The Story of Stuff

Watch this video for a good explanation of our consumptive system and all its faults. The narrator outlines all the stages a product goes through from resource extraction to its eventual place in a landfill, and explains what is fundamentally wrong with this system. Special thanks to Gaelen Weiss for sending this video our way!

“The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See”

Check out this video about global warming that breaks the discussion of future action into a very clear, logical argument. This video helps us understand that protecting the fate of the world far outweighs any other possible consequences. Moreover, this video helps bring the discussion of global climate change out of the realm of the purely environmental and helps frame it in ways that people will understand—no matter their views on politics, the economy, etc.

Special thanks to Phil Cassidy for sending this video our way. Phil is a former Environmental Studies Major at  Skidmore College .

Conscious coffee drinking

By Martel Catalano

I started drinking coffee at age 13, but so many of my friends began to regularly consume it freshman year of college. Despite not liking the taste, they found it necessary to survive at school, needing to pull all nighters or to not fall asleep during their first class. I found it most convenient, and most cost-efficient, to get my own coffee maker long ago. Around the time when Keurig’s were becoming popular I knew I had to have one. The speed and efficiency was unbeatable, but as an environmental student I couldn’t help but notice all of the single-use pods (or K-Cups) I was throwing in the trash. Each cup of coffee meant another K-Cup in a landfill. I rationalized this at first by the fact that I wasn’t buying a new paper cup at the coffee shop each time I wanted a cup of joe…but I felt guilty. In my opinion, nothing should be single-use because it only promotes the consumerism illness our country suffers from.

photo via greenmountaincofee.com

I was really happy to read the New York Times about a month ago and see that Green Mountain Coffee, a company with over 300 kinds of K-Cups and supposed eco-conscious reputation, is generating some ideas to abolish their old K-Cup idea. Biodegradable pods are a possibility, or recycling-programs for the pods could be a solution. Even more convenient than the K-Cup itself is the fact that the best solution to this problem is actually available to buy. “My K-Cup” is a plastic pod with a metal filter inside. You buy ground coffee from the supermarket the old-fashioned way (imagine that) and pour it into the pod, where it is then inserted to the Keurig and – voila, the perfect cup of coffee, without any shred of guilt or trash! 

photo via roaste.com

So, for all of you coffee lovers – or college students – out there, you can now save money and help the global waste problem all in one. Get your Keurig here and your My K-Cup here (also available at Bed Bath & Beyond), because I know you’re sick of paying over two bucks for a cup at Starbucks.

Appologies

Dear readers,
We are very ashamed of the long article hiatus The Ry has taken. Getting back to school and starting classes for the last time has caused us to put the site on the backburner for a while – which we greatly regret and apologize for.
Now that we are engulfed in our new learnings, we are more eager than ever to get The Ry going – we are looking for articles, opinions, even just links to post on a regular basis. We know The Ry has great potential, and we are asking for you to help us make it something to talk about. Our hope is that with increasing traffic, The Ry can get it’s own official URL and become a noteworthy environmental forum!

-The Ry

Food

By Isaac Blum

As Americans we tend to live in bubbles. We like to feel distant from the atrocities of the world; be they genocide in Rwanda, the use of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, or the trade of human beings for sex across the globe. By no means is any problem in America comparable to the horrible acts committed in other countries, but we do have our own minor problems. One, for example, has to do with food. There is a lingering problem associated with American food consumption that is all too apparent yet at the same time completely unnoticeable. We know we are a fat nation yet it seems as though we do not question the reasons as to why that is the case. It’s almost as if we are fine with the fact that America has created the obesity epidemic and nearly 30% of all adult Americans are overweight. The fact that we have a relatively “new” epidemic of obesity should open people’s eyes to our problems and make us question the foods that we consume.

I recently read the book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan for the first time. It was an extremely fascinating expose into the different production methods of the food we eat. I feel as though I am somewhat knowledgeable about the food I eat, but this book truly opened my eyes to the disgusting food conditions that the vast majority of our food is produced in. As I was reading the book and thinking about the arguments, I came to a realization that should have been apparent much sooner for me. What I realized is that there is an inherent problem with food production on a large scale. The problem with large scale food production is that we demand ever lower prices for our food. We want $1 eggs, $2 gallons of milk, and very cheap, if not free, bread. This demand has a number of effects. In order to meet this demand, companies must find the cheapest way to produce these goods as possible. This has meant that smaller companies have consolidated into larger ones to create economies of scale and/or have created an industrialization process that would make Henry Ford roll over in his grave, all to create lower food prices. Wal-Mart is the best known example of a low price strategy in action. While no doubt large scale food production companies have run a very efficient business campaign, there comes a point in the production process when questions of quality must be asked in favor of price. For example, what does the quest for ever lower priced food have on our bodies? And where does this food come from? These answers are well documented for those interested. The former is partially evident in the obesity epidemic mentioned previously and the latter is much more complicated. The large scale food production process that we have demanded has created an environment where our food is no longer cared and treated for as it once was. Food production has more resemblance to car production today that it does to the smaller scale production of food as known before the 1930′s. The problem with this is that food is not meant to be produced in the same fashion as cars or clothing. Food production is a natural process that differs yields based on soil fertility, sunlight, water, and other mechanisms in nature’s bounty. We must start viewing the production of food on a local scale in terms of the quality of the product and healthfulness, not the price. As soon as we disassociate ourselves from cheap, unhealthy food and refocus on building local food economies will we begin change the problem that persist among us the most; obesity.

Throw it and Grow it

By Jesse Watson

Worldwide, there are over 1.1 billion people who smoke cigarettes. Every year, these 1.1 billion smokers discard 4.5 trillion cigarette butts. All of this litter has to go somewhere, and unfortunately, the majority of these butts are not being disposed of properly. In a 2006 study by the Ocean Conservancy, cigarette filters are listed as the number one debris item found worldwide, constituting 24.7% of all total collected debris.  What’s worse is that these butts can take up to 15 years to degrade completely. During this slow degradation process, cellulose acetate and carbon particles—both known to cause cancer in humans—leach into our soil and water supply.

Fortunately, the future doesn’t have to perpetuate the past. A new company, greenbutts, is revolutionizing the way we make and dispose of cigarette butts. This San Diego company has created a cigarette filter that is made entirely of organic cotton and natural de-gummed hemp. There is no synthetic glue used in the process either; wheat flour and water hold the filter elements together. This new filter design makes for a cigarette butt that is 100% compostable. But greenbutts doesn’t stop at cotton and hemp—they are also manufacturing filters that contain grass, flower, or even tree seeds. This means that if you place your used butt in soil rather than an ashtray, you can grow a plant, creating life rather than refuse. And even if you choose to throw away your butts rather than planting them, at least you can be confident they will biodegrade safely and naturally.

In a world that is quickly replacing green with gray, imagine the effect these seed-containing filters could have on the environment. If even a quarter of all cigarettes produced worldwide were able to integrate this innovation into their design, there would be the potential for a over a trillion new flowers and trees to be planted every year. And while ameliorating the largest source of litter in the world, greenbutts would be going a long way in changing how we think about cigarettes.

2055

Watch this optimistic video of our world in 2055… is it too idealistic? possible? what do you think?

Pursuit of the Wild

By Jesse Watson

Growing up in rural Vermont, bounded on all sides by an immense wilderness of trees, mountains, valleys and ponds, coexisting with nature became a way of life. I lived out fantasies as a young child, some extraordinary and some frightening, but in the end I always emerged dirty and grinning, having used my strength and intellect to survive situations real and imagined. As I grew older the fantasies subsided but my adventuring did not. If anything, they increased. I learned how to build shelters, look for animal tracks, and find my way back home no matter where I was. By the time I reached my teen years I knew the several hundred acres devoid of human settlement surrounding my house absolutely, existing in my head like a well worn and loved map. In my younger days my life and the life in the woods were one and the same, I saw no line between the “environment” and myself. We heated our house solely on the energy derived from burning wood, much of it cut by our own hands. We sugared in the spring, and I cross-country skied in the winter. Excepting the evidence of my ski tracks, there was very little hint of human interference. I first began to understand that people were trying to use the land around me for profit when a local logging company started work on a neighboring lot when I was around 13 years old. After that, many of the trails that perhaps only the animals and I knew were soon broad swaths of demolished trees and underbrush, tracked by the cruel thick tractor tires and smelling of oil and freshly buzzed trees. The sounds of the beasts of progress could be heard echoing through the woods for miles, and the rough off-key rage of the machines drowned out the melodic bird song. I began to feel like my trust had been betrayed, the A. Johnson lumber company was in my woods, they were carelessly destroying my deer paths and minnow brooks. If I was to pinpoint one moment when I began to feel the divide between humans and nature this would be it. As a young child I had not traveled many places, and so my woods had been The woods, and as my virginal northern forest of deciduous broadleaves and conifers had become maple countertops and pine flooring, I lost this feeling of holding a well kept secret. The next chapter in my environmental autobiography began in high school.

It was in high school that pure experience was channeled into theoretical understanding and activism. In my junior year of high school two friends of mine and I started working with a former chemistry professor on a cow power project. Living in agricultural Vermont, there are many dairy farms in our area, and the amount of methane produced by these farms is immense. We began looking into the possibility of harnessing this methane and converting it to electricity. My work on this project was limited by the fact that the year after I was leaving for college. I am no longer involved but there is a big movement in Vermont right now for this kind of energy and it is catching on. Sparked more than anything by my love for the outdoors and concern of losing it, I became an environmental studies major at Skidmore. I took many classes in the field, but found myself not as interested in the hard science but in writing and the social aspects of the environmental movement. I believe that any passionately pursued career or study should be based on personal experience. As soon as I got to Skidmore I developed a kind of claustrophobia I had never before experienced. I felt trapped in the artificially designed campus with its fake grass and landscaped quads. I yearned for my Vermont woods, for the freedom to yell as loud as I could and only be heard by the creatures of the forest. I carried this claustrophobia around with me as long as I was there, and while escaping into the North Woods helped in some ways, the truth was that a five minute walk in any direction led you to houses, train tracks, or highways. It was as if my whole life before Skidmore had been spent around a magnificent bonfire, keeping me warm and satisfied, without any concern of the fire being extinguished. Here however, I felt as if I needed to start my own fire anew every day, and no matter how hard I tried I could not make it as big as before. My yearning for my old woods turned into a burning desire for the savage wilderness, the vast unknown, the dangerous and magical, the lost and forgotten. Over Christmas break of sophomore year this desire broke free from the bounds I had been trying to place on it. I needed to get away, I needed to escape, I needed to breathe in some mountain air and look out upon a landscape that had never been marred by the hand of man. I told Skidmore I was not coming back that semester and scrounged for a trip to Patagonia, in search of an experience of pure wildness and adventure.

I flew into Buenos Aires in Argentina and whetted my appetite for tango and steak, quickly finding I had other tastes such as rock and snow. I could not wait to get out. When I did, and arrived in the heart of true Patagonia, I was embraced by the long lost feeling of freedom, and my claustrophobia blew away like ash in the wind. I was in my element. With a 40 pound pack on my back and a pair of heavy duty leather hiking boots strapped to my feet I was unstoppable, I was man, and I was wild. I hiked for 20 miles a day and ate a simple dinner in the company of mountains. I toned my muscles climbing rocks and woke and slept to the setting of the sun. I navigated vast tracts of land with nothing but a map and a compass. I engaged situations that tried to get the better of me and I came out on top, dirty, exhausted and bleeding. I didn’t shower for weeks and bathed in glacial waters. I fulfilled the hunger for the unknown. Coming back to the United States was not something I enjoyed but I came back to Vermont, to the womb. I spent my summer hiking, mountain biking, and fishing, and when the time came to go back to school I hoped to return with a renewed sense of purpose and drive.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be more than I could have hoped for. After the novelty wore off I was left feeling impotent and unfulfilled. As a junior now, I am supposed to be concerned with my “future” and my “career”. If I could have it my way I would live amongst the mountains and eat dinner with the bears. For now, that will have to wait. In developing skills and interests, I always enjoyed writing immensely and considered it my strong point. I kept a journal while I was on my trip, and writing about the experiences I had helped them retain their reality in my post-trip existence. After making up the credits I missed and finishing my final year next year I look forward to the freedom of the pursuit. It is an unfortunate reality that unless you are in possession of a trust fund, which I am not, that you need to make a living for yourself in this world. It then seems the only logical course of action from which to proceed is to strike a compromise. My ultimate goal is to write for an outdoor or nature magazine, lead wilderness trips, or write for myself, publishing accounts of my adventures. There are so many people in the world who live in a world of concrete and asphalt, brick and glass, and they have never experienced the allure of the natural world. I would write for them, in hopes to lure them outside and give up their caged existences. But mainly, I would write for myself. The creation of words, and the naming of something makes it real, and maybe, just maybe, if people begin to see more things as real, they still stop trying to destroy them. There is not enough awareness out there about the beauty and simplicity of nature. I would like to do my small part in revealing this beauty to the world. But more than that, I would like to die knowing that the world has seen me, not through the lens of a camera or in the text of a newspaper, but in a path left in the snow or the call of a bird startled out of its mid day reverie.

Textile Progress: Organic Cotton

By Martel Catalano

Once an interior-design student and art major, my environmental interests always seem to curiously bring me back to world décor. And as much as I enjoy a good recycled-glass countertop or bamboo floor, fabric textiles have an even more intimate relationship with our everyday lives. We sit on these fabrics each day in the living room and sleep on them each night in the bedroom, thus there are things we should bear in mind when choosing the upholstery for our next couch or even the tablecloth we eat on.

photo via Rubie Green

As cotton is an extremely chemical-dependent crop, I am a huge supporter of using organic cotton products in the home. Standard cotton is grown and processed with chemicals that are harmful to not only our bodies but also the land it is grown on. About 57 million pounds of pesticides are used each year on cotton farms in the United States alone, and thousands die each year from pesticide poisoning. Although the chemicals that are used to make standard cotton are no longer harmful to our skin by the time a product has been created and placed in our home, the dangers these farming practices pose to the environment and the workers are enough to think twice about fabrics when decorating. Luckily, organic cotton is becoming more and more accessible in the textile industry—some of my favorite fabric manufacturers that use organic cotton include Rubie Green, Cloud 9, and Wabisabi Green. Currently the United States does not have any official guidelines for organic fabrics and textiles, but the Global Organic Textile Standards is a good place to start, and visiting their database can help you determine what is officially chemical and cruelty free.

Guyibera

By Jenna Gersie

Russell was a black Buddha of a man, in flip-flops, a cowboy hat, and a T-shirt printed with Aboriginal art, tucked in to hold his joyous belly. His laugh was rich, frequent, and addictive. I was drawn to him immediately, for his wisdom and his love.

The first night my group of friends went camping with him on the edges of the rainforest in Northeast Queensland, creek gurgling behind wet trees and snakes sliding across the mud-red ground, Russell told us he would give each of us our own Aboriginal name. He would give the names to us as they came to him: our own totems that arrived in the dreaming.

I was the first to receive my name. The sun had set and it got dark quickly in these woods. Russell sat in his camping chair, acoustic guitar leaning against the side, his face lit by lantern-light, and called me over. “I know your name,” he told me.

He gave me the name Guyibera, the bush stone curlew, a long-legged, long-necked, terrestrial bird that stands about 20 inches tall. The bird has brown and white mottled feathers and is streaked with grey, and unlike the curlews with long, curved beaks found on our continent, this bird has a short, straight beak. Its large, inquisitive but cautious eyes are useful when it hunts; a nocturnal bird, it stalks shorelines and shrubs beneath starry skies, looking for small frogs, spiders, and snakes. The bird walks slowly, carefully. It keeps to the edges of a crowd, like I do, watching and listening, rarely interacting. It is often solitary both in hunting and in day-time sleeping, though the birds are frequently found in pairs on moonlit nights.

He told me that the curlew is known for its cries at night. “Do you cry often?” he asked me.

“Sometimes,” I shyly said, looking away.

I did not tell him that I cry about my father’s passing, a death so young, at the age of 45, that it can be considered nothing but cruel. I did not tell him that I cry because soon, my mother will be living alone. I did not tell him that I cried because my brother asked me, at his first college visit, “Jenn? Do you think I’m attractive?” I did not tell him that I cried because my best friend’s father made a pass at her.

I did not tell him that I cried when I swam my best time in the 100 yard butterfly during my first college meet when I was 19. I did not tell him that I cry when other people cry, that I cry after I orgasm and that I cry when I don’t. I did not tell him that I cry because life can be so beautiful that it breaks my heart, wondering what my place in it is. I did not tell him that I was on the verge of tears right this moment because this man, who I had met less than 12 hours ago, knew me so well.

Later in the week, Russell told us a dreamtime story about the curlews. Long ago, in the dreamtime, a nesting pair of curlews left their nest to quickly collect water from the stream, and the Owl, who was watching from his cave, sent his pet dingo to the nest. The dingo gratefully pillaged the nest, killing the two baby curlews for his feast. When the curlews returned to find their children gone, the father ran to the Owl’s cave, where he first killed the dingo and then warned the Owl never to show his face in the light of day again. Since then, the curlews mourn their loss each night, and the Owl stays in the cover of darkness.

The first time I heard the curlews cry, I was sitting on the back porch of a friend’s house, my legs dangling over the side into the night. There were stars and spiders and frog song. It was a darkness that was warm and soft, and I stared out toward the forest and the sky. Then I heard a long, haunting, whistle-like wail. “Those are the curlews,” my friend told me, and I listened, enchanted. The curlews cried for hours. I heard them when I went to sleep that night, and though the sound was akin to that of a ghost or someone mourning the dead, I felt comforted by their calls. These were ancient birds of the dreamtime, birds who knew how to grieve but kept living despite their sadness, surviving in the darkness. These were birds that I knew, birds that I understood.

Once, walking along the shore one evening at dusk, small waves that snuck past the barrier reef lapping at sea grasses, I came upon a curlew. We both froze, separated by only a few feet. I looked into its large eyes for several moments before it darted away into the shadows. It wasn’t long before I heard it crying in the distance. I could almost cry now, remembering: the fruit bats overhead, the salty smell of jelly-fish filled water, the warm breeze brought from the east, and the curlew, a bird burdened with the fate of crying for the rest of its life at all the joys and sadnesses in the world. Russell had been right: he knew my name.