The Dark Side of Valentine's Day

St. Valentine's Day is a holiday that has been celebrated all over the world for centuries, with roots in Ancient Rome and christian folklore. It is a day to commemorate love, romance, and folk traditions. It is one of the most common days for people to give and receive gifts, and unfortunately, there are ethical issues directly associated with the traditional Valentine. The good news is that there are plenty of companies that produce sustainable and ethical products for you to give to that special someone. 

Chocolate

Chocolate is made from the cacao bean (aka cocoa), which grows primarily in the tropical climates of West Africa and Latin America. Cocoa is one of the largest agricultural exports, and the West African countries of Ghana and the Ivory Coast produce about 75% of the world’s cocoa supply. With a huge worldwide demand for chocolate, companies have resorted to using child labor and slavery to produce cocoa at competitive prices for the export market. The children of West Africa live in abject poverty and many are forced to begin working at a young age to help support their family. Some end up on the cocoa farms because they need work and are told the pay is good, while other children are sold by their own relatives to traffickers or directly to the plantation owners. It has also been documented that traffickers often abduct young boys from small villages in neighboring African countries and bring them to cocoa plantations as slaves. Most of the children are 12-16 years old, but children as young as 7 have been filmed working on the plantations. The sad truth is that most of these children have never even tasted chocolate.

In recent years, organizations and journalists have exposed the widespread use of child labor and slavery in West African cocoa production. In the aftermath of these reports, the cocoa industry has become increasingly secretive, restricting access to farms and workers to ensure that their violations against social justice aren't made public. It's like some sort of chocolate mafia. There are journalists who have attempted to document these conditions on cocoa plantations in West Africa, and have never being seen or heard from again, presumed captive or dead. There have even been incidents where journalists have been detained by the governments in these countries and then jailed and deported. 

Industry leaders such as Nestle and Mars use these unethical methods to secure their cocoa supply, and their massive amounts of money and political power means that child labor and slavery will continue to be "business as usual" for cocoa production. The best thing you can do to help these children is to only buy chocolate and cocoa products from Fair Trade certified companies. The Food Empowerment Project has compiled a huge list of chocolate companies to help you make informed and equitable purchases: http://www.foodispower.org/chocolate-list/ 

Flowers

More than one-third of American adults will buy flowers on Valentine's Day, which equates to about $1.7 billion. The majority of those flowers come from Colombia and Ecuador, countries with alarming rates of substandard working conditions and child labor, especially in their flower industries.

At least 8.3% of flowers in the U.S. were cut by child laborers in Ecuador, according to the most recent data. During the school year, 80% of the workers in Ecuador's enormous flower industry are children, according to a report by the International Labour Organization. 

Two-thirds of flower workers in both countries suffer from work-related health problems like nausea, impaired vision and asthma, and sometimes even more serious issues like birth defects and miscarriages. Labor rights organizations cite the industry's use of dangerous pesticides as the reason for this. The U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project says that 20% of the pesticides are so toxic that they're either restricted or outright banned in the U.S. and Europe.

Women make up half of the flower work force, and they are often subjected to abusive conditions at plantations. Of the women interviewed by the International Labor Rights Forum, 55% said they had been subject to sexual harassment at work and 19% that they had been forced to have sex with a supervisor or coworker. This means that 5.7% of flowers you see for sale today were cut by women who have been sexually harassed, and 2.0% cut by women who were raped by a supervisor or coworker. 

When you want to get flowers for someone, the safest bet is to buy local! Most small, independent florists will know exactly where their product comes from, you just have to ask. When shopping at larger businesses, read the labels to find out where the flowers were grown and harvested. 

Have a happy, sustainable and ethical Valentine's Day and join Sustainable Initiatives for our Valentine's Day event at the Richard Oaks Multicultural Center on February 12th: https://www.facebook.com/events/370511756424895/ 

 

Governor of California Declares a Drought State of Emergency

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink! This week, Governor Brown released an official State of Emergency for California's water supply. As January comes to a close without even an inch of rainfall in the state, we are officially in a drought, folks! In fact, this drought is the worst since we started measuring our water supply, over 100 years ago. This means that water allotments must be diverted from agricultural uses to urban uses, which has a domino effect on our whole system. Rising food prices, water rationing, decreased water quality, wildfires, economic losses and food shortages are on the horizon for California, but luckily, there are things that YOU can do to help. Think about all the ways that you use water in your day to day life. Think about it much deeper than just turning the water off while brushing your teeth. What are you eating? The amount of water used to produce different foods varies greatly from product to product. How many gallons of water do you use in your daily routine? Showering, watering your plants, doing the dishes; every simple task of your day involves some amount of water. Here are some easy tips to help you conserve water:

1. Limit the length of your showers and use warm water instead of hot (heating up water actually consumes more water).
2. When using water-hungry appliances like dishwashers and washing machines, make sure that they are running at full capacity. No partial loads!
3. Eat low on the food chain. The EPA estimates that it takes about 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of beef whereas it only takes about 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. Have some whole grain pasta with veggies for dinner and skip the steak. Doing this a few times a week can dramatically lower your water usage.
4. Got plants? Instead of letting your shower water run down the drain while it's warming up, collect it and use it to quench your green friends. With some humidity-loving houseplants, you can even put them right in the shower with you!
5. Know the peak water usage hours for your area. In San Francisco, the best water usage times are before 12:00pm and after 6:00pm.
6. Take advantage of your geographic situation. Open windows to create a cross breeze and cool your apartment without the a/c. On cold days, resist the urge to crank up the heat and bundle up in your favorite sweater instead.
7. Buy clothes secondhand! The amount of water used in the textile manufacturing process is astronomical. Buying used clothes is more sustainable and uses much less water.

These are just a few of the many simple changes you can make in your day to day water usage. For more information on conserving water in California, visit http://saveourh2o.org/ a website created by the California Department of Water Resources and the Association of California Water Agencies with the goal of permanently reducing water usage in our state, whether or not we are in a drought.

Sustainability Fest is this week!

This year's Sustainability Fest is in memory of Justin Valdez, environmental studies student at SF State, who was killed on September 23, 2013. 

Sustainability Fest 2013 is Wednesday October 23rd and Thursday the 24th. The event is in partnership with groups on campus and includes environmental student organizations. Wednesday is focused on campus sustainability and Thursday is Food Day! We have several events happening each day, so check out the flyer for some fun ways to learn more about sustainability and meet our campus's environmental advocates.

Sustainable Initiatives is hosting a Food Justice Panel Discussion on Food Day. Come listen to Bryan Jersky of Healthy Planet USA, Professor of Geography Jennifer Blecha, and Lisa Roach of Real Food Challenge at SF State. Free cupcakes will be provided by Kingdom Cake! Note: the location is now in Rosa Parks D.

We hope to see you at some of our events this week!

Being a Superperson

This week I went and saw the latest, greatest, action packed, CGI, multimillion dollar superman movie: Man of Steel.  I have to say I was pretty impressed. I could practically feel my nerdy self shiver with excitement as superman flew through the sky at what seemed to be mach ten speeds (terribly forgetting the laws of physics).  One of the scenes in the movie that most stuck to me, was when Russell Crowe’s character (Superman’s Father) explains to Superman where he came from and the fate of his home planet Krypton. As Russell Crowe explains Kryptonians were once a glorious race that created and accomplished much.  But abandoned their age of exploration and slowly stripped their planet bare, ultimately resulting in the planet’s destruction and the destruction of their race.

In a bluntly overt sense, the film draws striking parallels with the real world. We have abandoned our space program; stripping NASA of its funding and absorbing it into the US air force.  We are consuming our planet’s resources and polluting the planet at alarming rates as CO2 levels are at their highest in the last 10,000 years.  We are increasingly becoming more and more obsessed with “stuff “ and consumerism. We allow targeted commercials and ads convince us we cannot be happy unless we have more “stuff “ and money. We concern ourselves not with the direction our world is veering toward, but analyze whether or not Kim Kardashian really has butt implants. We spend all day behind screens socializing with people we’ve never met in person, but don’t find it strange that when we sit next to people on buses we do so in perfect silence.

Biodiversity has dropped 50% in the last 100 years, the biggest drop since the last great extinction and we have cut down over 75% of the world’s forests.  Nevermind the slew of social problems ranging world hunger to holocausts.  In the midst of these problems we find our representatives in government (the people whose jobs are to solve these problems) in deadlock, unable to compromise or understand the other, as their positions and opinions are bought out by corporate lobbyists and greed. The truth is no law or policy will change us, only we can change us.

But what do we do?

What can one person actually do about this?

See that pale blue dot, that’s us from over 3.7 billion miles away.  All of those things I listed above that seemed so insurmountable, in fact everything that has ever happened in all of human history has happened on that small speck, in an ocean of darkness.  Looking at it it’s hard to imagine the universe and all that inhabit it are made for that one speck of blue.  Or further yet for a certain shade of one of the millions of creatures that inhabit that small speck of blue.   Our world and our problems can seem so big when only perceived through our own eyes, but in the perspective of the universe they are as insignificant as a speck of sand.

From here you have two options.

1.You can feel tiny and insignificant. You can forget everything you’ve just read and continue on with your life.  With luck you’ll find a job most likely in some corporate office, pushing papers and using your talents to make the person at the top richer and be paid yourself a small fraction of what you make for the company.  You can carry on turning your head away from the truths of our society, by constantly telling yourself "there's nothing I alone can do, I should just focus on what I need to get by" and "eventually someone will do something about."  Just don't be surprised when nothing does.

2. You can set your self a worthy goal.  Imagine if you worked not to make the rich richer but to help others and make the world a better place.  I know it sounds idyllic and nonsensical but imagine if everyone who only cared about themselves suddenly changed their outlook.  If everyone helps each other everyone wins.  You deserve more of an existence than an office job, happiness isn't found in a new car or status symbol, true happiness is found in helping others, in giving back and feeling worth.

We all have hard lives, so instead of just focusing on just getting by, help others get by and then you wont’ have to worry so much about yourself.   Everyone has the potential to do great things just as much as everyone has the potential to do horrible things.  If we align with our potential we can continue doing marvelous things (like curing cancer)

Like Gandhi once said: "Be the change you want to see in world"

So how can you make a difference? here's a start:

Volunteer: There are few better ways to find happiness and appreciate life than volunteering.  When you really see those who truly have nothing, it puts your life into perspective.

SF Environment

https://www.facebook.com/SFEnvironment?fref=ts

http://www.sfenvironment.org/events/2013-06-25

California Student Sustainability Coalition (CSSC)

http://www.sustainabilitycoalition.org/

FarmGram

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/398878806/farmgram-locally-crafted-mealbox-delivery

Earth911

http://earth911.com/

Project Open Hand

http://www.openhand.org/join-us/volunteer/

St. Anthony's Foundation

http://www.stanthonysf.org/?q=volunteer/volunteer-program

Read the news: Knowing what's going on in the world couldn't be more important. In America our news stations stay away from things going on elsewhere in the world.  There is more going on in the world then just us, and reading the news is a way to stay better connected to others.

My Personal Favorite is  https://www.google.com/news?vanilla=1

Reading the news I know can sometimes be boring, if you are the type of person who bores easy or just likes to laugh you might like the The Daily Show or The Colbert Report

Advocate sustainability

In the world of Capitalism, talks about sustaining our planet fall wayside to talks of profit and high yields.  If we continue down this path we will undoubtedly face bigger problems in the future.  Making a sustainable world for future generations isn’t just a choice, it’s a necessity.

SF State has a ton of sustainably and environmentally conscious programs:

To read about each one click the links below:

The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF)

Sustainable Initiatives

Real Food Challenge

Eco Students

Fossil Free SFSU

CALPRIG

Enjoy life With the average work week increasing along with the average retirement age we are working more than ever before.  With that we don’t spend as much time doing what we want to do whether that be spending time with family, playing or singing to music, or just enjoying the gift of life.  Find time in your day to day just to have fun.

I feel like this quote applies well: “The most dangerous risk of all – The risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later”

Fun reads and Views

7 Steps to Happiness Dalai Lama

10 Sentence That will Change Your Life

A Universe Not Made For Us Carl Sagan

From Nightmares to Day Dreams

 I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." - Martin Luther King

This speech delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters on August 28th 1963 became a calling card for a massive civil rights movement.  What may seem shocking is that King's prepared speech never included the words "I have a dream" and was largely a negative outlook of the segregated America of the time.  The dream part of King's speech is largely considered improvised on the spot and is  possibly prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry: "Tell them about the dream."

So what if King never spoke about his dream and only spoke of the nightmares of the time?  Without the vision and hope King instilled with those 4 famous words it can be questionable whether the civil rights movement would have succeeded in changing public policy or at the very least prolonged it's success.

If you're an avid reader of this blog you may be asking, what in the world does this have to do with the environment?  One of the largest critiques of the environmentalist movement is the doomsday esk rhetoric spoken by a majority of it's contributors.   There are major systematic problems in our society including (but not limited to) corporate influence on policy and the electoral process, dangers of unregulated capitalism, western culture's obsession with stuff and it's relation to the exploitation of developing countries, the dangers that nationalism imposes on  equality and universal cultural acceptance, and the continued development of nuclear and biological weapons that not only pose a threat to our continued existence but to the future of the planet.  As famous physicist and environmentalist Carl Sagan once said "The trap door beneath our feet swings open and we find ourselves in bottomless free fall."

Our world is in need of great people like Martin Luther King Jr to make the unpopular stands, to stand up for liberty and inspire millions to follow in their footsteps.  But preaching about nightmares is not the  way to do it.  How can we possibly expect people to start caring about the world around them when most of them have enough troubles in just getting by?

Instead of talking about all the things that plague are world and how we aren't doing enough, lets talk about our dreams of a better world.  Let's craft actual solutions to real world problems.  Imagine a world in which we didn't define ourselves by our different colors, cultures or opinions but instead focused on the sometimes forgotten fact that we are all human beings and inhabitants of Earth.  Think of what we could achieve, what we could become!

So I ask you, what's your dream?

The Case for Safer Phones

We all know someone who has a cracked screen, and some of us have broken phones ourselves.

People will spend hundreds of dollars fixing their broken phones or buying cases that protect our phones-- but what about a case for us?

Last Wednesday, the Environmental Health Trust came to our campus to discuss the impacts of cell phone radiation on our bodies and brains. President of EHT, Devra Davis, pleaded that the audience come to City Hall the following day to talk to our District Representatives and explain the importance of having warning labels on the front of our cell phone packaging.

Currently the manufacturers have a page deep within the phone's "Settings" that explains how people should handle their phones. 

Quote from iPhone 4 Legal RF Exposure page

To get to this page on your iPhone, you have to go to Settings --> General --> About --> Legal --> RF Exposure. It takes five different pages before a person can actually access the information that tells you that your phone exposes you to radiation. Additionally, it is impossible to actually copy and paste the information from this page. 

Many of us feel uncomfortable without our phones-- we release dopamine whenever we receive notifications, and get grumpy or upset when we don't have our phones on us.

But before you stick your phone in your pocket for the next twenty four hours, think about this:

A cellphone is essentially a microwave that you're putting up to your body every time you use it. Cellphones are constantly seeking a signal-- half of the waves that are emitted from the towers to your phone will travel through your body to get to your phone. 

The radiation that comes from cell phones was never actually tested before; people are now finding that it damages and unravels DNA with the free radical byproducts. Damaging our DNA also means that the cells that build the DNA will be mutated-- leading to cancer or other problems. 

Guys that leave their phones directly against them in their pockets can harm their potential for fertility, and ladies that stick their phones in their bra can cause breast cancer. ALL of us that constantly put phones to our ears multiply our chances of brain cancer by six times.

Don't freak out though! We still can help fight against this by:

                                   Devra Davis presents ways to help reduce radiation intake

BE SMART WHEN YOU USE YOUR SMART PHONE!

Environmental Student Activism: Panel Discussion

Have you heard of the Divestment campaign? The Green Initaitive Fund? The Real Food Challenge? Did you know SF State has a campus garden?

If you have of if you haven't, find out more at our Environmental Student Activism panel discussion, next Monday, April 15th! The event will be held in Rosa Parks A&B (in Cesar Chavez Student Center) from 2-4pm.

Find out what great initiatives fellow students at SF State are working on and what it means to be an activist on campus!

Our Panelists:

• Sharon Daraphonhdeth with "Why Student Activism is Important to the Success of Campus Campaigns"
• Lisa Roach and Tyler Wescott with and update on the Real Food Challenge and our campus community garden
• Nick Cicchetti with "Divestment/Fossil Free SFSU" 

and guest speaker, Environmental Studies professor, Glenn Fieldman.

We hope to see you there!