Author Archives: veselyjt

Endangered Species – They Now Sell Chocolate!

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So, I’m back in Harris Teeter, but I’ve switched from the cereal aisle to the chocolate aisle. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the link to my last blog about Honey Nut Cheerios helping saving our pollinators!)

https://blogs.charleston.edu/envt-200-01/2018/04/29/can-cereal-save-the-bees/ ‎

While I’m walking down the chocolate aisle searching high and low for something sweet, something even better caught my attention. It was THIS chocolate bar.

As a matter of fact, there was an ENTIRE row dedicated to this brand of chocolate bars that caught my eye! It’s called Endangered Species Chocolate (ESC). They’ve been a company since 2014 and have a home office in Indianapolis, Indiana. You can learn more about the company at ChocolateBar.com. This website provides you with tabs labeled for their mission to help the world’s endangered species, their retailers, how to contact them, their blog and even a list of their products. I also found links where you can look at the company’s environmental impact and giveback from the previous year (2017), popular posts, twitter feed, and even recipes you can make using their tasty sweets. Here’s some of the main points I found from the website.

  • Mission/Giveback: 10% of the company’s net profits are donated annually to current 10% GiveBack Partners. Some of these partners include The Xerces Society, Chimp Haven, the African Wildlife Foundation, and the Wildlife Conservation Network. Each is guaranteed a minimum annual donation of $10,000 and is freely able to utilize the funds on projects they deem most important. With over $1.3 million generated in the past 3 years alone, each chocolate bar purchase is a big support in helping wildlife thrive.
  • Sourcing: ESC uses ingredients that meet strict standards for quality, ethical trade and environmental sustainability. They supports sustainable farming practices as well as honors the farmers that work with them by paying a social premium for ingredients to ensure they’re are supported and the species are protected. The company has certifications with Fair-trade International, being gluten free and kosher, RSPO, the Vegan Project, and the Non-GMO Project.
  • Products: There are 18 chocolate bars, 2 “bug bite” flavors, and 6 bark bite flavors. These flavors as well as their endangered species support and cocoa percentages* range from:
    • Dark chocolate – Chimpanzees
    • Dark Chocolate with 88% cocoa – Black Panthers
    • Dark Chocolate with Cranberries and Almonds – Grey Wolves
    • Dark Chocolate with Forest Mint – Rainforests
    • Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt and Almonds – Eurasian Eagle Owls
    • Dark Chocolate with Cherries – Puffins
    • Dark Chocolate with Hazelnut Toffee – Black Rhinos
    • Dark Chocolate with Blueberries – Sea Turtles
    • Dark Chocolate with Raspberries – Grizzly Bears
    • Dark Chocolate with Espresso Beans – Tigers
    • Milk Chocolate – Sea Otters
    • Dark Chocolate with Lemon Poppy Seed – Jaguars
    • Dark Chocolate with Blackberry Sage –
    • Dark Chocolate with Cinnamon, Cayenne and Cherries –
    • Dark Chocolate with Cacao Nibs – Bats
    • Dark Chocolate with Peppermint Crunch – Emporer Penguins
    • Dark Chocolate with Pumpkin Spice and Almonds – Arctic Fox
    • Dark Chocolate with Cranberries, Orange, and Cinnamon – Horned Rams
    • Dark Chocolate with Caramel and Sea Salt – Bald Eagles
    • Dark Chocolate with Almonds and Peanuts – Florida Jaguars
    • Dark Chocolate with Caramel and Spiced Apple – Polar Bears *all items without said cocoa percentages are 60%-72% cocoa
  • Impact: Here are links to the company’s 2017 Impact Report (http://www.chocolatebar.com/docs/doc_esc_ir_2017.pdf)  and Giveback Media Release (http://www.chocolatebar.com/media/3818_giveback.html)

The chocolate bars actually provide the consumer with a lot of cool information about different endangered species of animals as well as a delicious treat. I decided to not be too risky, so I went with the 48% milk chocolate flavor, which happens to have a sea otter on the cover.The inside of this wrapper included information about the sea otter such as it’s diet, threats, population, and regions of location, as well as information on how to help, their ethical ingredients and processes, more on some of the 10% Giveback Partners, and links/scannable QR codes to more information and media for the company. I’m eager to try some of the other flavors the company produces to see what their wrappers say about more endangered species. I highly recommend that everyone try out some of these sweet treats as well to find out more information as to how we, as humans and consumers, can help save those at stake for extinction.

 

Can Cereal Save the Bees?

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As I was walking through the Harris Teeter cereal aisle one night, I turned and a particular box caught my eye. It was actually this box, and my immediate question was, “Where’s Buzz?”

Safe to say I ended up picking up (and eventually purchasing) this box of Honey Nut Cheerios. I was so excited for what I saw this brand doing in order to promote a change for things that are happening in and to our environment.

I know, it sounds crazy. Why in the world would you get so excited about  box of Honey Nut Cheerios? Well, not only did it catch my attention by NOT having their signature mascot Buzz Bee on it, but I also knew that I’d get a FREE packet of flower seeds “to help bring back the bees”! BRILLIANT! Since 2016, the brand has shown a cut-out silhouette of Buzz in order to more adequately inform consumers about the declining population of bees. General Mills, the company behind the #1 selling cereal in the U.S., joined forces with Burt’s Bees to bring awareness to this potentially catastrophic issue and are using the hashtag #BringBacktheBees on social media to further spread their message.

On the back of the box, there are tips and tricks as to how a potential consumer and petitioner for their cause can help bring back the bees! The box talks about the alarming rate that bee populations are declining, such as honeybees like Buzz. It also states a fact that 1 of 3 bites of food were made possible thanks to bees and other pollinators just from the work they do in our environments. Bees are the only insect that produce food eaten by man. Foods such as apples, almonds, coffee, and (obviously) honey all use pollinators to help grow, which is why some of the apples are missing from the apple tree.

So how can you help? Plant bee-friendly flowers like cosmos! Bees have great color vision, which is why flowers are so attractive to them especially blue, purple, yellow, and white colored buds. They also all need flower pollen and nectar in order to BEE happy, healthy, and helpful to the plants they get it from. Thankfully, the box already provides you with some, so you can go ahead and get started to #BringBacktheBees! By the end of 2020, farms that source oats for Honey Nut Cheerios will house about 3,300 total acres of dedicated pollinator habitats on almost 60,000 acres of land! Companies like General Mills and Burt’s Bees are making environmental impacts by calling on consumers to help join in their awareness movements. Do your part for what bees do for you! #BringBacktheBees

The Biggest State is Battling a Big Threat – Trump Wall vs the Texas Wildlife

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I did my news report assignment on the Trump Wall’s impacts on the diverse, wildlife environments in Texas and along its borders.

The Story:

What: President Trump’s US-Mexico border wall could pose a threat to vulnerable wildlife, plants, and the growing ecotourism industry in Texas and its border regions.

Who: Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin (Norma Fowler & Tim Keitt) published a letter outlining the potential ecological damage of such a major project in the area.

When: Whenever/if the wall gets built

Why: Texas currently has walls along its border with Mexico approximately 100 miles long. However, until now, the wall has gone through mostly desert and cities, but it’s on the verge of hitting the Rio Grande regions.

Where: Texas and the bordering areas surrounding the state

How: The wall would destroy much of the habitat biodiversity of plants and animals these areas.

Impacts of the Wall:

Here’s a closer look at the impacts from the scientists themselves: https://youtu.be/it6O3Pf4jFQ

  • It’s set to cut through hundreds of miles of protected federal land, which includes Big Bend National Park the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
  • Construction would directly destroy the habitats and resources that animals need in order to survive.
    • Use of trucks and equipment in order to change the landscape.
  • The wall would destroy the biodiversity of the area, especially for the Riparian forest and threatened Tamaulipan thorn-scrub ecosystems.
  • It would fragment animal and plant habitats with a physical barrier.
    • It would restrict their movements and seed dispersals.
    • Though they might leave small gaps for animals to get through, normally they won’t use them.
    • Even if animals could go over the wall, they normally will choose not to.
  • The wall would also divide breeding populations of animals, such as the ocelot.

Local animals that could be affected:

The Green Jay and Whiskerbush Cactus

The Ocelot

The Zebra longwing Butterfly

The American black bear

How we can decrease these impacts’ effects:

Scientists suggests that these impacts could be lessened by:

  • limiting the extent of physical barriers and associated roads
  • designing barriers to permit animal passage
  • substituting less biologically harmful methods, such as electronic sensors, for physical barriers

Or, we don’t build the wall!

Relevance to Class and Society:

  • By building the wall, we increase the human impacts we have on nature while aiding in habitat destruction and degradation caused by the construction and the roads on either side of the wall.
  • The wall symbolizes the human dominance we try to have over nature.
  • The wall may pose a threat to all 3 pillars of sustainability for these regions
    • Local recreation and ecotourism declines may cause a negative economic impact.
      • Birdwatching generates $344 million in the Lower Rio Grande region alone
    • Private land owners who don’t want the wall on their property should hold precedence, but are still fighting to keep their land.
    • Barriers that are created would destroy much of the environment in the areas and those that aren’t far enough from the river could potentially trap animals causing many environmental issues.

Questions Raised by the News:

  • What are some ways that we could stop the wall from being built?
  • Is there anything circulating through the Texas government that already is fighting against the wall being built?
  • Why don’t people talk about the environmental and ecological impacts on this wall instead of focusing on political standings

References:

uhttps://phys.org/news/2018-03-border-wall-texas-animals-scientists.html

uhttps://inhabitat.com/trumps-border-wall-threatens-texas-plants-and-wildlife/

uhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocelot (picture)

uhttps://www.nps.gov/bibe/index.htm

A whole lot of ‘Junk’ that you’d probably like to see

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The Charleston Music Hall has said to be set to screen the plastic pollution activist documentary “Junk” at the end of April in 2018.

As many people know, and as we all know by talking about pollution in our class, there is A LOT of junk in our oceans and clearly, it’s not getting any better. Dr. Marcus Eriksen, an international plastic pollution expert, wrote a book all about this oceanic junk titled, Junk Raft: An Ocean Voyage and a Rising Tide of Activism to Fight Plastic Pollution. The book’s content relays just what the title describes it to convey: a man, which is Eriksen, is on a journey through the ocean and is buoyed only on a raft that is actually made out of the plastic junk found within our seas.

The film itself is about a 27-minute long documentary based on Eriksen’s book and was filmed while he and several others were floating for 88 days on a raft made out of 15,000 plastic bottles in the North Pacific Gyre.

“In the Spring of 2008, 3 marine scientists built a raft from 15,000 plastic bottles, 30 sailboat masts, and a Cessna 310 aircraft fuselage. We launched on June 1st, beginning an adventure from Long Beach, California to Hawaii. We ran out of food, outran 3 hurricanes, and met a female rower in the middle of the ocean. It was an amazing adventure to bring attention to the rising plague of plastic waste in our ocean.” – Eriksen

You can watch the film at the Charleston Music Hall, which is located at 37 John Street, on Sunday, April 29th at 6:30 p.m. Tickets will only be $8 and after the film there will be a panel discussion with Eriksen himself! Others on the panel will also include Chris Jones, who is the film’s director, and Anna Cummins, who’s another leader in the ocean plastic pollution movement.

James Cameron, a filmmaker and deep ocean explorer, describes Junk as an “adventure far from shore, the spirit of exploration, and the fight to save our oceans — all in a gripping narrative that is also a parable for our time.” I highly recommend everyone planning to take a break from studying during finals week to go out and see this film. I will more than likely be there, so we can all be involved in the panel discussions together! 🙂

This is a short trailer to show what the film will be like:

The agricultural sustainability project that reached over 20.9 million Chinese smallholder farmers struggling with increased populations

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A group effort to improve crop yields and reduce fertilizer use utilized both bottom-up and top-down efforts to be able to successfully reach over 20 million smallholder farmers across China. Smallholder farmers, who control only a few areas of land, are beginning to dominate the agricultural landscape in countries like China, India, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa. By increasing their efficiency and reducing their environmental impacts, they are taking crucial steps to ensure sustainable food sources for the world’s (and their own country’s) growing populations. However, sharing the best practices with smallholder farmers is often a discouraging prospect because the farmers often have limited resources to invest back into their livelihoods and are often grouped in the hundreds of millions in China alone.

Included in a report by the journal Nature, Zhengxia Dou, a professor of agricultural systems in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, teamed up with colleagues from China’s Agricultural University and other organizations in sharing a successful execution of a “long-term, broad-scale intervention that both improved yields and reduced fertilizer application across China.” The first author of the study, Zhenling Cui, along with the project leader and corresponding author, Fusuo Zhang, were both with China’s Agricultural University and assisted Dou. The study’s effort, which was in effect for over 10 years, engaged almost 21 million farmers and increased their yield on average by more than 10% and lowered fertilizer use between 15%-18%. As a whole, these actions created an increase in the farmers’ grain outputs with a decrease in fertilizer inputs, which made savings totaling close to $12.2 billion.

“The extent of the improvement in terms of yield increase and fertilizer decrease was great,” says Dou. “But it was not a surprise as similar results had been attained before. It was the scale of it all, approaching it with an all-out effort and multi-tiered partnerships among scientists, extension agents, agribusinesses, and farmers, achieving a snowball effect. That, to me, is the most impressive takeaway.”

The project began with the overall realization that the current agricultural practices with China’s large number of smallholder farmers didn’t meet the requirements they needed for sustainable productivity. Globally, the production of food has to increase 60%-110% over the 2005 levels by the year 2050 in order to meet this high demand. At this same time, the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation make farming a lot more difficult. In order to determine the best ways to meet the sustainable productivity demand, researchers in the study conducted over 13,000 field trials, which tested what they called “an integrated soil-crop system management program”, or ISSM. ISSM is a model that helps to determine which variety of crops, planting dates and densities, overall fertilizer uses, and other strategies will work best in any given climate and soil type. The tests for this particular model were done using maize, rice, and wheat.

Researchers then organized a massive campaign to work with farmers all across China after finally concluding that the ISSM model could help guide agricultural efforts across major farming zones in China, achieve yield improvements, and increase fertilizer reductions. In order to reach the 20.9 million smallholder farmers in 452 counties in China, this campaign involved more than 1,000 scientists and graduate students, 65,000 agricultural extension agents, and 130,000 agribusiness personnel, which were key partners in the effort by designing fertilizer products that matched the essential needs of the farmers.

“The collaborating scientists trained local technicians, and the technicians worked with the farmers closely to develop their management practices based on what made sense in the region,” Dou says, “This was a massive, nation-wide, multi-layered collaboration.”

To gain a deeper understanding of the current performance of Chinese farmers, the researchers conducted a survey of 8.6 million farmers from about 1,944 counties across the nation. They found a lot of room for improvements, since most had yields of at least 10 % and some as much as 50% lower than the ISSM model would predict. Dou believes the experiences and lessons gained through the nation-wide project can be applicable elsewhere, particularly in Asia. India, for example, is another country where the yields are relatively low and fertilizer use is high. In sub-Saharan Africa, both yield and fertilizer input is low, yet the lessons “inhow to work with smallholder farmers, how to earn their trust and engage with them,” Dou says, would hold true to those of China.

 

References:

http://www.fao.org/ag/save-and-grow/MRW/en/1/index.html

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180309095512.htm

LUSH Cosmetics – Beauty on an Environmental Budget

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When you’re shopping for body care products, whether it’s shaving cremes, lotions, shampoos/conditioners, bath or shower products, facial products or moisturizers, (and this list can continue), do you ever think how that specific product came to be? Do you even know what all is actually in the products you buy? Yes, the labels on the back can tell you, but do you know all of the chemical names and what they actually do to your body? One thing that most consumers can agree on is the thought of how we can look and feel beautiful while being on a budget. Well, LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics decided to take it a step further and figured out how to be the best kind of beautiful naturally while being on a budget and equally being environmentally friendly. It’s a company based out of Canada that does just this for everyone, no matter what age, sex, race, or worldly background.

The company’s mission statement is as followed:

“We believe in making effective products from organic* fruit and vegetables, the finest essential oils and safe synthetics. We believe in buying ingredients only from companies that do not commission tests on animals and in testing on products on humans. We invent our own products and fragrances. We make them fresh* by hand using little or no preservative or packaging, using only vegetarian ingredients and tell you when they were made. We believe in happy people making happy soap, putting our faces on our products and making our mums proud. We believe in long candlelit baths, sharing showers, massage, filling the world with perfume and the right to make mistakes, lose everything, and start again. We believe our products are good value, that we should make a profit and that the customer is always right. We believe that all people should enjoy freedom of movement across the world. *We also believe words like “fresh” and “organic” have an honest meaning beyond marketing” (pg. 4).

LUSH’s co-founders have been creating products for over 30 years, but it wasn’t until after the loss of the original business, called Cosmetics to Go (CTG), that the brand’s innovators created the eco-friendly company that we know and love today. Mark and Karen Wolverton, who are Canadian business entrepreneurs, took a trip to London back in 1995. It was then and there that they first came in contact with LUSH and fell in love with the the philosophy and values behind the company as a whole. They later asked the founders if they’d thought of expanding their business into North America and in 1996, they did, opening the first North American LUSH store in Vancouver, BC, Canada. It wasn’t until 2003 that the first US LUSH store opened in San Francisco and today there are more than 250 shops across all of North America, with only 2 factories located in Toronto and Vancouver supplying their highly demanded products. “In October of 2014, we decided that we’d need to speed up our shipping times to customers. So we opened up digital fulfillment centers in Toronto and expand our distribution center..making us even more efficient by shipping shorter distances and reducing our overall carbon footprint” (pg. 17). It was also in 2014, that LUSH UK created their Lush Kitchen, which is the place where limited edition, exclusive products are created from a daily menu each week. Each Kitchen product is handmade and follows the strictly fresh policy while making the most of locally sourced ingredients. Customers can always shop from the Kitchen directly without having to cross the pond into the UK by following their social media accounts for a look at the latest menus and new products being sent out to stores.

The values of LUSH are the core of the brand as a whole and influence all that the company does. These values include always using the freshest ingredients, having all products handmade, making everything 100% vegetarian, creating “naked” packaging, buying ethically, fighting against animal testing, participating in charitable givings, implementing sustainable processes for the Earth, and getting involved in ethical campaigns.

 

 

On every recyclable black pot and bottle, they add a face sticker of the compounder who created the product along with their name, the date in which the product was made, a list of all of the ingredients used and when to use it by in order to ensure absolute freshness with maximum nutrient benefits. Every product in LUSH from the ones on the shelves to the actual shelves themselves and the other furniture in their stores are handmade in their very own woodshops. “Everything we do is made for us, by us..This way we can be sure that our products and shops are ethically sourced from beginning to end and that they’re of the finest quality” (pg. 34).

Not only do they create products that are fresh and 100% vegetarian, they’re also more than 80% vegan! For example, the glycerin that the company uses in their soap is made from non-GMO rapeseed oil instead of animal ingredients like most soap and cosmetic manufacturers use. In some cases, honey, yogurt, and eggs are used in products, but the company makes sure that that every ingredient is sourced from cruelty-free practices. The purpose of their ethical, organic buying is to help maintain sustainable farming practices and fair working conditions. Buying from small producer groups provides LUSH the opportunity to create positive change, increase sustainability, and create world-wide relationships. They even created the Sustainable Lush Fund, which takes 2% of the amount the company spends on packaging and raw materials and uses it to create sustainable farming and community projects from scratch around the world. Whenever someone buys a LUSH product, their money directly supports these Sustainable Lush Fund initiatives.

Other sustainable factors of the company include using as little to no packaging (otherwise known as “naked”) that’s recyclable, compostable, or biodegradable. They’re packaging in stores is also 100% post-consumer recycled plastic, which means that the pots have already been recycled at least once.They also have bags made 100% out of post-consumer paper. They also ship and wrap their products in 100% biodegradable plastic bags, recycled paper and biodegradable filler with eco-friendly packing tape. The company also monitors their fresh water resources to make sure they don’t overuse it. LUSH also works with their transportation providers to create low-impact and ethically responsible fuels for moving products worldwide. They also have a Green Team that are dedicated environmental advocates that are in store fronts and even behind the scenes in manufacturing to make sure that every product being made is environmentally safe (pg. 43).

Though they’re mostly known for the invention and innovations of new and exciting products throughout their past  30 years of business, the company is most commonly known for patenting the original bath bomb back in 1989. They’ve also patented toothy tabs, mouthwash tabs, and solid shampoo bars in order for everyone to experience the products just as they were originally imagined without any harmful additions. Since the very beginning, LUSH has created gender neutral products that don’t need excessive packaging or preservatives to stay fresh. The policies the company created then have always been rooted in trying to minimize the impact we as humans have on our environment and are continuing to do so every day. Stop by a LUSH store today to get a first hand experience into each and every product. There’s one conveniently located on King Street in Downtown Charleston! Maybe you’ll think about making the switch like I have into reusable, environmentally friendly, and 100% waste-free beauty products that not only come from the environment, but also continuously give back to their source – the Earth.

Resources:

The Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics: The Starter Guide Manual

https://www.lushusa.com

https://cvskinlabs.com/7-cosmetic-ingredients-that-are-bad-for-the-environment/