Share & Voice: Halloween...not so fun...

With Halloween just around the corner, I'm sure we're all ready to get a little festive.  I love the decorations, the candy, and of course the costumes.  One thing I always am looking forward to are the arts & crafts and yummy halloween treats you can make at home. 

One thing I was going to do for all my little dancers that I teach was make some yummy Halloween Cookie/Cupcake sort of thing.  One of the things it required was something called "orange coloring mist."

So I went to Michaels and found this orange coloring mist and was excited to spend my night making these fun things for my students. I was just about to put the finishing touches of mist on the halloween treats & just happened to look at the ingredients....

My jaw dropped...Ethanol was the number one ingredient.  Next up arsenic.  And the list kept coming!  What the hell was I doing?!  Why would anyone produce something that people ingest containing all these chemicals?  Those things went straight in the garbage and I'm never not checking the ingredients of things again.  Never would I ever want to put that sort of mixture into my students.  There is the proof that we are killing our children...the next generation.

Read 'n' Seed 3: Second Quarter of Trash Talk

I read part three of this book.  It included pages 151-176.  


Part three included sections on: trees, magazines, books, and other paper products.  


The most effective thing someone could do for our planet...plant a tree.  Plant life is the one thing that allows us to survive here on earth and is helping to absorb the "bad" things such as air pollution and fossil fuels.  We can continue to save trees by using our laptops, flash drives, and the new E-books that are available to us online.  With our new technologies we are able to go paper free.  
Many of us are very on top of our recycling habits.  At school and other offices we need to continue this support.  For every ton of paper that we take out, is saving over 380 gallons of petroleum.  We must continue ways to reduce consumption and begin reusing as much paper products as possible.  
One ton of magazine paper uses only 7.68 trees.  We can make efforts in various ways to reuse book and magazines before they're recycled or write to editors to begin creating online subscriptions.  Newspapers on the other hand use of 247,000 acres of forest to meet the demands of consumers.   Again, it's common knowledge to recycle these products.  Producing from recycled paper uses 30-35% less energy and generates 95% less air pollution than making paper from trees.  


So in the end...Reuse Reuse Reuse...paper can be used as many different things before being put into the recycle bin.  Be creative and continue with your recycling habits.  :)

Eye Opener: CSPI

The eating green tour had lots of good facts.  I focused on reading more about the animals.  The cattle has a small lifespan.  They are being be as much "special" grain which causes them health problems & the cattle is producing more fat & so when we eat that meat, we also are intaking that excess fat.  They're brought to the slaughter house where millions are killed each year.  In general, the overall cleanliness of these animals & how they're taken care of is very dirty, wasteful, and causing more problems than we think.


I enjoyed the eating green calculator.  I went off of my last weeks eating habits (which weren't too good or healthy.)  I was pretty disgusted in how much manure was produced by the animals I eat.  I definitely was not expecting that information to be included.  But talking about waste/garbage, manure is a whole other factor of waste we have not really considered how to dispose of.  I think how much chicken/meat I eat a year might have been more effective of the burden it's causing...


Uh-oh!  I need help with my eating green score.  Whether it's my overall nutrition, environment, or animal wellfare that needs work i'm not sure.  I just didn't score so well.  I think again we can just relate it back to making sure we are used locally grown foods from local farmers & just being more aware of who and where the food we're eating is coming from.