Eye Opener: Quiz Scores!!

I completed everyones online activities and enjoyed doing them!!

Jayme did one the quizzed the AQI colors, suprisingly, I scored an 85%.. same as Kevin!

Derek put together a quiz that was focused on clean water.. there was a lot of information to "study" haha I didnt put in my hours to go over all the material, thats probably why I only scored a 60%

Lastly, I checked out Kevins activity which was based on urban sprawl. It was a fun quiz as well.. i scored a 67%.. clearly I need to read up a little on this topic as well!!

Eye Opener: Photo Essay

So, I was pretty excited about doing this eye opener and had a few neat ideas. I have had my camera for a little over 2 years and had to brush the dust off it once I got started!! Initially, I wanted to do a contrast of how beautiful Duluth is, but how it has it's down falls... The way I had it planned didn't work once the snow fell!

I was sitting at school with Derek and looking around wondering what I could do, he pointed to the garbage cans lined up with the one recycle bin..

For the most part our school did well when I was looking at different areas. Some places had more recycle bins than trash cans, while others have no recyle bins in sight.. When there are no recyle bins available, people are likey to dispose of recyclable material in the trash cans.

Now, I know having recycling bins isn't going to change everyone. Some people would still probably throw recyclable material ina trash can even if there was arecycling bin right beside it, But it will help for the majority of people. Another thing I noticed on a few trash cans was a sign that kind of confused me. After looking at the contents inside these bins, I can tell others are confused as well.


What exactly does this mean? Maybe I'm just oblivious and out of the loop, but for people like me, recycling should be fool-proof. Here's was I found inside this container...

Hmm... doesn't look like new paper to me and theonly thing green in there is a gum wrapper

Overall, having recycle bins is awesome to have around the school and I think wedo a good job with it. The thing that would make it even better is the consitancy and have ZERO confusion..

This hallway was full of recycle bins, 5 to the 1 trash can, maybe we can spread them out a little bit.

The Good Option..

The Better Option...

Hope you all enjoyed the photo essay!! Reduce, Recycle, Re-use!!

Eye Opener: Environmental Working Group

My Product of Choice..

The product that I use daily is "Lady's Speed Stick 24/7 Antiperspirant Deodorant Solid". (haha) I didn;t know that was the actual name, but it gave it me the options. Everyday I wake up and put it on without even thinking anymore. Every now and then, if I'm wearing a new stick, someone will notice the fruity smell, which i will take as a compliment over smelling like BO of course. But after reading some of the information that was given by "Skin-Deep Cosmetic Database", I might start to think about about smelling like fruits and flowers.

Facts About the Product

-Ingredients in the product are linked to: Cancer and Allergies/ immunotoxicity

- Scored a 4 out of 10 on the hazardous scale

-IS tested on animals... Gross!

-54% of other antiperspirants have lower conerns

My Thoughts

I think this website is really interesting!! The thing that really threw me off about this product was that they tested on animals. I think thats cruel and disgusting to do that. Also, ingredients can cause cancer. I feel like that is said with a lot of products- from plastic to cell phones. But I guess things do add up if used too much. I think I will continue to use antiperspirant, yet again because I like to smell good and it only rated a 4 on the hazard scale. I know 4 is higher than 0, but if we were to adjust every aspect of our lifes, I think that might be hard. Maybe starting little, will work for me. I'll look for a safer, more environmentally freindly and consumer freindly product next time.

Eye Opener: Review of reading 23- Bioreactors and EPA Propsal to Deregulate Landfills

This article is based around the idea that the compost industry has yet to show how it can complete as an alternative to landfills because current landfill regulations put composting at a severe disadvantage by allowing landfills to defer costs of inevitable environmental contamination to future generations while composting had to address evironmental concerns in the short term before compost can be used beneficially. It talks about helping the problem by having and EPA deregulate most national standards, but in the long run it would just perpetuate landfilling. The article is then divided into 3 sections: Failure of "Dry Tombs", "Bioreactors" a Risky Techno-fix, and Deregulating Landfills.

Failure of "Dry Tombs"

This section talk about how back in 1987 composting attempted to complete with landfilling. Things didn't work out due to a political decision which was based around money. EPA could have could required keeping biodegradable materials out of landfills and promote source seperation of materials- leading to reduced multiple problems. But, the reason is became flawed went into effect because the practice of deferring liability for these discharges in the future made it appear that landfilling was less expensive then it really is.

"Bioreactors" a Risky Techno-Fix

Finally, during the 1990's the EPA couldn't ignore the facts about landfilling and composting. So, instead of recognizing the futility of trying to manage organics mixed with toxics in huge mountains of garbage, EPA promotes an extremely risky technological fix dubbed "bioreactors". A technique of deliberately flooding the landfill with massive additions of liquids in an attempt to accelerate rather than halt, decomposition. The was "cheap" and only partially resolved the longterm problems that wil create a whole new set of short term problems.

Deregulating Landfills

EPA is still investing in the risky techno-fix of bioreactor landfills. They are also proposing a rule that would allow each state the sole discretion of issuing exemptions from most of regulations for landfill operators without oversight. This is apparently a rule to encourage innovation. According to the autor, this is rule a disguise to deregulate most of the minimum national standard for landfill permitting and open the flood gates to the most ill-considerest bioreactor designs built on the cheap to ensure that composting will not be able to compete in the 21st century.

My Thoughts

I really liked this article, but at the same time found it to be very opioniated on the autors behalf. He basically bashed the EPA the entire time about landfilling vs. composting. I agree with him when he says we should work harder in the direction of composting and not just use "cheaper" methods in get rid of our waste. It's funny to me and also saddening that most issues are based around money. That's the world we live in, so we are going to have to find ways in which we can help. We have to work together and strive for the same goals. If thats not going to happen, then helping the planet is going to be a hard task.

Different View Points on The Topic

The EPA is doesn't exactly have a good reputaion within this article, but after reading through their website, they do contribute to the environment in many other ways. It's easy to pick apart a large corporation and find flaws here and there. At the same time, I don't think some things should be taken more lightly than others.
http://www.epa.gov/ -EPA
http://www.fairfieldcompost.co.uk/what_we_do/environmental/environmental3.html- Importance of Composting
http://www.jgpress.com/archives/_free/000146.html - Interesting article on Lanfill Gases

Questions to Pose..

-Do landfills have any benefits to the environment?
-Should the EPA be so concerned with the economical decision rather than the "healthier" decision?

Eye Opener:CSPI

The cspi website had lots of great information and statistics. I decided I was going to focus on the "Tour the food Supply" section and see what it had to say. Right away, I liked the visual and the fact that it allows you to click on various items such as: slaughter houses, feed lots, feed grains, pesticides, irrigation, fertatize factory, farm factory, animal feed, manure lagoon, super market, restuarant, and hospital. Eachof these things had unbelievable facts that I had no idea about. Some points that really made my stomach churn was how many animals were in fact slaughtered a year. Half an animal forevery man, woman, and child is a little shocking, and 30 birds for every american- unbelievable. After looking at the slaughter house stats, Iwas interesting to see what the hospital was doing on there. It should statistics that shocked me as well. The overall cost of diet related illness is about 90 billion annually. Seriously? That much money could turn an enitre third world country around. It's easy to look around and think I'm living a healthy lifestyle and what we have here in north america is great, but I think it is taken for granted and abused at times. It's scary ti actually know what goes on behind the scenes before your meal hits your plate.

Eye Opener: Ecologial Footprint

Summary of Quiz/Project

With this eye opener project, we had to take some quizzes online at the Earthday website. These quizzes helped us determine what our own Ecologial Footprint was.It was a little cartoonthat gave us a visual of what impact we had on the earth with. It asked very simple questions about how we livedour life day to day. Some of the questions asked, seemed like they wouldn't really matter but in this case everything adds up.

Impact of my Behaviors on the Environment

According to the quiz, my ecologial footprint wasn't very good. It said that if everyone lived like me, we would have to have 4.4 earths to provide enough resources. Also, it said that inorder to support my lifestyle, it's takes 19.4 global acres of the earths productive area.

My Reaction/Behavioral Changes

I found these numberts to be very high and alarming. I have been under the influence that I lived a fairly healthy lifestyle, not only for myself but the environment as well. I guess was wrong. I feel like whenever I see numbers like this, it's because all the little things have added up. When it comes down to it, the little things are what makes the big difference. I think one thing that made my scores pretty high was what I was eating. A lot of the food I have isn't locally grown. I feel that making the extra effort in the grocery store can help.

Welcome to Sara's Environmental Health Blog

Hello! My name is Sara O'Toole and I am a Community Health major at the University of Minnesota Duluth. This Blog is going to be about Environmental Health.

There are 5 possible types of posts on my blog. They include:
Advocacy Project
Eye Openers
Reflections
Reviews
Share and Voice
If you notice at the bottom of this post, the categories will be listed as labels. This post is has been labeled with all five kinds of posts. (Use the "label actions" feature in the edit posts tab to add the labels.) You will also see the number of each kind of post in my Labels Gadget at the top of the page. (Place labels gadget below blog header but above blog text). All post titles from now on will begin with one of the categories above.
The members of my web group are: (Adjust # of members as necessary.)
(Example: Amy@Over the Rainbow)(add hyperlink to the person's blog)
1. Derek @ http://dpkeepin-it-green.blogspot.com/

2. Jayme@ http://goinggreenwithjayme.blogspot.com/

3.Randy@ http://randysgreenmachine.blogspot.com/

4. Kevin@ http://weatheryoufeelitornot.blogspot.com/

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I hope everyone enjoys learning and reading about Environmental Health with me!