What type of Christmas tree should I buy?

   It may have occured to you that growing a tree specifically to cut it down might be just a little bit wasteful. They're like any other crop, only they take many years to "ripen." On the other hand, plastic Christmas trees are, well, plastic. We're meant to be producing as little of that as possible, right? Petroleum is bad and so on? Can you even recycle a fake Christmas tree?
   These are kind of an odd questions to tackle, but with all the extra consumption going on around the holidays it's important to at least try to work them out. Fake trees are made from a plastic that cannot be recycled; their only pro is that you could potentially keep using them for the next few hundred Christmases, but in actuality people only keep them for an average of six. Real trees that are cut down have the pro of being compostable, but since they are grown in monocultures, that is large tracts of land devoted to, only one crop, they tend to guzzle a lot of pesticides and other resources and degrade the land as they grow. They do sell organic cut trees, which are an excellent option, though in my experience they're about twice as expensive.

   There is a fourth option, the one I went with this year. Just buy a living tree! When the holidays are up you can either plant it or keep it in the pot for next year. If you use it for more than two Christmases, it will be saving you money. And as a bonus, you'll never again have to deal with messy needles falling all over the place as your tree withers away before you. It's a win-win!

  Anyway, here are a couple more quick tips for lowering your impact this holiday season:

•  Buy reusable decorations. Apparently, roughly two thirds of American household buy new decorations each year! That's over $7.5 billion spent and tons of waste produced. 
• Buy greeting cards that are made from recycled material. This could make a bigger difference than you make think as statistically Americans send two billion holiday cards a year. 
• Try to get presents with little or no packaging, and rather than wrapping them in paper present them in a reusable bag or basket. Americans produce an extra two billion pounds of garbage per week over the holidays, and most of it is wrapping paper. With a little care we can easily get that number down.

 That's all folks.  Happy holidays!

Campus Sustainability Member of the Semester

Do you love the environment? Do you care about sustainability and social justice? Are you an active community member on and of campus?The Cesar Chavez Student Center invites you to participate in our sustainable community member of the semester award! We want to hear what you are doing on and off campus to help achieve more sustainability. 

Top applicants will be entered in a drawing to win a $300 gift certificate to the SFSU bookstore! To apply fill out our questionnaire here and email it to sustainability@sfsustudentcenter.com. The deadline to submit is Wednesday, December 12th at 12:00pm. 

Questions? Email us at sustainability@sfsustudentcenter.com

Bottled Water

In the 1970s, ironically the same decade which marks the environmental movement, bottled water made its debut. Since this time, bottled water sales have exponentially grown, and are continuing to do so. In a matter of three decades, Americans have managed to inflate their consumption from zero to 50 billion plastic water bottles (as of 2006). With any product consumed at such a large rate, it is important to ask yourself whether the product is doing more harm or more good. I found an article by Charles Fishman that does a great job of weighing out the costs and benefits of bottled water. All of my facts were derived from this article (see link at the bottom).

First off, let’s consider the cost of bottled water. Before the bottled water boom, water was always considered a free resource, and in some countries, a luxury. So why do so many people pay a dollar for this free resource? As Americans have become increasingly busier with work, school and extracurricular activities, bottled water has gained popularity due to the convenience factor. But what are we really paying for? Half of the price of a water bottle goes to the retailer, a third to distribute and transport, and only 12-15 cents for the actual water. In the article, Fishman put the price we pay into perspective, referring to a $1.35 bottle of Evian.

“In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite

National Park. It's so good the EPA doesn't require San Francisco to

filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that

bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco

tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the

water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our

monthly water bills would run $9,000.”

It is clear that we are significantly overpaying for water, but how is the quality of this water? I think this is one of the biggest myths of bottled water which has made many people almost scared to use water from tap. The two largest companies selling bottled water, Pepsi and Coke, together account for 24% of the bottled water sold. These two companies both implement similar practices; with bottling stations throughout the United States, Pepsi and Coke fill their bottles with tap water, purified by reverse osmosis. Coke and Pepsi are putting perfectly drinkable tap water through a process which consumes great amounts of energy just to be able to put on their label that the water has been purified. Even though our tap water is of exceptional quality, other companies import water from outside of the country. Fiji, for example, uses its out-of-country origin to market as luxurious bottled water to its consumers. Ironically, more than half of the citizens in Fiji do not have access to safe drinking water.

The example of Fiji brings up another problem with bottled water. Not only is bottled water pricey and not necessarily any better for you than tap, it also travels great distances to reach you. First, the plastic for the water must first be sent to where it is bottled, in this case Fiji. The bottles are then filled and sent back to their destination in the United States.  As the Fiji factory produces over one million bottles a day, transporting the heavy bottles imposes a significant impact.

Not only transportation affects the environment. The material that the water is delivered in also poses a major threat to the environment. Though the plastic used is made of a material that can be recycled, this is not always the case. As of 2006, only 23% of the plastic used was recycled, leaving 38 billion bottles in landfills for the year. Fishman states that in 2006 the amount of plastic bottles used in the United States came out to 167/person.

Considering all the information in this article, it is extremely important to start cutting our dependence on plastic water bottles. The Cesar Chavez Student Center has water bottle refill stations on the top floor and on the main level adjacent to the seating area. Start bringing your own reusable water bottles to school! It is a great way to reduce your environmental footprint and help our campus reach zero waste. 

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=environmental+impact+of+plastic+water+bottles&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5

Bioneers!

Last weekend a few of us Environmental Studies got free tickets to the renowned Bioneers Conference, courtesy of our lovely school! The conference was comprised of influential speakers from environmental and social justice movements all over the world. The mood was distinctly directed toward rejuvenation. It wasn't just about hearing news and learning technical information. It was about convening with like-minded, like-valued people who you could connect with professionally and emotionally.  It was so inspirational for me to hear such a diversity of people with such immense experience share their deepest concerns and hopes with us. There was much that I took away from the conference, but I think these principles pretty much sum it all up:

1. Turn to nature for inspiration and guidance (for example, nature allows no waste).
2. Exposure to diversity will lend you perspective and adaptability; be willing to collaborate with anyone.
3. Empathize with and preserve the rights and dignity of all that lives.
4. Health of body, health of mind, and health of environment are all interrelated.
5. Life, including your own, is reproductive and regenerative of itself.
6. Realize that the current status quo is in its infancy, and that it is in drastic opposition to most what preceded it.
7. Study and have respect for the values, wisdom, and ecological knowledge, our ancestors developed in ages past.
8. Bring global ideals to local arenas; generally speaking, no good is universal.
9. Understand that each problem has ten thousand causes and ten thousand victims - it takes cooperation and integration across disciplines and movements to aid them all.
10. Don't blame yourself for what this world has done to you, and be compassionate for what the world has done to others.
11. Nature is within us, and if we are unjust to nature (or even to each other) it is because we have been alienated from it; alienation causes suffering within the self.
12. Know that change is coming; all the innovation and determination we could possibly need is already out there.

 During the course of it all, I wrote down many quotes from my favorite speakers (they're well worth looking up: Bill McKibben, Fletcher Harper, Gabor Mate whose books I bought...) but the most eloquent and on point was probably Marina Silva, an associate of the late Chico Mendes (you may have seen her carrying the Olympic flag in London this past summer). I think this motley pile of her poignant words describes the direction of twenty-first century activism very aptly: "If the current model cannot be universalized, it cannot be defended ethically... This is a type of activism that is at the altar of the self... It is a leadership that is multicentric... People no longer want to be spectators of politics; they want to be the protagonists." I for one certainly feel this way, especially after the conference. How about you?

Campus Sustainability Day

Thanks to everyone who participated in Campus Sustainability Day! It was a great success and we are so happy that we were able to work with such great people and to meet new people while promoting sustainability efforts here on campus!

We hope you had a great day. Please keep updated on upcoming events by following us on our blog and Facebook.

Check out GREEN SFSU's Facebook for more AWESOME pictures from the day!

More oil rigs doesn't mean cheaper gas.

Gas prices are of concern to everyone, especially  with an election coming up, and there are  lot of people who would have you think Obama isn't doing enough to help the U.S. oil industry and get those prices down.  Those same people want more pipelines, including the much discussed Keystone XL.  But actually foreign oil imports have fallen since Obama came into office, and, more importantly, studies show that more wells don't mean cheaper gas at all!

Unsure about climate change?

Recently, the Bay Area's own Berkeley Lab completed the most comprehensive study of climate change to date.  Using 1.6 billion reports, they have pieced together a global temperature record dating back 250 years, which is a hundred years more than any other study.  What they have found is that "rise in average world land temperature globe is approximately 1.5 degrees C in the past 250 years, and about 0.9 degrees in the past 50 years."  Here's what that looks like:

The cause?  Their study proves that humans and volcanoes are the definite causes of all this temperature variation.  After taking into consideration everything from urban heat islands to solar variation, poor station quality to the effects of the Gulf Stream, the impact of our greenhouse gases has been shown to be undeniable.  If you need more proof, check out data, summaries, graphs, and results by location here on their fascinating website.  

Pens vs Pencils

Pens vs Pencils? What's more eco-friendly?

The most difficult thing about this question, is there still really isn't a clear answer. I have been reading on this subject and most arguments are left, well, as arguments. Immediately I wanted to say mechanical pencils, because once you run out of lead you just simply refill it. However, it takes plastic and chemicals to make the mechanical pencil, which means much more energy is used. For instance, many low cost mechanical pencils (generally the ones that come in a 20-something pack) are made out of polystyrene. Polystyrene uses up a lot of petroleum which means it uses up a lot of energy and releases some pretty harmful things into our planet. Unless your purchasing mechanical pencils that are made from recycled materials, than it might be worth it. This is the same case for pens. Pens are made of plastic and chemical inks and I am sure most people throw out their pens after the ink runs out as oppose to recycling it or re-filling. But pencils on the other hand, aren't that great either. Though it takes less energy to produce pencils since they are made out of raw materials, there are some cons. Pencils are made of wood, usually from Cedar trees, and graphite. So, trees must be deforested to supply some pencils. Though pencils are able to break down and decompose, one must be weary where the wood used to make the pencil came from.

The good news is that I am not the only one who has asked this question and there are a lot of options for fans of all writing circles. Many bookstores, including ours here at SFSU, sells pens and pencils made from recycled materials. For now, I think the best option we have is to purchase pens and pencils that are made from recycled plastics or wood. Let me know what you think! Pens or Pencils?

CCSC Waste Survey

In a recent survey conducted by Sustainable Initiatives, we found that many students on campus believe a switch to compostable packaging would make throwing away their waste a lot easier. Students also stressed a strong interest in wanting more information and help on how to properly use each bin.

 When students were asked what they normally throw away into the landfill trash bins, we found that many are throwing items in the landfill that can be easily recyclable and compostable.

This is a huge issue on campus and Sustainable Initiatives is working on addressing it accordingly. It is important for us to hear what the students have to say and what they would like to see differently.  We currently are looking towards all compostable packaging from all vendors and new improved signs. Thank you to all who participated in the survey and a special thanks to the Shu, Alyssa, and Kelsey who helped conduct the survey!

Welcome Rongxian!

I am delighted to welcome our new student intern, Rongxian to our team! Rongxian is a foreign exchange student from China, majoring in Environmental Studies with an emphasis on Urban Studies! He will be helping Sustainable Initiatives this summer achieve our current goals! Thank you Rongxian! We are happy to have you!