Tag: life

Living Without Plastic

  • Cheryl Lohrman victorious after finding a specialty deli that would sell her cheese and put it, plastic free, in her steel tin. (Photo courtesy of Sadie Babits)

We use a lot of plastic. Every year some 30 million tons of plastic in the U.S. from diapers to bottles get tossed in landfills. One woman wants to change those numbers. She’s trying to live her life without plastic. Sadie Babits caught up with her to find out if that’s really possible.

Transcript

We use a lot of plastic. Every year some 30 million tons of plastic in the U.S. from diapers to bottles get tossed in landfills. One woman wants to change those numbers. She’s trying to live her life without plastic. Sadie Babits caught up with her to find out if that’s really possible.

When Cheryl Lohrmann comes to the grocery store all she sees is plastic. Plastic yogurt containers, cheese wrapped in plastic shrink-wrap, juice bottles, plastic bags. She doesn’t want this stuff in her life. So Lohrmann decided she’d vote with her wallet by refusing to buy anything with plastic.

“We’re at cherry sprouts grocery store in Portland, OR where I’m going to purchase some cheese and some eggs.”

Eggs are no problem. She just puts them in her used egg carton. But cheese is a different story. She has a small steel tin that looks like it belongs with her camping gear – not the grocery store. And Lohrmann has a special request for the guy behind the counter.

“And that is if I get the cheese not wrapped up in plastic but just in this container or maybe you could put this on paper.”

“Aahhh. I don’t think we can do that because it needs to be wrapped up.”

Lohrmann gets that reaction a lot. So she won’t buy cheese here. It means a trip to another shop – this time a high-end specialty deli.

LouAnne Schooler owns this store. She explains to Lohrmann why they use plastic.

“Plastic, it’s the unfortunately simplest choice because we wrap and re-wrap continuously throughout the day and it can’t be left unwrapped and people need to see the cheese so that precludes it from being wrapped in most papers.”

But Schooler says she’s only too happy to help people like Lohrmann who don’t want their cheese shrink- wraped. So she drops the cheese –plastic free – into Lohrmann’s tin.

“That’s a good chunk of cheese. Magical moment here–thanks for letting me do that”

“Sure.”

Lohrmann started going plastic free a couple of years ago after reading Elizabeth Royte’s book Garbageland. The author tracked her trash to find out where it ended up. The chapter on plastic struck a nerve with Lohrmann.

“I think it’s been taken too far when you have toothpicks individually wrapped in plastic. You know you just start to think is that really necessary given the fact that this is such a toxic material that doesn’t have high enough recycling rights to really justify having it.”

Lohrmann also gets miffed that you end up paying for plastic three times. You pay for it at the grocery store and again to have it hauled to the landfill. Finally, she says we pay for it environmentally – plastic doesn’t disappear. So you might think it’s a little nuts to even think about living a life free of plastic. Lohrmann gets that.

“It is hard right now to feel like you can maneuver to get whatever you want without plastic.”

“Ok, so on a scale of one to ten–ten being plastic free–where are you?”

“I would say probably a nine.”

That’s a nine when it comes to buying groceries. Because let’s face it. Plastic is everywhere even in Lohrmann’s home. There’s her computer, picture frames, even the parts on her bike. She realizes going plastic free is nearly impossible but she’s willing to try to send a message especially to businesses that we need to reduce the amount of plastic in our lives.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

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Is Radical Homemaking the New Feminism?

  • Author Shannon Hayes says raising chickens and growing veggies is a new route for women who consider themselves feminists. (Photo courtesy of Nathan & Jenny CC-2.0)

Women who consider themselves feminists might be shocked to hear what some are calling the new wave of feminism: women heading back to the kitchen – and the garden. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Women who consider themselves feminists might be shocked to hear what some are calling the new wave of feminism: women heading back to the kitchen – and the garden. Julie Grant reports:

When Shannon Hayes was finishing her PhD, she made a list of all the female professors she’d ever had. There wasn’t one who had tenure who was also married with children. Hayes wanted a husband and family, and realized that if she wanted a big university job…

“I was not going to have these things. And they were as important to me as having a career. In fact, in truth they were more important to me.”

So, much to the dismay of her PhD committee members, she headed back to the northern foothills of the Appalachian mountains near the family farm where she grew up. She bought a teeny house with her husband. People whispered. What had gone wrong?

Once there, Hayes couldn’t even get a job interview. To make things worse, her husband lost his job two weeks after buying the house. So, they fell back on their domestic skills.

“Well, if something broke, we fixed it. If something ripped, we mended it. I was very good at canning, so any food we didn’t grow on the farm or didn’t grow in our gardens I wold go to the local farmers when it was in peak season and I would can it, freeze it, lacto-ferment it.”

Hayes says her idea of success changed. Spending time with her parents and children, cooking family meals – those are her successes.

And she’s found that more people are realizing the power of homemaking.

Hayes has now written a book called Radical Homemakers – which profiles twenty families that are saying “no” to regular jobs, and are instead raising chickens and growing veggies.

Hayes says homemaking is a new route for women who consider themselves feminists.

“I think that a lot of feminists are realizing that the family home life is extremely important. I do think that this is part of the next wave of feminism.”

One feminist blogger asked with disgust:
Are you telling women to get back in the kitchen?

Traditional feminists don’t like the sound of this one bit.

Brittany Shoot is another feminist blogger. She’s concerned with calling homemaking feminism. Shoot writes about eco-feminist issues for Bitch Media and The Women’s International Perspective. She says just because some women are doing it, does NOT make it feminism. She says Hayes’ message could be considered a step backward for women.

“I can’t imagine saying to my grandmother, ‘I’m going to stay home and just hang out.'”

Shoot says her grandmother struggled to attend university, and didn’t have nearly the choices Brittany has for a career. She would want Brittany to make the most of her opportunities.

“We’ve come so far. Why would you make this decision when you have the ability to have a career that may not only be lucrative, but fulfilling.”

But Shannon Hayes says we’ve been conditioned to want the money and status of a big job and that’s proving to be as empty for many women as it is for many men.

Hayes says being a housewife in the ‘50s and 60s was limiting. Back then, when Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, women were depressed by their role as homemakers. Women were losing their own identities to serve their husbands and children. But Hayes says women today are losing their identities to the workplace. She also says corporations have largely taken over in the home.
She says when women left the kitchen to join the workforce, that’s when everyone started eating processed, unhealthy foods.

“I think everybody should get back in the kitchen, not just women. But that’s because I don’t think you should be buying processed foods, and I don’t think you should be supporting industrial agriculture, and don’t think that you should be supporting food traveling thousands of miles.”

Hayes says becoming a homemaker isn’t abandoning feminism, it’s redefining it on her own terms. She’s sharing homemaking with her husband… and both are finding more balance between home life and work.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Acidic Oceans Dissolving Shellfish Industry

  • Oceanographer Richard Feely says the shellfish industry is suffering in part because the more acidic seawater encourages the growth of a type of bacterium that kills oyster larvae.(Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

When carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, about a third of it absorbs into the ocean. That creates carbonic acid—the stuff in soda pop that gives it that zing.

That means seawater is becoming more acidic.

Scientists say this ocean acidification is starting to cause big problems for marine life. And Ann Dornfeld reports that could affect your dinner plans.

Transcript

When carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, about a third of it absorbs into the ocean. That creates carbonic acid—the stuff in soda pop that gives it that zing.

That means seawater is becoming more acidic.

Scientists say this ocean acidification is starting to cause big problems for marine life. And Ann Dornfeld reports that could affect your dinner plans.

Taylor Shellfish Farms has been growing oysters for more than a
century. And shucking them, one by one, by hand.

“An old profession. Y’know, they’ve tried for years to
find a way to mechanize it. There’s no way around it. Every oyster is
so unique in its size and shape.”

Bill Dewey is a spokesman for Taylor. The company is based in
Washington state. It’s one of the nation’s main producers of farmed
shellfish. Dewey says if you order oyster shooters in Chicago, or just
about anywhere else, there’s a good chance they came from Taylor.

But in the past couple of years, the company has had a hard time
producing juvenile oysters – called “seed.”

“Last year our oyster larvae production was off about 60
percent. This year it was off almost 80 percent. It’s a huge impact to
our company and to all the people that we sell seed to.”

Shellfish growers throughout the Pacific Northwest are having similar
problems with other kinds of oysters, and mussels, too. They suspect a
lot of it has to do with ocean acidification.

Richard Feely is a chemical oceanographer with the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration. He says when the pH of seawater drops
too low, it can hurt marine life.

“What we know for sure is that those organisms that
produce calcium carbonate shells such as lobsters, and clams and
oysters, and coral skeletons, they generally tend to decrease their
rate of formation of their skeletons.”

Feely says it looks like acidified waters are affecting oysters
because their larvae build shells with a type of calcium carbonate,
called aragonite, which dissolves more easily in corrosive water.

The more acidic seawater also encourages the growth of a type of
bacterium that kills oyster larvae.

Feely says the changes in the ocean’s pH are becoming serious. He
recently co-published a study on the results of a 2006 research cruise
between Hawaii and Alaska. It was identical to a trip the researchers
took in 1991. They found that in just 15 years, the ocean had become
five to six percent more acidic as a result of man-made CO2.

“If you think about it, a change of 5% in 15 years is a
fairly dramatic change. and it’s certainly humbling to see that in my
lifetime I can actually measure these changes on a global scale. These
are very significant changes.”

A couple years ago, Feely gave a talk at a conference of shellfish
growers. He explained the impact ocean acidification could have on
their industry. Bill Dewey with Taylor Shellfish Farms was there.

“All these growers were walking around with all these
really long faces, just very depressed. I mean it was a very eye-opening presentation and something that’s definitely had growers
paying attention since, that this could be a very fundamental problem
that we’re going to be facing for a long time to come.”

Dewey calls shellfish growers the “canary in the coalmine” for ocean
acidification.

Scientists say if humans don’t slow our release of CO2 into the
atmosphere, shellfish may move from restaurant menus into history
books.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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Interview: President of the National Wildlife Federation

  • Larry Schweiger says that we as a society are losing connection with nature, but those who are in nature every day are seeing the changes of global warming take place. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, David Parsons)

The head of a hunting, fishing and bird-watching group has written a book that indicates to save nature as we know it, we have to come to grips with climate change. Larry Schweiger is the President and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation and author of the book “Last Chance: Preserving Life on Earth.” Lester Graham recently talked with him:

Transcript

Graham: You write in your book, “like it or not, global warming is the defining issue of the twenty-first century,” but you also note that there’s a significant amount of what you call “cynical obfuscation” of the science on global warming. If the overwhelming amount of science supports the fact that climate change is happening, and burning fossil fuels is contributing to that change, why is skepticism among the American public growing?

Schweiger: Well I think you need to look at how much money’s being spent by the fossil fuel industry, the oil and coal industry, to confuse the American public on this issue, and they have done a masterful job, as we’ve seen, in creating doubt, sending signals of confusion…

Graham: Most scientists tell me the effects of global warming are happening faster than first predicted, but those effects are often lost on the general public. Your group, the NWF represents hunters, fishers, bird-watchers, people who are out in nature. Are they noticing changes?

Schweiger: They are, and they are helping us to communicate to congress, and helping us to get the word out about what’s taking place. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans today spend 7 hours or more in front of a computer screen or a TV screen, or in some other way disconnected from nature. The average child, for example, spends some 7 minutes a day in nature, so we as a society are losing connection with nature, but those who are in nature each and every day are seeing the changes take place ‘cause they’ve watched it over their lifetime.

Graham: Your book not only makes the case that the world of nature as we know it is worth saving, but you note some things that everyday folks can do—you can protect natural areas near you, talk back to news media, push the politicians, get your hands dirty, literally, by organic gardening at home, but I get the impression most of us are looking to someone else to solve this global problem, I mean after all, the earth is just too darn big for any one of us to make much of a difference.

Schweiger: Well that’s a very important question because in America we assume that our government is gonna just solve our problems, but really what we need to do as Americans is we need to give voice to these problems, and demand that we see action. I think we need to step up and tell our lawmakers what we believe, what we want to see done.

Graham: Now you’ve spent some time in the halls of congress. We saw the house pass climate change legislation last year. The senate has kind of scrapped that whole thing and now senators, Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham, are working on a new plan. When do you think we might actually have some policy put into law that will help us deal with this climate change situation?

Schweiger: Well let me first say that the three senators working on this legislation are doing the type of legislating that we need because they’re working together, it’s a tripartisan bill—

Graham:–Alright, Kerry’s a Democrat, Lieberman an independent, and Graham is a republican—

Schweiger: –Right. So we have all three working together. And I particularly want to acknowledge Lindsey Graham—he has bucked his own party saying we need a new energy policy in America, we need to wean ourselves from dependency on foreign oils, very powerful things, and I think it’s very influential in the way it’s playing out here.

Graham: Larry Schweiger is the president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, and the author of the book ‘Last Chance: Preserving Life on Earth.’ Thanks very much.

Schweiger: Thank you.

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A Battle Over the Treatment of Livestock

  • The treatment of laying hens is one part of the issue getting a lot of attention in Ohio. (Photo source: LEAPTOUY at Wikimedia Commons)

Recently, six states have changed their laws to require
better conditions for farm animals. But there’s a battle
brewing in one state that’s putting a new spin on the debate.
Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Recently, six states have changed their laws to require
better conditions for farm animals. But there’s a battle
brewing in one state that’s putting a new spin on the debate.
Julie Grant reports:

The Humane Society of the United States says it’s shameful
the way animals are treated on many American farms. Paul
Shapiro says veal calves, pregnant pigs, and egg-laying
hens are all kept in cages so small – it’s cruel.

“Hundreds of millions of egg-laying hens in the nation are
confined in tiny battery cages that are so restrictive the birds
are unable even to spread their wings.”

Shapiro says some farms house millions of hens, all
squished into tiny cages, and none of them get the chance to
nest, or act in any way like natural chickens. The Humane
Society has spent millions of dollars pushing for change in
California and other states.

But when the Humane Society hit Ohio with its campaign,
the state Farm Bureau Federation pushed back.

Keith Stimpert is spokesman for the Ohio Farm Bureau. He
says there’s a reason cages are a certain size for hens,
calves, and pigs: the animals’ safety.

“You can expand space, but you’re going to increase
aspects of fighting or cannibalistic behavior, or the chance
for that sow to fall down while she’s pregnant.”

Stimpert says the Humane Society doesn’t understand
livestock.

So instead of negotiating with the Humane Society, the Ohio
Farm Bureau is proposing something new: a state board to
oversee the care of livestock.

“I think we, in this case, can get to a better resolution on
animal care by organizing this board.”

The board would include family farmers, veterinarians, a
food safety expert, and a member of a local chapter of the
Humane Society, among others.

Voters will probably be asked in November to decide
whether to change the state constitution to create this board.

But the Humane Society’s Paul Shapiro says the board will
be stacked by the Farm Bureau. He calls it a power grab by
big agriculture.

“Keep in mind that these are people who have opposed,
tooth and nail, any form of agricultural regulation for years,
and now, all of a sudden, in just a few weeks, they’ve gotten
religion and feel grave urgency to enshrine in the state’ s
constitution their own favored system of oversight.”

Shapiro says this board will only protect the status quo. And
that’s not good for the animals.

Egg producer Mark Whipple runs a small farm in Clinton,
Ohio. He’s got about 1,500 hens. We caught up with him
delivering eggs at a local health food store.

He says his hens are free range.

“There ain’t no cages, really. They go in the box, lay their
egg, and go out and run around with the rest of ‘em, go eat,
drink, I don’t know, just be free.”

Whipple says he was never inclined to cage the hens.

You might expect him to side with the Humane Society on
this debate. But he doesn’t trust them to make decisions for
farmers.

“I don’t know that they really know where their food comes
from – other than they go to the grocery store or they go to
the refrigerator. Unfortunately, that’s a lot the mentality of
the world right now, so far removed from the farm at all,
knowing about livestock.”

Whipple says there are good producers and bad producers
out there – just like any business. He would rather see a
board like the one proposed by the farm bureau than a
mandate on cage sizes from a Washington DC-based
lobbying group.

But the Humane Society says the board proposed by the
Farm Bureau won’t make things better. If it’s approved by
voters this November, the Society plans to place its own
initiative on animal treatment on the ballot next year.

Meanwhile, other farm states are considering the Ohio Farm
Bureau’s approach and might soon have their own advisory
boards on how to treat animals.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Bike Shop in a Box

  • A mechanic works on the bikes to make them as compact as possible - removing pedals, kickstands, and turning the handlebars (Photo by Karen Kelly)

So many of us have an old bike collecting
dust in the garage. More often than not,
they end up in the garbage. But, as Karen
Kelly reports, one group has found a unique
way to recycle them:

Transcript

So many of us have an old bike collecting
dust in the garage. More often than not,
they end up in the garbage. But, as Karen
Kelly reports, one group has found a unique
way to recycle them:

(sound of banging)

“That’s a sweet ride!”

A volunteer drops a bike into a pile at the back of a huge shipping container in Ottawa, Canada.
The bikes are stacked one on top of the other.

(sound of tools)

Just outside, a mechanic is stripping the bikes down to make them as compact as possible.

“If it has a kickstand, we have to remove it. We take the pedals off and turn the handlebars.”

In a few hours, this cargo container will be jammed with hundreds of donated bicycles, bike parts, and backpacks.

The gear is collected by a group called Bicycles for Humanity.
They have 20 chapters, most of them in North America.

Each chapter raises a couple of thousand dollars to buy a shipping container.
They pack it full of donated gear, and send it off to a community in Namibia, Africa. The shipping cost – another several thousand dollars – is also raised by the group.

A volunteer group there turns the container itself into a locally-run bike shop that provides jobs and transportation.

Some of the bikes are donated to health care workers who use them to pull patients on a stretcher.

Others are piled high with stacks of food and household items that defy gravity.

Martin Sullivan points to some of the pictures on display.

“These are the bakers who are able to sell their bread. And also wood, you can stack wood. It’s just amazing what they do, how they make use of these bikes that we take for granted. We throw them out, and they can do so much with them.”

(sound of traffic)

In Namibia, cars – and even bicycles – are scarce. Sullivan says these bikes make life easier for people who are used to walking miles to get to school, work, or to find the basic necessities.

Seb Oran is the co-founder of Bicycles for Humanity in Ottawa.

This is the fourth container of bikes that she’s sent to Africa.
Each one supports a local community group.
Sometimes its a hospital, sometimes an orphanage, sometimes a women’s empowerment group.
She remembers one run by former prostitutes.

“Six of them became bicycle mechanics now. And now, they don’t have to sell their bodies to put food on their plate.”

But there are some challenges.

Michael Linke runs the Bicycle Empowerment Network.
He helps the Nambians set up the bicycle shops.

“Because this is the first time a lot of these people have had formal ongoing work, it’s often difficult to get people to understand a long-term ongoing business.”

But with some mentoring, they’ve been able to make it work.
There are now 13 successful projects, with more containers filled with bikes on the way.

The group estimates that these bikes will last another 20 or 30 years in Africa. They might be junk to us, but in Namibia, they’re a precious resource.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

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Coral Conservation in the Caribbean

  • The island of Bonaire is somewhat of an anomaly in the Caribbean due to its remarkably preserved coral reefs (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)

Scientists say nearly half of the coral reefs in the US are in bad shape.
Many are dead. The situation is similar in much of the world. But not
everywhere, as Ann Dornfeld found on the Caribbean island of Bonaire:

Transcript

Scientists say nearly half of the coral reefs in the US are in bad shape.
Many are dead. The situation is similar in much of the world. But not
everywhere, as Ann Dornfeld found on the Caribbean island of Bonaire:

(sound of waves on shore)

Jerry Ligon was working as the on-board naturalist on a small Caribbean
cruise ship when he first saw Bonaire.

“And I saw how clear the water was. And I’d been able to compare, during
my stint on the cruise ship, other islands in the Caribbean, and I realized
how special Bonaire was. So that was at the end of my contract, so I
decided to stay here. And I’ve been here for 15 years!”

It’s wasn’t just the clarity of Bonaire’s water that made Ligon stick around. It
was the remarkably healthy coral reefs that lay beneath the waves.

“I can even talk to divers who come to Bonaire and they say, ‘What
fantastic diving!’ and they remember, ‘This is how the way it was in Cayman
Islands 25 years ago!'”

Ligon says the Cayman Islands might have even had more impressive
reefs than Bonaire’s back in the day. But coral throughout the US and
Caribbean has been in sharp decline for decades.

So how do Bonaire’s reefs remain intact?

Ramón de León is the manager of the Bonaire National Marine Park. He
says the island has an advantage in that it has no industries to pollute the
water.

The island is mostly undeveloped, which means relatively little farm and
lawn fertilizer run-off that can create marine algae blooms. And cool
upwellings in the region help balance the rising ocean temperatures. Warm
oceans can cause coral bleaching, which often kills the coral animal.

But de León says Bonaire really owes its healthy reefs to its history of
conservation laws. They date back to an era when such policies were rare.

“Bonaire start to protect sea turtles and turtle nests in 1961, back when
everybody was promoting sea turtle soups and nailing shells in the walls.”

By the end of the 1970s, Bonaire had banned spear fishing and made it
illegal to damage coral. For years, divers have been required to pay a
sizeable fee and take an orientation course before they’re allowed to dive
on the island. That helps them avoid touching the coral, which can kill it.

De León says the island still allows too much fishing. So several years ago,
he told the island’s fishermen they needed to choose a no-take zone to let
the reefs recover.

“I refuse to decide myself. I give the fishermen some prerequisites that they
have to have to close, and they chose which area. Is not my number-one
option, but is their number-one option. So I have to respect that.”

De León says because the fishermen chose the no-take zone, something
important happened. Compliance is high.

For all of Bonaire’s success in coral conservation, there are still some
problems. De León says its reefs suffer from leaky septic tanks and boat
pollution. And there are few of the large predator fish that used to maintain
population balance on the reefs.

But the island is a haven for researchers like Mark Patterson. He designs
underwater robots at Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences.

Last year he led a NOAA expedition to use robots to map Bonaire’s reefs.
He says the island’s reefs are valuable as a baseline by which other reefs
can be judged.

“If you’re an up-and-coming marine scientist and you go to a lot of the coral
reefs on the planet now, you might think that all coral reefs have always
look like this. And they haven’t! So the fact that we’ve got some pristine
reefs left is very important, and we’ve got to work very hard to protect them
because it shows us how the ecosystem should look and used to look
around the planet before things started to go downhill.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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Green Last Requests, Part One

  • Amy Weik has a will drawn up that specifies a green burial (Photo by Todd Melby)

Memorial Day is coming up. Many people still visit the graves of family and friends, maybe bring flowers. When a loved one dies, grieving prevents most of us from thinking about the environmental consequences of conventional funerals and burial. But some people are beginning to weigh the environmental costs of caskets, burial vaults and grave markers. Todd Melby reports on the green death movement:

Todd Melby and Diane Richard produced a documentary on green burial called “Death’s Footprint.” You can listen to it here .

Transcript

Memorial Day is coming up. Many people still visit the graves of family and friends,
maybe bring flowers. When a loved one dies, grieving prevents most of us from
thinking about the environmental consequences of conventional funerals and burial.
But some people are beginning to weigh the environmental costs of caskets, burial
vaults and grave markers. Todd Melby reports on the green death movement:

Amy Weik works at a bank in downtown Chicago. She’s also a big-time
environmentalist. She bikes to work, doesn’t eat meat, recycles and she composts.

“This is my worm bin. It’s a rectangular cube, which I keep my worms in that eat
my scrap vegetables. Mmm, look at that. Yum. Scrap paper, food that went bad.”

The environment is such a big part of Weik’s life, she’s not only interested in
living green.

She wants to die green.

“We’re Americans. We are wasteful and we consume. We think that we are
entitled to everything. So I’m entitled to using up this massive plot of land for the
rest of eternity. That’s ridiculous thinking. You know what I mean?”

So 11 years ago — when she was only 23 — Weik wrote her own will and shared it
with her mother.

Weik: “I can read part of it.”

Melby: “Sure, what does it say?”

Weik: “Zero products or services from funeral homes are to be utilized.”

Instead, Weik prefers her body to be chemically cremated. But that new, high-
tech process isn’t widely available yet. Her second choice is to be composted with
worms.

“If all efforts have been exhausted, but these two options are not available, please
bury me in a green burial ground, location unimportant.”

That second option leaves Weik’s mother — Linda Williams — confused.

“The second was composed with worms? When I read it today, my first reaction
was, oh my Gosh, she composts with worms in her kitchen. I hope she doesn’t
expect me to put her in the box!” (Laughs)

Weik sees lots of unnecessary waste in conventional burial practices. Caskets
constructed from wood or metal are used for a short time and then go right into
the ground. Most graveyards require the casket be placed inside a concrete burial
vault to prevent leaking, but most eventually leak anyway. Grave markers are
often made of granite. And cemeteries are usually manicured to perfection using
fertilizer and riding lawn mowers.

Green burial advocates prefer biodegradable caskets — or just a shroud — no
burial vault, no grave markers and no landscaping. They prefer natural
surroundings.

Weik is hoping to live long enough to see a cemetery in her town go green.

So far, that’s not happened.

But one organization is working on it.

“I don’t think many people really want many aspects of conventional death care. I
think they think it’s legally required.”

That’s Joe Sehee. He’s head of the Green Burial Council.

“Most Americans do not know that you can have a funeral with a viewing without
embalming. Most don’t know that you can transport a body across state lines
without having to embalm it. Most don’t know that burial vaults can be avoided,
for example, or that you can go into the grave with a shroud or nothing at all.”

The council has been busy certifying all kinds of earth-friendly death products,
but has been slow to find graveyards willing to ban concrete burial vaults and
minimize traditional landscaping.

That leaves Amy Weik wondering if she’s going to have rely on the worms in her
compost bin to dispose of her body.

For The Environment Report, I’m Todd Melby.

Related Links

Who’s to Blame for the Dead Zone

  • It is predicted that the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of the state of Massachusetts (Photo courtesy of NASA)

About 40% of the continental U-S drains into the Mississippi River. It sends water – and pollution – from across the country into the Gulf of Mexico. A new study shows just who the worst offenders are. Gabriel Spitzer has the story:

Transcript

About 40% of the continental U-S drains into the Mississippi River. It sends water – and pollution – from across the country into the Gulf of Mexico. A new study shows just who the worst offenders are. Gabriel Spitzer has the story:

All the pollution creates a dead zone in the Gulf nearly the size of New Jersey.

Nitrogen and Phosphorus pour in and fertilize big algae blooms.

When that stuff decays, it sucks oxygen out of the water, and makes it impossible for most fish to live there.

US Geological Survey researchers say most of the problem comes from farm runoff, but the single biggest source is sewage from Chicago.

Albert Ettinger with the Environmental and Law Policy Center says Chicago water managers have to catch up with their neighbors.

“They’re gonna have to look at treatment systems which take nitrogen out of the water, and bring phosphorus down to one milligram per liter. It’s done in Milwaukee, it’s done in Cleveland, it’s done in Detroit.”

Chicago’s Metropolitan Water Reclamation District say they haven’t had a chance to look closely at the study yet, so they don’t want to comment on it.

But they don’t like being singled out.

For The Environment Report, I’m Gabriel Spitzer.

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A New Approach to Dairy Farming

  • At Hawthorne Valley Farm, calves are raised with their mothers - unlike other dairy farms (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

Some cutting edge farmers are stepping
away from concentrating on only production of
meat and milk on their farms. They’re starting
to focus on ways to give their animals healthy,
long lives. And they’re finding more benefits
than they ever imagined. Kinna Ohman reports:

Transcript

Some cutting edge farmers are stepping
away from concentrating on only production of
meat and milk on their farms. They’re starting
to focus on ways to give their animals healthy,
long lives. And they’re finding more benefits
than they ever imagined. Kinna Ohman reports:

The idea of dairy cows grazing out in a pasture is rare – even though advertisers use this
scene all the time to sell us cheese and milk.

The reality is, most dairy cows spend their lives inside big sheds. They’re pushed to produce a lot of milk. And
they often die a premature death.

(cows mooing)

So there’s something relaxing about a farm like Hawthorne Valley. Maybe it’s just
knowing places like these still exist.

The farm’s surrounded by the rolling hills of New York’s Hudson Valley. There’s a big
red barn. Cows graze out in green pastures. And this year? You’ll even see some little
calves hanging out with their mothers.

Steffen Schneider’s grinning because of those little calves. He’s the dairy farm manager
at Hawthorne Valley. He’s standing at a pasture fence. And he can’t take his eyes off the scene
in front of him.

“It’s a great sight to see a little herd of calves galloping like little kids right through
the herd and the mother looking, being very proud of their ones. This mother right
here we’re looking at Patricia, she has her eye exactly on her own baby there,
Pepper, he’s one of those guys lying right there. Yeah, it’s wonderful.”

Schneider started letting his cows bring up their calves around a year ago. But that’s
really rare in the dairy industry.

At most farms, they take calves away from their mothers within a day of being born.
That’s because farmers want to keep their cows in milk production. They don’t want to waste that
milk on the calves. That push for high milk production does take a toll on dairy cows.

Kent Anderson’s a veterinarian who works on these types of farms. He says he
understand the business needs of farmers. But he says its difficult seeing cows pushed so
hard.

“But one thing that distresses me a bit is that a normal bovine should have five, ten,
twelve, productive years. But as agriculture changes, the average dairy cow makes it
two and a half lactations, which means, she’s not even 5 years old, and she’s gone.”

Many farmers think that’s the best way to run their dairy farms.

But Steffen Schneider says he wants to balance business with the natural needs of his
animals. And letting his cows raise their calves is just one more step. He says the cows
are less stressed. And they’re seeing some great changes in the calves.

“Within a few weeks, it was amazing to watch how healthy those calves were, how
quickly they grew. They were like different animals than we were used to seeing in
our pens. And so much more awake in their senses, so much stronger limbs. Just
much more vibrant animals.”

Schneider wonders how these improvements will help the calves as they become adults.
And even how it could help the quality of their milk. But more than anything else, he just
seems amazed it took him twenty five years to take this step.

“It’s really crazy that through just greed we don’t just expose those calves to their
mothers. And think we need every single last drop of milk – forgetting the only
reason the milk even comes in is because the cow gives birth. I’m really very happy
I finally, we finally, did it.”

Only a small group of dairy farmers are letting their cows bring up their young. But they hope to show other farmers and consumers there is a way to combine business with a more natural life for their animals.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

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