No Impact Man

I was e-mailed this by the Greennexxus.com people.

And I thought my Green Test would be hard...

Colin Beavan challenged himself to spend an entire year trying to have no impact on the environment whatsoever—creating no trash, consuming no fossil fuels and living as lightly on the planet as possible. The experience changed his life for the better. Now he wants you to find out what it could do for yours. Leigh Bailey interviews Colin Beavan, author of “No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process” available in bookstores now.

Here's the link to his blog:

http://noimpactman.typepad.com/

Very interesting!!

Blog Action Day

Today is Blog Action Day. Today, bloggers of all subjects and styles are asked to hone their text on the most significant problem of our time: global warming. Today, we make our virtual voices heard by uniting in a common goal.

Why is it so important this year? Well, because this December, there will be a UN Climate Negotations meeting in Copenhagen, where leaders from across the globe will discuss actions towards an international climate change agreement. Non-governmental organizations, delegates and businesses from every nation will be there. But there are concerns that our leaders will not make stringent enough plans for real change. Many fear that the environmental issues we face will not be taken as seriously as necessary, as has been the case in years past.

In preparation for this landmark meeting, there will be events held all over the world on October 24th--6 weeks prior to the Copenhagen meeting. In conjunction with United Nations Day, communities around the world will be holding rallies to let their leaders know that the health of our planet is the most important issue we have to deal with right now and it will not be ignored (eg. In Canada, we are marching on Parliament Hill in Ottawa).

Check out 350.org for more information.

The Art

As my previous blog entries have been rather bleak and somber, today's focus will be decidedly brighter-- today, we talk art. Now I've always been something of a wannabe-struggling-artist; I paint here and there for friends and family, I sketch from time to time, but I've never really taken it all too seriously.

Recently, however, I have become exposed to a new craft, a beautiful deviation of what I might call the "staples of art" (ie. painting, drawing, sculpting). My boyfriend's mother opened my eyes to the wild ride of mosaicking, and it's a trip that I haven't been able to get off of since its inception in my life.

Mosaics, like any other art, are a release-- a projection of one's ideas or feelings, a palpable supplement of the world of the mind. They are also things of beauty; they spice up our everday drab with colour, vibrancy and creativity. But what I love most about mosaics, and it is something that divorces its practice from conventional art forms, is that they are, for the most part, made from reused and recycled products!

Take, for example, my last project:
I had found an old crooked and cobwebby stool in the basement of my house. Needing a stool for one of my plants to sit on, I decided to give this little Cinderella-stool a new ballgown. I took an old brown and beige glass lampshade, one that you might see dangling over an old pooltable somewhere, and hammered out the glass bits so that I had a pile of brown and beige shards. I glued each peace onto the top of the stool (the glue I had to buy at a craftshop), used some old grout of my father's (who is a carpenter and had had the grout wasting away down in his cellar), spread the grout and let it dry... and voila! A decent-looking stool.
(pictures to follow)

The thing is, there's no end to this or any other craft project because the materials you need are EVERYWHERE. They're in your garbage, in your grandparent's cabinets, in your basements and in your garages. The possibilities are infinite. I can remember when I first started mosaicking-- suddenly the world took on a whole new meaning. Garbage was no longer garbage; it was a source of art! I found myself raiding the dinnerware aisles of second-hand shops, anticipating that next great find. Garage sales were goldmines of trinkets and goodies. Their trash was my treasure. So the next time you go throwing out perfectly good dishes, or cutlery, or lamps, or buttons, or whatever it may be, think of me and all the other craft-makers out there who might just have a better place for it than your nearby toppling landfill.

In the world we live in today, garbage is everywhere. And garbage will continue to be everywhere. But maybe, through art and creative minds, we can change the role that our waste plays in this world. Maybe garbage doesn't have to be a filthy, overbearing problem. Maybe it can be a beautiful work of art.



Incredible piece by Tim Noble and Sue Webster, comprised of a full six months of their garbage!




Artist HA Schult began building life-sized “trash people” in 1996 from garbage he collected in his hometown of Cologne, Germany.

The Meat

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
-Albert Einstein

Ok, ok. I know what you're thinking and believe me when I say that this entry is going to hurt me just as much as it hurts you.

For like most of you, I am a carnivore. And like many of my fellow flesh-tearers, I've kept my habit alive in a self-sustained cage of ignorance. I know nothing about where the meat is coming from, how it was made, or how it effects my world. What's worse is that I know I don't know and I know I don't want to know. I'm terrified of what I might find out, and even more terrified of what I might have to give up.

Thus, a little nervous and leery, I set out to find the "meat and potatoes" of the issue, so to speak. I was immediately cast into shock-mode. In mere minutes, my browser was swamped with statistics and data from environmental websites around the globe, all of which were aimed at the meat industry's extirpation of the Earth and its resources. In the next few minutes to follow, I was convinced. The meat industry is a major, if not the primary cause of some of the most hazardous environmental problems we have. A 2006 UN Report called the meat industry “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems" and recommended that animal agriculture "be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity." In short, the meat industry is wreaking havoc on the globe in almost every way possible.

Therefore, not knowing quite where to start, I've broken this entry down into five sections. And although these sections are meant to act as a guideline for this entry, the information I've found is far too extensive to be fully represented here. I would highly recommend looking into this issue on your own as the data is extremely significant to our health and the vitality of our planet.


1) Meat's Impact on Land
2) Meat's Impact on Air
3) Meat's Impact on Water
4) Meat's Impact on Animals
5) Meat's Impact on Humans

LAND

"Because of deforestation to create grazing land, each
vegetarian saves an acre of trees per year."
-Emagazine.com

Simply put, the Earth's surface is being overtaken by livestock, poultry, and the space needed to take care of them. According to Emagazine.com, an environmental magazine based out of California, there are 20 billion head of livestock taking up space on the Earth, over triple the number of people. And that number isn't going to do anything but increase. With the growth of the human population, and the fact that our addiction to meat is now more easily appeased (thank you McDonalds, Burger King, KFC et al.), our consumption keeps doubling, tripling and in the poultry case, quadrupling since just 40 years ago. The problem is, companies need more and more land to keep the process going. From tropical rain forests in Brazil to the ancient pine forests in China, entire ecosystems are being eradicated to allow for more farming space. According to scientists at the Smithsonian Institute, the equivalent of seven football fields of land is bulldozed every minute to create more room for farmed animals.

Although obviously innocent, these animals' growing presence is doing a number on the Earth's soil. The equation is simple, and the results are staggering. With 20 billion head of livestock walking all over the ground, eating everything in sight, not allowing the plants their proper recovery time, the land is stricken of its over-all usefulness, productivity, and biodiversity and this leads to massive erosion and desertification. Indigenous plant and animal species eventually die off and once-fertile land is rendered barren. According to Jennifer Bogo in, "Where's the Beef?", livestock grazing is the number one cause of threatened and extinct species both in the United States and throughout the world. Likewise, Philip Fradkin of the National Audubon Society states that, "The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and subdivision developments combined" (taken from GoVeg.com). Furthermore, since we have devestated the soil so much, what little bit of arable land there is left may not be enough to produce the crops needed to keep our restless hungers satisfied. Frankly speaking, starvation may be a very real and upcoming threat if this extremely inefficient cycle continues.

AIR

There is little else that pollutes the air so much as the meat industry. The 2006 U.N. Report evaluated that "livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport." You simply have to add up the stages of the whole meat-eating process to realize how energy-intensive it is. From when they graze on the fields to when they lie dormant on your plate, animals have a long way to go before we get to eat them.

First you must grow massive amounts of feed (with all the required tilling, irrigation, crop dusters, and so on). Then comes the transportation of the crops to manufacturers of feed on huge gas-guzzling 18-wheelers. Next you must operate the feed mills (requiring massive energy expenditures) and transport the feed to the factory farms (once again using pollution-spewing transport trucks). Then one must operate the factory farms, truck the animals many miles to slaughter and operate that slaughterhouse. After the slaughter they are transported to processing plants, where meat is packed into the tiny foil-sealed packages that we know and love. Finally the meat is transported in trucks to the grocery store where it must be kept cool until we come to make our pick. Every single stage involves heavy pollution, massive amounts of greenhouse gases, and massive amounts of energy-use (GoVeg.com).

In fact, a study by Akifumi Ogino of the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, Japan found that a kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home (NewScientist.com). Now that's something to think about.

WATER

"You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do
by not showering for an entire year."
-GoVeg.com

You may not think about it too reflectively when you turn on your shower, or when you run your tap, but flowing out of your faucets is an extremely valuable resource-- one that is quickly running dry. The water crisis is world-wide, and is not something to be taken lightly. Everywhere in the world people are dying of thirst because either their water-source has dried up or has been contaminated. Here in the West we might think we are safe, but when the Earth is only 3% fresh water, we cannot deny that we are just as vulnerable to thirst and desertification as anyone else.

So when I heard that it takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat (an average bathtub when completely full holds about 80 gallons of water, just for some perspective), and that in the United States half of all the water used goes to raising animals for food, I start to feel a bit queasy in my stomach (Robbins, The Food Revolution).

If that wasn't bad enough, the water that's not being hoarded by the meat industry has probably been contaminated by it in some other way. According to PETA, livestock raised for food produce 130 times the excrement of the human population, some 87,000 pounds per second. That is a lot of bull-shit. And all these millions of pounds of excrement and bodily waste surely cannot be contained for long. It spews into riverbeds, contaminating waterways and sprawling into long brown lagoons. The much-publicized 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska dumped about 12 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, but the relatively unknown 1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25 million gallons of excrement and urine into the water, killing an approximate 10 to 14 million fish and closing 364,000 acres of coastal shellfishing beds.

ANIMALS

Factory farming is the practice of raising livestock and poultry in severe confinement at high stocking densities. They operate in such a way that the farm is run more like an industrial plant, where workers are given a product (in this case, an animal) to be processed and manufactured in the most efficient and cost-effective means possible. There are differences in the way factory farming techniques are practiced around the world and the debate over the benefits and downfalls of the industry is ongoing. However, some of the industry's methods have been uncovered in recent years, and at the very least, their reception is cringe-worthy.

Whether they feel pain or not, whether they are intelligent or not, no animal should go through what some of these animals have had to go through in factory farms. It is simply so far from a natural environment that no animal could be expected to grow into a healthy adulthood, physically or mentally.

Whether factory farming continues to this extent today or not (I wasn't sure how recent some of my research was), I believe this information is still very necessary to present, at least as a means of awareness that there is a whole world going on behind us when we eat our food, if only we turn around to view it. Besides, even if factory farming has been somewhat sedated by legalities as of late, I find it is usually unwise to have faith in large companies to do the right thing where a savings in money is at stake.

That having been said, here are a few shudder-inducing factory farm practices I've discovered.

CHICKENS


Male chicks, of no economic value to the egg industry, are typically gassed or macerated (ground up alive). In this photo, unwanted male chicks struggle to survive amid egg shells and garbage in a dumpster behind a hatchery for laying hens. Every year, more than 100 million of these young chicks are disposed of this way.



Hens which are primarily used for egg-laying are crammed together in wire cages where they don’t even have enough room to spread a single wing. The cages are stacked one on top the other, and the excrement from chickens in the higher cages constantly falls on those below. The birds have part of their beaks cut off, beaks that are very sensitive and filled with bone, soft tissue and nerve-endings, to prevent pecking eachother which comes as a result of stress from such an unnatural environment. After their bodies are exhausted and their production drops, they are shipped to slaughter, generally to be turned into chicken soup or cat or dog food because their flesh is too bruised and battered to be used for much else.


Chickens raised for their flesh, called “broilers”, spend their entire lives in filthy sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, where intense crowding and confinement lead to outbreaks of disease. They are bred and drugged to grow so large so quickly that their legs and organs can’t keep up, making heart attacks, organ failure, and crippling leg deformities a common problem. Many become crippled under their own weight and can’t even move to reach the water nozzles, so they die of thirst. When they are only 6 or 7 weeks old, they are crammed into cages and trucked to slaughter.

PIGS

As piglets, they are stolen away from their mothers when they are less than 1 month old. Their curly tails are cut off, some of their teeth are cut off, and the males have their testicles ripped out of their scrotums (castration), all without any pain relief whatsoever. They will spend the rest of their lives in overcrowded pens on a tiny slab of concrete indoors, until the time for slaughter.

Breeding sows spend life in a tiny crate where they can't even turn around. Shortly after giving birth, they are once again forcibly impregnated. This cycle is forced upon them for years until their bodies finally give out and they are sent to be killed. When the time finally comes for slaughter, they are forced onto transport trucks that travel for many miles through all weather extremes—many die of heat exhaustion in the summer and arrive frozen to the inside of the truck in the winter. According to reports from the industry, more than 1 million pigs die in transportation incidents each year, and an additional 420,000 are crippled by the time they arrive at the to be slaughtered.


COWS

In the U.S. alone, over 41 million cows die for the meat and dairy industries annually. When they are still infants, cows are burned with hot irons (called branding), their testicles are ripped out of their scrotums (castration), and their horns are cut or burned off—all without being given painkillers. Once they have grown big enough, they are sent to massive feedlots to be fattened for slaughter or to dairy farms, where they will be repeatedly impregnated and separated from their calves until their bodies give out and they are sent to die.

HUMANS

Like the hidden practices of factory farms, there is yet another threatening facet to the meat-industry debaucle that is not as easy to perceive. It is the threat that we have put on ourselves--the human species.

About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes and critics of our modern agricultural system say that the spread of meat-based diets aggravates world hunger numbers further (http://www.thehungersite.com/). The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of beef for human beings represents a colossal waste of resources and a greed that we seem to have perfected in the capitalist west. Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet For a Small Planet writes, "Imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. Then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of them. For the 'feed cost' of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains."

To make the idea more clear, the British group Vegfam came out with this chilling comparison:

A 10-acre farm can support 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn and only two producing cattle. Britain --with a population of 56 million-- could support a population of 250 million on an all-vegetable diet. Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing meat production by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free enough grain to feed 60 million people (Emagazine.com).

When everything is said and done, eating meat will always be a personal choice. But if you’re even remotely concerned about the environment, at least think about cutting back on the amount of meat you eat and buy it from a local source whenever you can. Seek out grass-fed, free-range and hormone-free meat and reduce the amount you eat, and you’ll at least be taking an important step forward. Personally, I will never look at meat (or vegetarians for that matter) the same way again.

The Computer

From eight o'clock in the morning until four-thirty in the afternoon, I sit in my office chair and stare into techno-space: my computer screen. Computers and technology are ingrained in to my, and millions of other peoples' everyday lives. But what are these magic mirrors really showing? Or not showing? The answer leads down a dark path to the other side of the world-- where children's blood is poisoned with lead and computer parts scatter the land like weeds. It is a world literally caught in a wired web that we have illegally forced upon them; a nightmare world that leaves only two options: poison or poverty.

When I originally thought to study the environmental impact of computers, I began by looking into how they are made and how their everyday usage effects the environment. I wanted to know if the screen I stared at or the tower that buzzed beside me were made in environmentally unconscious ways. Well, surprise surprise, they are. Like anything manufactured in a plant, computers play a part in the waste that is produced from using the Earth's resources as energy. But from what I've found, there are companies that seem to be genuinely and actively attempting to reduce the waste that comes from manufacturing and using their products. For example, the environmental portion of Apple's website states that:

• A 13-inch MacBook consumes only 14W in idle with the display on, less than a quarter of the consumption of a typical household 60W lightbulb.
• Energy-efficient LED display technology now ships with MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro. The MacBook LED backlit display uses 30% less power compared to conventional CCFL-backlit displays.
• The packaging for the fourth-generation iPod nano is 32% lighter and uses 54% less volume than the packaging for the first-generation iPod nano.

Another big-name computer manufacturer, Dell, now powers nine of its facilities in the United States and Europe with 100 percent renewable energy. They boast, "Dell’s use of renewable energy is part of its plan to reduce its facilities’ greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2015."

So there is now at least some level of environmental awareness in many computer companies, and obviously some action has been taken to improve in this respect. This gave me some hope. I began thinking about the positive effects of computers on the environment; how, with the internet and e-mail, paper-use has been greatly reduced. Furthermore, environmentalists use computers every day to map and track species, gather information and spread awareness. For me, too, it would be entirely hypocritical to shout the evils of computers while I utilize one to do so.

Though, as my research continued, I quickly discovered that there is still a major ongoing problem with computers that a lot of people are unaware of. For it's not only a matter of cutting down the energy used to make and use new computer products; it's also a matter (and maybe a much more important matter) of what to do with the old computers. Thus, my investigation quickly shifted from where computers came from to where they ended up. And where and how most of them end up is a horrifying and deplorable story.

Every day in the United States, 130 000 computers are thrown out. That's close to 4 million a month and over 46 million a year. And that's just computers. Add to that old cell-phones, printers, fax-machines, and scanners and you have an unthinkable amount of technological garbage. Known as "e-waste", it is the fastest growing stream of municipal waste worldwide, and it all has to go somewhere. Unfortunately, where it goes is usually where it will cause the most damage--developing countries that lack the resources and education to properly disassemble and dispense of these toxic parts.

The picture at the top of this entry was taken in Guiya, Hong Kong. Located in southern China, Guiya is reported to be the largest e-waste site on earth. Roughly one million tons of electronic waste is being shipped there per year, mostly from the U.S., Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Despite the Basel Convention Treaty, which the United Nations enforced in the late 1980s to try to regulate commercial waste disposal, significant amounts of hazardous electronic waste are being illegally imported into China where migrant workers separate and burn these parts for a mere eight dollars a day.

Conditions in Guiya are disastrous. Like something out of a science-fiction story, literally acres of computer monitors carpet the ground. Women heat circuit boards over smoking coal fires, pull out chips and pour off the lead solder. Men use what is actually a medieval acid recipe to extract gold from parts. Pollution has ruined the town so drinking water has to be trucked in. The health risks are obvious and severe. Scientists have discovered that Guiyu has the highest levels of cancer-causing dioxins in the world, pregnancies are six times more likely to end in miscarriage there, and seven out of ten kids have too much lead in their blood.

Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist who was interviewed for a special on 60 Minutes, explains that, "These people are not just working with these materials, they're living with them. They're all around their homes. The situation in Guiyu is actually pre-capitalist. It's mercantile. It reverts back to a time when people lived where they worked, lived at their shop. Open, uncontrolled burning of plastics. Chlorinated and brominated plastics is known worldwide to cause the emission of polychlorinated and polybrominated dioxins. These are among the most toxic compounds known on earth. We have a situation where we have 21st century toxins being managed in a 17th century environment."

It's difficult to imagine that there are people living in these conditions. For the children living there, this is probably all they will know. This is normalcy. But perhaps the most troubling thought is that we are the ones that have imported this catastrophe to them. What was once our burden is now theirs to bear. And why? The same. old. reasons. Because we're lazy and ignorant. Because companies can't make a profit on recycling certain parts correctly so they ship them to someone whose life is deemed of less worth. Because it's an easy fix to a difficult problem. Because out of sight, out of mind. And just like that, our waste becomes their homes.

The thing is, we can stop this buildup right now if we just use our common sense. If you have an old computer, cell phone, printer, etc. that you are about to throw away, don't! Give it to a relative, a shelter, a Goodwill, a Value Village. Put it on Kijiji or Craigslist or put an ad up in the newspaper. Throwing it out should not even be an option in your mind. If you can't get a response from anyone-- take your computer to a proper recycling depot. And when I say "proper" I mean proper. Make sure you research the centre to make sure that they do not in fact export their waste overseas. Some companies may say they don't but it's important you research it yourself. Ask questions and probe the regulations. You have a right to know that your waste will be taken care of responsibility and without any harm to others.

Lastly, I would strongly recommend people read this article on the 60 minutes website and/or watch the video of the news broadcast. Much of the information I gathered for this entry was from here and it has been extremely eye-opening.

The Lawn

They're a strange phenomena, lawns. They are "natural" in the sense that they grow outdoors in the soil and are essentially just a sprawl of one species of plant, but on the other hand you wouldn't call any old wild field of grass a lawn. There's a human-element that qualifies lawns as such, a shepherd-like caretaking that requires sometimes back-breaking labour and constant watchfulness. Because it's all about length. Too short and you've got yourself a thin patch of hair on a balding brown head. Too long and you've traded your lawn for a pasture. It's this fragile balance that keeps us exhaustively toiling our little Edens-- growing, cutting, growing, spraying, cutting-- until the day finally comes that we get to rest beneath them (happy intro, eh?).

So why do we do it? Why put yourself through all the pain and the extra responsibility, not to mention the terrible bank-breaking effects some lawns cause? Well, like most things in human society, I think most of it has to do with money and power. The bigger the lawn, the greener, the better it is maintained, the classier you are. I'm sure most of us lawn-carers don't consciously think of it that way when we're chopping to our hearts' delight on a big green John Deere, but to some extent, a large, well-pruned lawn is like a big banner with dollar signs all over it. Little green blades of money-coloured class. It shouts: "Hey you, street rat! I've got a lot of land and a lot of money and I can make my land look amazing because I have lots of money and land! Take that!"

The problem is, lawns are evil. No, just kidding. Lawns are great. Most people don't realize that lawns in themselves are quite helpful to us. Lawns absorb water, which helps reduce storm runoff and improve water quality. They also have a significant cooling effect, provide oxygen for us, trap dust and dirt, promote healthful micro-organisms, prevent erosion and filter rainwater contaminants. I have a lawn. A HUGE lawn now actually, having moved into my late grandfather's old farmhouse. So recently I've come to know the upkeep required to keep a big area of grass healthy and pristine, which is why I targeted it for enviro-analysis in the first place.

So why are lawns a problem, you might ask. (Just get off lawns' backs already, lawn-Nazi!) Well, once again, we're to blame. We don't maintain them in an eco-friendly way. Just look at the following statistics which were taken from the U.S. National Wildlife Federation (I assume Canadian statistics would be quite similar).

• 30% of water used on the East Coast goes to watering lawns; 60% on the West Coast.


• 18% of municipal solid waste is composed of yard waste.


• The average suburban lawn received 10 times as much chemical pesticide per acre as farmland.


• Over 70 million tons of fertilizers and pesticides are applied to residential lawns and gardens annually.


• Per hour of operation, a gas lawn mower emits 10-12 times as much hydrocarbon as a typical automobile. A weedeater emits 21 times more and a leaf blower 34 times more.
  
• Where pesticides are used, 60 - 90% of earthworms are killed. Earthworms are important for soil health.
  

Shocking, I know. So what can we do about it? Well, I've been scouring the internet for helpful information on how to get the most out of your lawn without damaging the earth with harmful chemicals. Here are two that I found very straight-forward and effective:

1) Read Your "Weeds"- A Simple Guide to Creating a Healthy Lawn

2) 8 Steps to a Toxic-Free Lawn

Now as far as the lawnmower emissions, that seems to be a problem still for those of us with larger lawns. Small-lawned folk can do well with a corded/cordless electric mower or a push-reel motor, but unfortunately the riding lawnmower is still a necessity for the rest of us. However, if you happen to have $4000.00 to spend, you can buy this eco-friendly robot (yes, robot) lawnmower to do all your cutting for you! It's solar-powered and mows up to 20,000 sq. ft.! But, if you're like me and can't even comprehend $4000.00, then you might just have compromise the robot for the rider.

The Toilet Paper

For my first mini-investigation, I've decided to feel out a product that usually feels us out. I use it every day, multiple times a day for multiple purposes. Yes, you've got it. It's that delicate, white, oh-so-soft material that we know better as "toilet paper".

First off, a little history lesson. It turns out that humans have been wiping and wasting for centuries. According to The Toilet Paper Encyclopedia, the earliest known records of toilet paper production was from 1391 A.D., when the Chinese Bureau of Imperial Supplies began manufacturing 720,000 sheets of toilet paper a year for its Emperors, each sheet measuring two feet by three feet. Important man, important wipes.

Following in their royal footsteps, we North Americans consume toilet paper rolls almost as fast as we consume cinnamon rolls. But not just any old toilet paper will do. We need the super-soft, cashmere, 4-ply, pearly white toilet paper with the dab of aloe-vera in the middle, signed by Britney Spears toilet paper. And why shouldn't we have it? Don't we have a right to get clean and be comfortable while we do so?

Well, what most people don't know is that none of the top-selling toilet paper brands have any recycled material in their toilet paper because they all compete for "softness"-- a quality that comes only from virgin trees (most of these trees coming from Canadian forests). Tissue made from 100 percent recycled fibers is under 2% of the domestic use market among conventional and premium brands.

Here's some interesting numbers found on Green Living Tips:

-One of the most commonly used type of tree can produce around 1,000 rolls of toilet paper. Americans use an average of 23.6 rolls per person per year.

-23.6 rolls x 303,824,640 (USA population at July 2008)= 7,170,261,504 rolls of toilet paper a year.
-98% of that figure (the market share of toilet paper from virgin fiber)= 7,026,856,273 rolls a year.

-Now divide that by 1,000 (what each tree can produce in rolls)= 7,026,856 trees per year.

7 million trees a year have literally all gone down the drain. That is deplorable! Especially considering that many if not most of the trees these American toilet paper companies use is from Canadian-grown trees!

Concerning my health, I haven't found any information that says toilet paper with non-recycled materials in it is bad for you, although I'm tempted to trust in recycled materials because of the lack of chemicals. Nonetheless, the health-aspect is besides the point here. We need trees. To live. The more the better. What we definitely don't need is cottony-soft tissues.

Therefore, let's do the right thing-- help out those struggling recycling toilet paper companies and go buy some environmentally friendly tissue (albeit, slightly coarser tissue).

If you can't find it in your local store, there are many websites out there who take orders for it (eg. Treecycle.com). Good luck!

The Proposal

Things are not going so well for our little race. If you don't realize that by now, you will soon. We are living in a critical moment in history where we have two doors to walk through. One leads to a torturous and short-lived existence on a violent and barren planet, and the other leads to a life of peace-- Peace between humanity and nature, between our inner and outer lives, between what we need and what we are merely greedy for.

The first step is to realize that you are an integral part of the problem, but also a valuable asset to the solution. And that solution is a simple one: it is only to train yourself to be more conscious about the planet you live on; to think before you take, to ask questions about where your commodities and entertainment come from, and to change your life accordingly when you know you are doing something wrong. Somewhere between being a toddler and becoming an adult we forgot how to do this. We must bring back that child-like innocence, that yearning to know why, and when we couple that simple wonder with the self-discipline that we as adults know so well, then the solution can be wrought.

Can we do it? Can I?

This is the Green Test.

Each week, I will choose one thing common to my everyday life and investigate it. I will ask simple questions about it: How was this made? Where did it come from? Why do I use it? Is it good for me? It may not seem like much at first, but my hope is that added up, the little acts of change that may come from this test will accumulate into a healthier, greener life. A life that I can be proud of, and one that I can share with the rest of the world.