whateverisworthy-blog

[whateverisworthy-blog]

This comic was produced in partnership by Years of Living Dangerously and Symbolia Magazine. For more amazing real life comics, get Symbolia on your iPad or via PDF. And for more information on the biggest story of our time - check out YEARS.

[whateverisworthy-blog]

Letter to HT Clean Campaign

I know they will never respond or publish this but I had to write it and 'yay' to the age of self-publishing.

Dear HT Clean Campaign and Mumbai ‘Clean Warriors’,

I want to thank you for your amazing efforts to make our city a cleaner one. Your daily images in the paper inspire me and it’s so great to see so many volunteers stepping forward to make a difference - cleaning the streets of litter with their own bare hands. We in India have a tendency to think that cleaning is 'someone else’s' job - not a job dignified enough for each of us to do for ourselves so it is really heartening to see that we are beginning to take responsibility.

May I humbly suggest that we need to take this one step forward. I am hopeful from what I have seen already that we could really make Mumbai a ‘chakachak’ city. However, it will not happen by simply moving the garbage from one site to another.

With a population like Mumbai city’s, we need to think more creatively about our waste as the fact is that Mumbai produces approximately 9,200 metric tonnes of waste* everyday. What less can we expect from a city whose population is 21 million and ever growing?

This waste is a huge problem even if we manage to get it out of our sight and off the streets. Organic waste (kitchen scraps, food waste, biodegradable waste) that is mixed in with recyclables (paper, aluminium, plastic, glass), toxic waste (electronics, medical waste) and rejects (cigarette butts, nappies) all thrown into one plastic bag and tossed in an overflowing dustbin is causing more problems than simply being an eye-sore. All of this mixed waste is reacting with each other, adding toxic leachate to our soil and water supplies and releasing toxic gases into the atmosphere that is making not just our city, but the planet ever hotter and our air ever harder to breathe.

But there is good news and a really simple solution that I believe that you (HT Clean Campaign and Clean Warriors) can really lead the way in! You’ve got the citizens listening and you’ve showed results already so can we push this campaign one step further?

All waste produced by Citizens, Restaurants, Offices, Factories, Educational Institutes, etc simply needs to be separated into these categories:

Organic Waste

Recyclables

Electronic Waste

Medical Waste

Rejects

Organic waste (which is 50-60% of our daily waste) needs to be composted at source through community composting or home composting. By doing this not only will we significantly reduce the garbage trapped in plastic bags off the streets but we can turn what we now see as ‘waste’ into an incredibly valuable resource. There’s a reason compost’s nickname is ‘black gold’! The benefits are endless and we are losing out on this potential right now.

Our city’s trash collectors and radhiwalas are already doing an incredible job of separating the recyclable waste from organic waste but I think we need to show our respect and gratitude for their hard labour by separating our organic waste from other waste so that they don’t have to sort through our muck with their bare hands and without any protection whatsoever.

This is all information that I know you are already aware of. A search of Hindustan Times’ archives brings up previous articles about how to successfully manage Mumbai’s waste. I encourage you to make this the forerunning point of your Clean Campaign.

Yours sincerely,

Tina Nandi Stephens

* http://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai/garbage-in-mumbai-is-bmc-s-mess/article1-1028016.aspx

Massive Thanks to DailyDump to opening my eyes to amazingness that is compost and educating me on waste. And to my favourite, Michael Pollan. 

Also, this is what happens when we thoughtlessly send all our garbage to a landfill.

[whateverisworthy-blog]

Yesterday at dinner with some friends we had some great conversations about what they teach in design school these days. And for me, the most obvious important place to start should be sustainability. This is what the world needs of tomorrow’s professionals... desperately. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Sustainability is thought of as an afterthought (if at all) but it needs to be a prerequisite. And this TED talk by Leyla Acaroglu is a pretty great expansion on that. "Because we don’t see the ramifications of the choices that we make as designers, as business people, as consumers, then these kinds of externalities [e-waste being trafficked to places like Ghana where they are burnt in open spaces to extract the precious minerals] happen and these are people’s lives. So we need to find smarter, more system based, innovative solutions to these problems if we’re going to start to live sustainably in this world." Hear hear all my highly talented friends who are engineers, designers, artists, etc. We need you to help us!

[whateverisworthy-blog]

"Wanna feed the world? Let's start by asking how are we going to feed ourselves? Or better, how can we create conditions that enable every community to feed itself?" - Dan Barber

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Food Chains | official trailer (2014) Eric Schlosser Eva Longoria

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Food and Human Rights?

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MIDWAY - Film by Chris Jordan - Trailer

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wise words from one of the most inspiring women I know.

“Good things come to those who wait.”

“If it were easy, anyone could do it.”

“Patience is a virtue.”

These types of clichés have been drilled into my psyche lately, as if my eyes were opened for the first time and now I see it everywhere.

I’d venture to say for the first 25 years of my...

[whateverisworthy-blog]

I wish we could do completely without disposables, but I know that's not always practical in our fast paced, busy lives but biodegradable disposables sounds like a good alternative for those times when you really can't do without them.

Wedding world, listen up! Get rid of all that disposable plastic cutlery!

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Promised Land Official Trailer [HD]: Matt Damon, John Krasinski & France…

Scary and inspiring.

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Chickpea Vegetable Coconut Curry Soup: zucchini, carrot, kale, and garlic sautéed in coconut oil and seasoned (curry powder, coriander, cumin, salt & pepper) + chickpeas, red lentils, red quinoa, coconut cream and vegetable stock.

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The shared meal is no small thing. It is a foundation of family life, the place where our children learn the art of conversation and acquire the habits of civilisation: sharing, listening, taking turns, navigating differences, arguing without offending. What have been called the “cultural contradictions of capitalism” - its tendency to undermine the stabilising forms it depends on - are on vivid display today at the modern American dinner table, along with all the brightly coloured packages that the food industry has managed to plant there.

Michael Pollan, Cooked

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"If, as has sometimes been said, the discovery of agriculture represented the first fall of man from the state of nature, then the discovery of synthetic fertility is surely a second precipitous fall. Fixing nitrogen allowed the food chain to turn from the logic industry. Instead of eating exclusively from the sun, humanity now began to sip petroleum. ... It takes more than a calorie of fossil fuel energy to produce a calorie of food... From the standpoint of industrial efficiency, it's too bad we can't simply drink the petroleum directly. ... But what happens to the one hundred pounds of synthetic nitrogen that Naylor's corn plants don't take up? Some of it evaporates into the air, where it acidifies the rain and contributes to global warming. (Ammonium nitrate is transformed into nitrous oxide, an important greenhouse gas.) Some seeps down to the water table. ... The nitrates in the water convert to nitrite, which binds to haemoglobin, compromising the blood's ability to carry oxygen to the brain. So I guess I was wrong to suggest we don't sip fossil fuels directly; sometimes we do."

- Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma A simple explanation of everything that is wrong with the way we grow food with synthetic fertilisers.

[whateverisworthy-blog]

I am choosing to use fewer plastics as my resolution because I think the consumption of single-use plastic items has spiraled out of control -- even costing us our personal and environmental health....

My husband and I have considerably reduced plastic usage in our home this past year by carrying our own reusable bags, switching to glass dabbas, using glass water bottles, making our own toothpaste (and currently testing my homemade deodorant), avoiding packaged foods and take-out... Join us in resolving to make our lives even more plastic-free in 2015!

Plastics wreak havoc on the environment AND your health.

I'm thinking homemade shampoo is going to be my next experiment...

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American biotechnology has turned Argentina into the world’s third-largest soybean producer, but the chemicals powering the boom aren’t confined to soy and cotton and corn fields. They routinely contaminate homes and classrooms and drinking water. A growing chorus of doctors and scientists is warning that their uncontrolled use could be responsible for the increasing number of health problems turning up in hospitals across the South American nation. In the heart of Argentina’s soybean business, house-to-house surveys of 65,000 people in farming communities found cancer rates two to four times higher than the national average, as well as higher rates of hypothyroidism and chronic respiratory illnesses. Associated Press photographer Natacha Pisarenko spent months documenting the issue in farming communities across Argentina. Most provinces in Argentina forbid spraying pesticides and other agrochemicals next to homes and schools, with bans ranging in distance from 50 meters to as much

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Ever heard of Monsanto? Roundup? GMOs? All that hullaballoo about bees dying?

What was that all about? For a while, I heard this name a lot in the papers and online but recently as my interest in food has grown because I now am responsible for cooking and feeding myself and my husband, I decided to look into a little closer.

If you've also been wondering what it's all about, this is an excellent place to start. 

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“Plastic pollution shouldn’t be thought of as ‘just’ an environmental issue, because like political & economic injustice it’s actually a human rights issue. Throwaway, single use culture is unsustainable, & it impacts the poorest, most vulnerable members of society most severely. But unlike taking action against overt & violent kinds of human rights violations, plastic pollution can be greatly reduced by making simple everyday changes to the way we all live our lives; like carrying a reusable water bottle & refusing to use single-use plastic. The time has come to change the way we live, and to spread the word!” -Alfre Woodard