled water, and found that twice as many students preferred tap over bottled15.  The hosts of Showtime’s television series Penn & Teller: Bullshit conducted a blind taste test comparing waters that showed 75% of New Yorkers preferred city tap water to bottled waters16.  The hosts of the show conducted another test where a sommelier handed out water menus with $7 bottles of “L’eau du Robinet” (French for “tap water”), “Agua de Culo” (Spanish for “ass water”), and “Amazone” (“filtered through the Brazilian rainforest’s natural filtration system”) on them.  The patrons had no idea that all of the extravagant bottles were filled with the same water from a hose in the back of the restaurant.

    In the end, tap water tastes the same as bottled water, is more convenient, is less expensive (about 500 times less expensive17), and is purer than bottled water.   Over 50 universities across North America have joined the Ban the Bottle movement that seeks to eliminate plastic water bottles from campuses.  These campuses have recognized our country’s unspoken responsibility, a responsibly that comes with affluence and the ability to set precedents for other prosperous countries.   They’ve recognized that we need to start conserving whatever we can because we share the world’s resources with 9 billion other people.  They’ve recognized that corporation’s privatization of water has lethal consequences for those less fortunate than us and that tap water is the environmentally noble choice.  It’s time for everyone else to opt for tap water too.

     

    Image courtesy of Tappening.com

     

    1  Kundzewicz, Z.W., L.J. Mata, N.W. Arnell, P. Döll, P. Kabat, B. Jiménez, K.A. Miller, T. Oki, Z. Sen and I.A. Shiklomanov, 2007: Freshwater resources and their management. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 173-210.

    2  “Delhi Water Crisis to Worsen.” Gulf News. Al Nisr, 21 June 2012. Web. 31 July 2012. <http://gulfnews.com/news/world/india/delhi-water-crisis-to-worsen-1.1038737>.

    3  “New Straw to Kill Disease as You Drink.” BBC News. BBC, 04 Apr. 2006. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4967452.stm>.

    4  “The Global Water Crisis.” UN News Center. UN, n.d. Web. 31 July 2012. <http://www.un.org/works/sub2.asp?lang=en>.

    5  Gies, Erica. “Rising Sales of Bottled Water Trigger Strong Reaction from U.S. Conservationists.” NYTimes.com. The New York Times, 19 Mar. 2008. Web. 31 July 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/business/worldbusiness/19iht-rbogbottle.html?_r=1>.

    6  Burnham, Ted. “Battling The Bottle: Students And Industry Face Off Over Water.” NPR. NPR, 12 Feb. 2012. Web. 31 July 2012. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/12/146692656/battling-the-bottle-students-and-industry-face-off-over-water>.

    7  Bosque, Tomas. “7 Bottled Water Myths Busted.” Ban the Bottle. N.p., 1 Mar. 2012. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.banthebottle.net/articles/7-bottled-water-myths-busted/>.

    8  Didier, Suzanna. “Water Bottle Pollution Facts.” Green Living on National Geographic. National Geographic, n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://greenliving.nationalgeographic.com/water-bottle-pollution-2947.html>.

    9  Shapley, Dan. “Almost Half of All Bottled Water Comes from the Tap, but Costs You Much More.” The Daily Green. Hearst Communications, Inc., 12 Aug. 2010. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/bottled-water-47091001>.

    10  “6 Types of Bottled Water You Are Drinking.” Reader’s Digest. N.p., Aug. 2011. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.rd.com/health/wellness/6-types-of-bottled-water-you-are-drinking/>.

    11  “Aquafina Labels to Spell out Source – Tap Water.” CNN. Reuters, 27 July 2007. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/07/27/pepsico.aquafina.reut/>.

    12  “Nestle Sued for Falsely Advertising Poland Spring Water.” Water & Wastes Digest Magazine. Scranton Gillette Communications, n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.wwdmag.com/nestle-sued-falsely-advertising-poland-spring-water>.

    13  “Bottled Water.” Natural Resources Defense Council. N.p., 25 Sept. 2000. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/chap4.asp>.

    14  Landman, Anne. “Lauria Quit Cigarettes, But Now He’s on the Bottle.” PR Watch. Center for Media and Democracy, 3 Sept. 2010. Web. 02 Aug. 2012. <http://www.prwatch.org/node/9415>.

    15  Saravia, Claire. “Bottled Water Loses to Tap in Taste Test.” Diamondback Online. The Diamondback, 10 Nov. 2010. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/bottled-water-loses-to-tap-in-taste-test-1.1770525>.

    16  The Truth About Bottled Water. Perf. Penn and Teller. YouTube. Showtime Television, 28 Feb. 2009. Web. 01 Aug. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdvJOF-2mm0>.

    17  Derbyshire, David. “Tap Water as Healthy and Far Cheaper than Bottled, Says Watchdog.” The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Limited, 29 June 2006. Web. 1 Aug. 2012. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1522617/Tap-water-as-healthy-and-far-cheaper-than-bottled-says-watchdog.html>.

  • Let’s Go!: Costa Rica

    As a supporter of the “Let’s stop wearing shoes” movement that seems to be taking over the mentality of both young adults and shoe manufacturers alike (that is a later story, though), I often find myself lamenting the amount of shoes I am required to pack when going on vacation with my mother. As a supporter of traveling and not destroying the environment in the process, those same trips with my mother tend to stress me out. Previous trips have found us in France and Ireland in GIANT tour buses that make me cringe when I think of the carbon emissions coming from my enjoyment of a new country.

    I have newly found faith in my mother’s traveling compulsion these days. Immediately upon finishing my first year of college, my mother and I hopped on a plane and flew to San Jose, Costa Rica to join a trip with G Adventures, an eco-friendly tour company based in Canada (and one where I was only required a pair of flimsy sandals in order to be comfortable).

    The highlights of the trip included white water rafting, ziplining, and a safari with a whole lot of monkeys. So let’s go into picture heavy post, because I very honestly cannot encompass this trip in words.

    G Adventures offers many kinds of tours. My mother and I took a YOLO trip, which is a budget-style trip kind of perfect for us. The trip style that interested me the most, and is how our tour guide Jorge started in this line of work, is a “Volontour” trip. Jorge worked at a biology research center studying leatherback sea turtles. Volunteers, through G Adventures, were able to work alongside the biologists, protecting the sea turtles as they hatched.

    I’m still a bit in awe of the fact that I got to be in Costa Rica, sharing the tree tops with howler monkeys. I’ll be back when I get over that awe and talk to you guys about college (yes, yes, it is that time).

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  • Earth Day Festival Turns A Gray Day Green

    Earth Day Festival Turns A Gray Day Green

    In 1970, 100,000 people gathered in Washington DC to protest the Vietnam War.  The deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin that year had fatally deglamorized the hippie lifestyle.  Smog-darkened skies were accepted as a byproduct of prosperity.  Environmental concerns had never been at the forefront of serious discussion.  It was Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson who first proposed a “national teach-in” on the environment to take place at every university campus in the US.  What better way to ignite a grassroots-led movement than to take advantage of the existing energy from anti-war protests?  The poignant events of 1970 awakened an emerging consciousness on which Earth Day was able to capitalize.  Consequently, 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day, and thousands of colleges protested against the deterioration of the environment.

    Forty-two years later, new generations are still helping to make Earth Day a huge international event.  Although the subject of most concern has shifted from local toxic pollution to the complexities of climate change, Earth Day continues to stress the importance of a sustainable society.

    This year at Georgia Tech’s 15th Annual Earth Day celebration the opportunity to unite our voices for a sustainable future was palpable.  Events were designed to encourage environmentally aware behaviors such as recycling, energy efficiency, and reducing disposable items.  The event featured a car exhibit, a green market, a clothes swap, an E-waste drop-off, free bike repair stations, Captain Planet, Reynard the Fox, a stage, and 70 exhibitors all on one sidewalk.

    Most of Earth Day, I volunteered with the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) booth where participants had the opportunity to paint a recycled cardboard tile, with labels “land” or “water” or both, so that when all tiles were pasted together, a map of the world emerged.  The message?  “EWB wants to highlight the interconnectedness of our environment, our world and the importance of sustainability.  Our goal at EWB is to help people on an international level to become more sustainable,” said EWB president Hannah Kates.

    An Earth Day-goer for the last few years, Janna San Juan noted, “Earth Day seems like it’s growing every year.  It gets people excited and reinforces the idea of being green.”  She was looking forward to trying the ‘Renewable Energy Challenge’ where participants could race against a solar panel on a stationary bike to generate energy.  They could light a bulb or fan themselves, such as the person in this image chose to do.

    Shoes flying through the air soon caught my attention.  The ‘Shoot the Shoe’ booth was run by the women’s basketball team, where participants had the opportunity to throw an old tennis shoe through a basketball hoop.  Earth Day committee member, Luke Chambers, who was promoting the booth in collaboration with Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program said, “Nike’s shoe recycle program reduces the need for new rubber and other materials which decreases environmental impact.  Our goal is to collect 500 pairs of worn-out tennis shoes.”  He also went on to tell me that $10,500 worth of reusable office supplies were donated for the ‘Office Supply Exchange’ event where students could shop for free.

    Before I could walk anywhere else, I was accosted by what could only be described as the Abominable Plastic Bag Man.  One More Generation, the non-profit organization founded by two elementary school students, was at Earth Day to raise awareness about Americans’ plastic bag use.  Fittingly, their “Plastic Bag Monster” donned 500 bags, the average person’s yearly usage and, hopefully, scared many others into purchasing reusable grocery bags.

     

    Like a child at a carnival, I let my senses lead the way at this event, so I ended up next in front of the live music.  This anomaly of a band, appearing in swing attire while at one point dishing out Spoon’s punk rock song “I Turn My Camera On,” attracted a large crowd with their energetic dancing and old school vibes.  Champagne Room lead singer Jared McGrath announced to the audience in between songs, “My favorite thing that comes from this Earth would have to be… beer.”  Cheers to that.

     

    After taking dozens of photos of the self-proclaimed “Southern Fried Swing Punk” band, I turned around to find another simple sensory boost.  Dry ice!  It was the American Chemical Society giving out cups of cold smoking punch.  They really sealed the deal with some bubble action.  By filling a bowl with a block of dry ice and running soapy water over the top, they created a ‘CO2 bubble’ which eventually erupted into a cloud of fog.  The kids, myself included, loved it.

    Free T-shirts were available for a very small labor fee.  You could collect your olive green “Helluva GREENgineer” shirt by participating in the ‘deconstructed’ maze.  Four eco-trivia stations were distributed throughout the event representing earth, wind, fire, and water.  Participants collected a stamp at each booth by answering the trivia question correctly, and four stamps got you the 100% organic cotton t-shirt.  “We’ve already given out about 150 stamps,” Marcela Moreno, a volunteer at the wind booth, informed me two hours into the event.  I quickly decided to take advantage of this freebie and ran to each station before the event ran out of shirts.

    Near the end of the event, I went back to the EWB booth where all the tiles had been painted.  As I helped paste the painted world back together again, I couldn’t help but think about all of the strides that have been made since the first Earth Day in 1970.  The development of the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, necessary laws that were formed because of the grassroots effort behind an unsettled generation.  I then noticed that someone had painted a new continent in the middle of our Pacific Ocean, and someone else had painted trees and flowers in our Antarctica.  Clearly, we still have a lot to work on, but with a united society and events like Earth Day, we can still continue to make large strides to save our environment.