The Anniversary of Shakespeare’s Death

April 23rd is a symbolic date for world literature. It was the date of death of Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. April 23rd is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors such as Maurice Druon, K.Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.

We now celebrate it as World Book Day,  a celebration of authors, illustrators, books and a celebration of reading. In fact, it’s the biggest celebration of its kind, designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and marked in over 100 countries all over the world.

Albert Einstein Was A Vegetarian

The first Earth Day, 42 years ago, marked an awakening of environmental awareness. Much has been done to reverse the damage decades of irresponsible behavior has had on out planet. What that being said, there’s obviously a lot more work to be done.

TreeHugger asked some of the Web’s best environmental writers to share their wishes for Earth Day. Responses varied, some said renewable energy, changing the human brain, or simply that there is no silver bullet that could solve our endless environmental problems. But if there was one response that I couldn’t agree with more, it would be that of professional race car driver, environmental activist, and frequent contributor to TreeHugger.com Leilani Munter. 

“If I could change one thing about the world, I would have everyone adopt a plant based diet. Many people associate their carbon footprint with the fuel in the car they drive but they don’t associate it with the food on their plate.” 

This is a large part of the reason why I am a vegetarian myself. The meat industry is very hard on our natural resources, polluting our land and water, cutting down rain forests and slaughtering billions of animals annually. Even Albert Einstein was a vegetarian! He once said:

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”

The Condition of Our Planet

The Reality of “Finding Nemo” Marine Life

As we’ve learned in Finding Nemo, sea turtles are the friendly hippies of the ocean. But there are seven kinds of sea turtles, all of which are endangered. And sea turtles aren’t able to hide in their shells for protection, that’s why they need our help! Since mother turtles leave right after they lay their eggs, sea turtles never meet their parents. So tiny baby sea turtles are left orphaned on beaches throughout the world. These little guys deserve to be saved, and loved!

But in all seriousness, sea turtles are greatly affected by warm water temperatures caused by climate change. Residential and tourist use of beaches can result in disturbance to nesting turtles. Their eggs are sill considered highly desirable, which continues to be a serious problem where ever sea turtles nest (including the United States.) Human attempts to exploit offshore oil and gas reserves pose a serious threat to marine turtles, resulting in the incidental injuring or killing of the turtles and destruction of their habitats. The most serious marine environment treat to turtles is commercial fishing where incidental taking of turtles during operations has seriously affected the population.

Believe it or not, even on the commercial streets of China, little turtles are found packaged as souvenirs. These little tortoises are still alive and swimming inside an herbal solution. They costs 5 RMB a piece, or $0.79 USD. Cruel and unacceptable…Is this really what our world has come to? Small as they may be, they are still lives, and someone needs to put an end to this uncivil act. In China especially, you can’t depend on the government to stop animal cruelty. What to do, what to do…

Eating Burnt Food Is Bad For You? No!

Personally I enjoy my food slightly charged. Weird but true. Burnt toast with butter, a little char on my grilled BBQ chicken (before I stopped eating meat). But there’s evidence that suggests that eating all that burned food could actually be bad for you.

Back in 2007, a Dutch study found an increased risk of cancer in women who were exposed to the chemical acrylamide. This chemical forms on fried or baked foods, especially when those foods are burned. The study found that women who ate 40 micrograms of acrylamide a day (equivalent to say, a bag of potato chips) had double the cancer risk of women who ate the lowest amount of the chemical. 

Save The Plastic Bag Coalition. Really?

The Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, a coalition comprised of large-scale manufactures of plastic bags, recently sued the city of San Francisco for expanding their law on banning plastic bags. The extended ban now includes single-use bags at most businesses, including restaurants. It also imposes a 10-cent fee for any other bag handed out at the checkout stand or takeout counter.

The Save The Plastic Bag Coalition’s reasoning to take this case to court is that “paper and compostable bags are significantly worse for the environment than plastic bags.” They also claim that “the 10-cent fee that the city wants businesses to charge for a paper or compostable carryout bag is, or may be, far too low to act as an effective incentive to promote the use of reusable bags.” 

Personally I’m all for the ban. Plastic bags are obviously a bad idea for the environment and must be banned. Paper bags are not much better, but really people just BYO Bag! It’s not painful at all to keep a few reusable shopping bags in your car. It would be a shame to see this ban go away. And although it makes sense to keep the ban, The Save The Plastic Bag Coalition is funded by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) so you never know what kinds of string$ they can pull.

Reusable Water Bottle. Kerplunk!

So I’m pretty distubed by the idea of plastic, how it comes from oil, the chemicals involved in processing, and all the technolical know how that I wont get into. But mainly the fact that it’s sprinked over our entire planet, acorss coast lines, lineing roads and highways, and floating in the bodies of water that we drink from #northpacificgarbagepatch. It’s even scarier that plastic is here to stay, out living most life forms here on earth, including us.  

Below is a picture of my reuable waterbottle, I’m slightly obsessed with it. The company that makes them is called Kerplunk. I found it in City Market, a Co-Op 2 minutes down the street from my place in Burlington for about $12. Now that might not sound incredibly cheap, but if your a big water drinker it certainly pays for itself. They’ve got some pretty cool designs as well, making the whole reuable water bottle idea a bit more fashionable and chic, not just outdoorsy and eco-friendly for granola crunching hippes.

It’s made of glass so it is pretty fragile, but I’m generally pretty careful with my most treasured belongings i.e. iPhone, MacBook, etc. so it works for my lifestyle. Something about the glass design makes you really thirsty. When it’s filled with cold water and the outside gets frothy, it’s almost like drinking glacier water. Of course I really have no idea what drinking water from a glacier is like…but I feel like it would be something like this.  

To Recycle Or Not To Recycle, That Is The Question.

                        

The world’s largest bottle-to-bottle recycling plant opened in California last week. The plant, owned by CarbonLITE, is expected to recycle roughly two billion PET plastic bottles a year for customers like Pepsi and Nestle. CarbonLITE specializes in processing used plastic bottles into bottle-grade PET pellets that can then be used to manufacture new plastic beverage bottles. This conserves virgin resources, reduces landfills, and capitalizes on the energy already invested in making existing plastic products.

         

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about recycling. But I can’t help but wonder if there is a more sustainable way to recycle plastics? After all, it is made from oil and your basically just melting it down to make the same thing over again, using the same chemicals, and emitting the same toxins back into the environment. Can technology even save us? And speaking of Pepsi and Nestle, check out what’s happening to the people living in Corpus Christi, TX. There’s some pretty scary stuff going on over there. If you enjoy learning through film, I would also highly recommend watching the documentary Tapped or Bag It. 

The Smiling Snail

Prepared Foods CSA  is a subscription based meals delivery service with share term periods as short as one month. They work with local farms and use as much local, organic and sustainable product as possible. The packaging is compostable and made from GMO-free wheat fiber or sugar case waste fiber. They also use glass mason jars for soups. The food sometimes includes local meat, but is never meat-centric. Vegetarian and gluten free options are available. Delivery is on Wednesdays to homes or workplaces in Charlotte, Shelburne, South Burlington and Burlington, Vermont.