Pollution, Poverty, and People of Color

One of the biggest environmental justice issues is the interconnectedness between pollution, poverty, and people of color. Too often, the victims of pollution are those already marginalized in mainstream society by class or race and those with fewer voices to fight with. But even with the difficulties facing them, some communities managed to win against the big corporations and industries polluting their water, air, and land. This past June, the Environmental Health Network launched a special news series highlighting the environmental justice issues facing seven different communities across the United States. Check out the articles!

Day 1: The Factory on the Hill. The people of Richmond, CA live within a ring of five oil refineries, three chemical plants, eight Superfund sites, dozens of other toxic waste sites, highways, two rail yards, ports and marine terminals.

Day 2: 'We are Richmond.' A beleaguered community earns multicultural clout. Richmond's jumble of smokestacks and storage tanks overlooking a port is one of the most industry-dense areas in the San Francisco Bay Area - and one of the poorest and most beleaguered.

Day 3: Stress + pollution = health risks for low-income kids. Facing financial strain, racial tension and high crime rates can wear down immunity and disrupt hormones, making kids more vulnerable to everything around them, including the lead in their yards and the car exhaust in their neighborhood.

Day 4: No beba el agua. Don't drink the water. “They think it’s normal not to drink water from your tap, that it’s normal to have to go buy bottled water. Part of our job is telling people, ‘This is not normal,’ ” said Susana De Anda, co-founder of the Community Water Center.

Day 5: Sacred water, new mine: A Michigan tribe battles a global corporation. The Keweenaw Bay Indians are fighting for their clean water, sacred sites and traditional way of life as Kennecott Eagle Minerals inches towards copper and nickel extraction, scheduled to begin in 2014.

Day 6: Dirty soil and diabetes: Anniston's toxic legacy. As a cleanup of West Anniston stretches into its eighth year, new research has linked PCBs exposure to a high rate of diabetes in this community of about 4,000 people, nearly all African American and half living in poverty. Even today, people there are among the most highly contaminated in the world.

Day 7: Falling into the 'climate gap'. Climate change is adding a new dimension to the three-decades-old environmental justice movement as researchers and activists focus on the inequities of the impacts. The rich can turn up air conditioners, move to higher ground, get bailed out by insurance. The poor and minorities are left – as with other environmental injustices – to cope as best they can.

Day 8: Asthma and the inner city: East St. Louis children struggle with life-threatening disease. What is it about this city, and other poor, African American cities, that leaves children with a disproportionate burden of respiratory disease? Is it the factories? The traffic exhaust? The substandard housing? Medical experts have struggled to unravel the mysterious connections between inner-city life and asthma, and they suspect they know the answer: All of the above.

Day 9A: Birth of the movement: "People have to stand up for what is right." A Q&A with two environmental justice pioneers. Just before the 30th anniversary of the protests against a toxic waste landfill at Warren County, North Carolina, Ferruccio and Ramey talk with EHN about their days as pioneers in the environmental justice movement.

Day 9B: Opinion Essay by Bullard: Much of America has wrong complexion for protection. In commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Warren County protests, we cannot celebrate too long because the “NIMBY” (not in my back yard) practice continues to be replaced with the “PIBBY” (place in blacks’ back yards) principle.

Day 10A: Opinion: Fighting environmental racism in the name of charity and justice . The “have not’s” or “have nothings” of the world often get blamed for their poverty as a moral failing on their own part. But perhaps the “haves” are the ones whose hardness of heart is the true moral failure because they don't act upon environmental inequity and destruction.

Day 10B: Opinion: Environmental policies must tackle social inequities. Even today, 30 years after residents of a poor, rural, predominantly African American county in North Carolina tried to block a hazardous waste landfill, the burden of proof still is placed on communities to demonstrate hazards and push for action. This needs to change. Social equity concerns should be incorporated into environmental policies and regulation.

Jame Oliver: Teach every child about food

This is one of my favorite TED talks. It's SO, SO important to teach kids now where their food comes from, especially with supermarkets everywhere and agriculture becoming less and less a tangible idea for kids growing up in the cities. It's not just about the feel-good urban agriculture of community gardens or farmers market, it's about knowing what goes into growing food and learning how to be self sufficient. If this generation of kids can't tell what the basic vegetable names are, society has a pretty huge problem on their hands once the current generation of farmers are gone. Everyone's gotta eat and someone has to grow the food.

Rough Guide to Community Energy

Rough Guides, a world travel guidebook company, and M&S has recently come out with a free book on community energy. This book, Rough Guide to Community Energy, brings together resources and advice about creating sustainability in local communities through citizen action.

It's often been said that individual action is too small to make a difference and government action is too slow to change anything, but communities are the right scale to get the movement going. For anyone who's interested in starting a community group to tackle climate change or solar energy, but doesn't know where to start, this book provides a lot of cool case studies from the UK and many a practical advice on getting a project off the ground. The guide only covers energy issues and only draws from successful models from one geographic region, so there's a lot more out there that's possible, but it's a good starting point.

The book is available for download free on the website here.

International Permaculture Day Celebrations

May 6 is International Permaculture Day! It's a day to celebrate sustainable, productive, and self-reliant households and communities. Check out the Australian and international events here.



For Melbournians, here's a local Permaculture Day event.

Sunday 6 May, Permaculture Celebration at Fairfield Community Garden

Time: 10am to 4pm

Address: 1 Hamilton St., Fairfield, Vic, (behind Interactive Learning Centre)

Come and join the celebration of Permaculture Day at Fairfield Community Garden!

-10:15am Weeding and mulching the paths
-11:00am Autumn Leaf Harvest (also a TD event)

Other highlights
- Gardening workshops
- Child's play area
- Book corner
- Sustainable finger food ( 12.30 to 2pm , by donation)
- Talks on sustainability
- Music and much more!

Please bring your picnic rug, food, cups, plates, cutlery, garden tools or skills to share and enjoy a day out in the garden!

Entry: $5 or by donation

Finally, the day of our permablitz!

Saturday 21 April was our very own permablitz at the rental property I share with my 4 other housemates in Preston. The weather was very cooperative! It started out a cold misty morning when the delivery truck came by with our 4 cubic meters of mushroom compost and mulch, but soon the sun came out for a very nice day. Volunteers started rolling in around 10am and started straight to work digging the fence for the chicken run and weeding the marrow by the peach tree. There were fewer people than we expected, but that turned out to be exactly the number we needed to get the job done.

Before: the back yard

Before: the back yard

Before: the back yard

Before: the front yard
After opening circle and a round of stretches lead by Pat, we split up into the morning workshops. Phuong spoke about the importance of ponds and got several volunteers to help dig out the pond. Pat facilitated the finishing details on the chicken coop (the bulk of which was built the previous weekend), such as sanding down, painting on several layers of paint, and adding on the roofing. Moz worked on the chicken run fence with Hans and Freddy the majority of the day, digging in the chicken wire to prevent foxes and securing the fence posts. I managed the laying down of wet cardboard over the grass for our no-dig technique on the veggie patch. It took a lot more cardboard than we expected to cover the entire backyard! We actually had to make several extra trips to the supermarket recycling bin for cardboard (luckily it's close by).

Stretching during opening circle

Weeding the marrow

Digging the pond

Painting the chicken coop

Digging out the fence

Putting in the chicken run fence

Pond
Lunch was a delicious vegan serving of potato salad, dahl, chickpea curry, and rice cooked by Pat. It was an excellent opportunity for everyone to network and get to know one another. There were a few people who were involved with the transition town movement, and I got to learn a bit about how they operate. I'd love to get involved with Transition Darebin in the future - the grassroots nature of transition towns is really appealing.

Cardboard, dirt, and the beginnings of the veggie patch

A long row of bikes on our front porch

Our veggie patch before planting
After lunch, we continued to work on the veggie patch, wheelbarrowing mushroom compost from the front to the back. We were initially worried that we wouldn't have wheelbarrows to carry the compost, but our callout for tools was readily answered by our volunteers, who all seemed to bring a shovel or other handy tools. Indeed, some dedicated few even brought everything on their bike trailers. Our house setup made it easy to have two wheelbarrows going at once and soon the entire backyard was covered in mushroom compost. Chamali and I used string to measure out a circle for the bike-wheel design veggie patch and soon volunteers were planting seeds and seedlings.

Planting!

The chicken fence was finished quite early so the rest of the volunteers soon moved on to building the composting toliet. Some measuring, pounding, and many a toilet joke later, our simple little composting toilet was finished.

Composting toilet workshop
Everyone was so efficient with the work that we had our finishing cake and tea before 3pm. Vegan chocolate cake and fruit after a long day of gardening was very welcome. Some volunteers stayed on to help with the front yard. We used the same no-dig technique out there with cardboard and mulch to suppress the grass, and soon the natives were all planted. The volunteers even dug out the concrete border and hauled it to the back, where we turned it into a nice little border around the laundry line.

Group photo!
All in all, I'm really happy with what we got accomplished. It took a lot of work in organizing, planning, and managing, but it was worth it. Permablitzes generally take place on land that the host owns because let's face it, gardening takes a LOT of time, energy, and money. So there aren't very many permablitzes that occur on rental properties. But I think that it's important to show what can be done on rental properties. With a little ingenuity about where you get materials, you can do a lot. Even if we don't end up staying at this house, having a garden will increase the value of the land and add to the urban ecosystem. So now comes the fun part of watching our garden grow!

How far are you willing to go for local food?

Another long break between posts! I'm in Auckland, New Zealand at the moment, staying with my housemate's family while I organize my student visa. The landscape is beautiful here and I've greatly enjoyed the hikes and walks around the Waitatere ranges.

Last weekend, we went out grocery shopping. There's a deal at New Worlds supermarket where you spend $200+ and get a 30 cent discount on gas. They managed to spend $235. Then, we head to this farmers' market in the city and bought some more eggs, cupcakes (which were quite yummy), and veggies. I figure okay, this is a good amount of food. But we're not done! 2 more stops at another farmers' market and a wholesake bakery (to get a week's worth of dessert it seems), back home to unload everything, and then to a farmers' market 40 min drive away to get veggies picked that day. There was SO much food and it was just for the 4 of us.

After having been here for a week and half, I've definitely noticed that they buy WAY WAY more food than they could ever possibly eat in a week. A good amount goes to waste or as they put it, if it's not good, just chuck it out and grab the next one because we have so many. As much as I think their intentions for environmentalism are sincere, I think they go about it in the wrong way. There's nothing wrong with stocking up, but one must take into account how much one can actually eat so that food doesn't go to waste. It'd save a lot of money as well, since they would actually just buy what's necessary instead of overcompensating.

The dilemma of local food versus how far you're willing to get said food is also highlighted here. Obviously driving out 40 min each way to buy groceries is not something you want to be doing each day. But eating freshly picked vegetables, picked THAT morning in fact, is appealing, and there are numerous other benefits to farmers' markets (getting to know your farmers, social interaction). The family is recognized by all the farmers and they exchange pleasant conversation at every stop. Weighing the pros and cons of such decisions ultimately pins different aspects of sustainability against each other - carbon footprint and time management of driving long distances, eating locally, farmer community. I don't think there's necessarily one right answer, but it helps to look at every angle and decide what each factor is worth to you.

Green travels to developing countries

Season's greetings, all! I was traveling abroad in Malaysia and Singapore for a few weeks this December. It was a wonderful trip and I loved being there. Southeast Asia is culturally similar to East Asia in many ways, but there were refreshing differences, such as the interesting mixing of Malay, Chinese, and Indian influences in the region. The food especially was amazing - I couldn't stop eating the street food, it was too delicious! That brings me to my next point - waste.

Street food in Asia used to consist of using reusable containers (glass jars for water while traveling, plastic containers for food) or compostable newspaper to wrap food with. What could be reused was and what left was thrown away, but because the material was compostable, there was little environmental impact. But with the rise of convenient and throwaway plastic bags and containers, the same habits of throwing things away created huge trash issues. During my travels in Malaysia and my past trips to China and India, I observed so many rivers clogged up with trash, city streets littered with plastic bags and bottles, and land covered with huge piles of waste.



Trash casually thrown away - my grandfather's hometown village in Guangxi province, China

At one point during my travels in China, my friend and I got so fed up with the constant plastic bagging of our street food that we decided to start reusing the old bags and chopsticks. Sometimes the hawker stall vendors would insist on giving us new bags or chopsticks. But eventually we got our way. It's a small victory to prevent one plastic bag or a pair of chopsticks from being thrown into the streets, but I hope that it gets people thinking about what they can do to prevent the waste from piling up.

Traveling to developing countries does make me realize how complicated the rise to first world status is. Environmental impact is just about the last thing the government will be thinking about when economic productivity is on the line. But I think that environmental sustainability is key to achieving first world status and it is not a luxury only to be obtained once economic success is had. Without sustainable foundations, society will be very unstable. I don't have any quick and easy answers to how to maintain that goal, especially when there are many other pressing problems to address in developing countries. But I do think that having that solid foundation will help ease the tension in the other areas.

Translations of sustainable living brochures

I just found something really cool - Environment Victoria in conjunction with their Sustainability for Diverse Communities Resource Hub has provided translations of various sustainable living brochures. They're all available here. The translations were done by different organizations so the topics vary from climate change to water to chemicals to gardening and food. I think it's a great idea to have this information for different communities in different languages, especially considering how multicultural and diverse communities can be. Hopefully once people get access to this information, they can act on it.

Greywater guidelines

In a continent where water scarcity is a common phenomenon, Australia's been taking a lot of steps towards more efficient water usage. During the last ten year drought, strict guidelines were set up for activities such as watering gardens and washing cars, limiting how often and what kind of water could be used. Water saving flushing toilets are standard, as are signs on showers in commercial accommodation suggesting a 4 min or less shower for guests.

This attitude towards water also includes using greywater, which is pretty much recycling water that's already been used, such as shower water, rainwater, and sink tap water. There's some microbial risk from reusing such water (which will be the focus of my upcoming PhD, incidentally), but in general, good water filtration and treatment methods can reduce the risk to acceptable levels. Some examples of filtration systems can be found here from Minnesota Public Radio, which includes septic tanks and concentrated wetlands.

A useful set of guidelines was recently issued from the Australian Clearwater organization on the best ways to harvest and store stormwater (ie run-off from drains or creeks) and roofwater (ie rainwater). These stormwater harvesting guidelines describe how to go about setting up the greywater collecting project, including what kind of roof characteristics to look out for to avoid contamination, types of rainwater tanks and piping to use, and monitoring/maintenance of the project. This might be useful for those interested in using greywater for non-drinking purposes. Other guideline publications from Clearwater can be found here.

What's important though is changing public perception. Many people still have much aversion towards using treated greywater, despite the fact that the microbial risk in the treated greywater can actually be LOWER than the risk in regular tap water. Using greywater is going to become more and more necessary around the world with climate change, but especially in Australia since the continent is already so water vulnerable. So the more the public can understand the process, the better off they'll be.

Boris Pelcer's Environmental Awareness Illustrations

I just came across Boris Pelcer's ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS © illustrations.



They're a series of illustrations based on the artist's childhood experience as a war refugee from Bosnia & Herzegovina living in Peć, Kosovo | Serbia from 1992 to 1998. Here's the artist's description:

Can you imagine our planet & our way of life in fifty of hundred years from now? Consider this. We live in a profit-driven economy. Great number of decisions are made with this question in mind: "What will bring us the most money?" Those decisions do not consider what is the best for the planet, but what is best for the economy financially. This series of work is to make you realize the quality of life we would create for our children & grandchildren if no action is taken. The problem seems too big to feel as though our efforts will make a difference, so most of us don't even try. However, as long as we put in any kind of effort with patience & persistence, we are doing exactly what we need to be doing to make a difference.

I found the illustrations very powerful - they really capture the despair and wretchedness that comes from living in a place environmentally torn, especially with children as the focal point of the illustrations. It brings the viewer from their comfort zone and forces them to realize what they take for granted, like fresh unpolluted air and enough food to eat. Art can provide ways to imagine the unimaginable and provoke discussion about issues that matter, so just wanted to share these illustrations with you.

Biking and living one's value system

I just finished changing a flat tire on my bike. It's my 4th flat tire in 2.5 months and I'm certainly not getting any faster at changing out the punctured inner tube. It still takes me around 1 hour if I'm lucky to get it all done. Add in the stress of figuring out how to get home on a flat and obtaining new inner tubes and you get a whole lot of frustration. It's days like these I ask myself, why do I put up with this?

Every time it happens, I recall a story an environmental studies professor at Wellesley once told us. She was asked to speak at a conference in Portland, Oregon and the conference hosts had arranged for a taxi to pick her up from the airport. But instead of taking the taxi service, my professor voluntarily looked up the public transport from the airport to her hotel and the conference site. The reason was because taking public transport in lieu of the more carbon footprint heavy taxi was more in-line with her value system as an environmentalist. If one really wants to be true to one's values, one's actions must reflect that.

Ever since I heard that story, I've been inspired to really put my actions where my words are. My decision to become vegetarian, bike to work and school, and buy more environmentally friendly products came from that. It hasn't been easy. My friends have to accommodate my dietary needs every time we have get togethers; it takes me an hour to commute to school each way and it rains a lot in Melbourne; and organic goods tend to be more expensive. But I feel despite all that, I am being true to what I believe.

There are a lot of pluses, of course. Biking every day has greatly improved my overall health (multitasking exercise and commuting, what an idea!) and it's sometimes easier than trying to figure out the fastest route by public transport. Being vegetarian also has contributed to a healthier living style and I've discovered many new delicious dishes I wouldn't necessarily have come across before. And all of this has raised awareness of environmental issues amongst people I interact with because they can see clearly the kinds of choices and impacts it makes.

So how do I feel now, hands covered in dirt and new inner tube back on my bike? I wouldn't change my mind for the world.