Category Archives: environment

conservation, environment, making a difference

Reduce, reuse, recycle…

5 Comments

It’s sexy to toss your plastics in one bin, and your glass in another. However, there is an imminently more satisfying way to recycle, support a good cause, and save yourself some money. With the market down enough to get people talking about “victory gardens”, thrift stores and Goodwill become appealing alternatives to pricey mall shopping. (Frankly, with the economy the way it is, second hand clothing is looking better than Wal-Mart and Target too.)

As a child advocate earning next to nothing in school I learned from other advocates that a certain neighborhood Goodwill received the bulk of the donations from the country club, and therefore had brand name suits for $15. I went, and sure enough argued my first case in a $15 Chanel suit that fit me like an expensively tailored glove.

Over the years, as we prospered and the housing market boomed, I replaced my thrift store habits with thrifty sale shopping, exchanging my $15 suit experience for the $100 or $150 suit experience. Still not a Chanel brand new, but a little nicer knowing I was the suit’s first owner.

Times, how they are a changin’.

This morning found me considering business attire and coats, missing from my post baby sized wardrobe, and a relatively empty wallet. How could I get a rain coat, a winter coat, and some tops that will work with my two precious pairs of slacks for the piddly amount I had to spend? It simply couldn’t be done. I have to have clothes that fit though, if I am to actually start a practice. I can’t meet clients in sweats.

Then I remembered… the Goodwill by the country club.
Down my mother and I went, happily off to search for a bargain, and happily, we struck gold.

I got a gorgeous full length wool business coat by Christian Dior for $15. I got a lovely khaki rain trench from Calvin Klein for $12.99. I also got several sweaters to toss on over my shells and tanks, thereby creating an expansive set of outfits from my seemingly paltry store. Each was less than $5, each was in perfect shape.

Reduce, reuse, recycle doesn’t have to pertain solely to soda cans and newspapers. I saved a fortune today, getting a week’s worth of winter tops and two coats for less than half the cost of one raincoat brand new. Best of all, I didn’t add to any environmental production costs, and I supported a charity I believe in.

environment

No more gold for me…

1 Comment

I have a raven-like fascination with shiny objects. My husband knows that the surest way to melt my butter is to present me with a set of shiny gems (no diamonds please!!), preferably set in white gold. Over the years he has punctuated special occasions with gifts of unusual stones set in glittering white gold.

A glittering gold that shines less beautifully now that I know how devastating gold mining practices are for the environment. Did you know that the production of one gold ring creates 20 tons of mine waste? The No Dirty Gold movement is doing its best to promote information on the environmental effects of gold mining. Their slogan “The more you know, the less gold glows” sums up my reaction to the information exactly.

Two-thirds of all Gold in use today is newly mined. Of this two thirds, two thirds is mined from open pit mines, several of which are large enough to be seen from outer space. Some of these open pit mines are opened in protected environmental areas, regardless of that protection. These open pit mines generate huge piles of waste rock. For example, The Bingham Canyon open-pit mine, the biggest hole dug by man anywhere in the world (approx. 2 1/2 miles long and nearly a mile deep), hauls about 450,000 tons of dirt out of the earth each day. More than 99% of that dirt is waste.

However, rock and dirt waste aren’t the real problem here, gold cyanidation is. Gold cyanidation is a technique for extracting gold from low-grade ore by converting the gold to water soluble aurocyanide metallic complex ions. It is the most commonly used process for gold extraction. Of course, there have been toxic spills of the cyanide, causing mass die offs of fish and requiring governments to shut off water supplies to whole villages to prevent poisoning.

The environmental part is just a small part of the story too, there are serious issues effecting women, child labor, and over human rights violations caused by gold mining.

Tiffany’s and Wal-Mart are both trying to get “Green Gold” in their stores by using gold from a single source. However, most of the gold sold to jewelers is co-mingeld from dozens of world-wide sources, so pinpointing where your gold came from is hard to do. Tiffany’s is spearheading an effort to enforce gold mining standards that are environmentally and human friendly. Wal-Mart is doing the same thing. Soon you will be able to purchase “Green Gold” from Walmart in the Love Earth line. Tiffany’s gets all their gold from green sources.

So for me, it’s Tiffany’s or titanium I guess. Turns out Gold doesn’t really glitter as much, when I know everything that went into it. (Or came out of it.) For piles of detail information on Gold mining check out the media materials here. For an excellent summary of the issues regarding gold mining, check out Fortunes Article Green Gold.

Activism, environment, Political

Palin’s perturbing policies…

6 Comments

A message from the Defender’s of Wildlife Action Fund discusses Palin’s policies regarding aerial hunting of wolves and bears. Remember, Wolves were only recently de-listed after decades of trying to revive their species from near extinction. Palin wasted no time before promoting policies intended to eradicate the once protected species.

Here is the message from Defender’s followed by a video. Please read and watch:

Alaska Governor and GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is a strong promoter of the aerial hunting of wolves and bears, a practice that has been condemned by conservationists, scientists and many hunters alike. It involves shooting wolves and bears from the air or chasing them to exhaustion and then landing and shooting them point blank. The animals, shot with a shotgun, usually die a painful death. The hunters involved in the program keep and sell the animals’ pelts.

“Sarah Palin’s anti-conservation position is so extreme that she condones shooting wolves and bears from airplanes or using airplanes to chase them to exhaustion and then shoot them point blank. Most Americans find this practice barbaric, but it’s routine in Alaska under Palin’s leadership,” said Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund president Rodger Schlickeisen.

Sarah Palin has supported aerial hunting since taking office despite the fact that the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council, the American Society of Mammalogists, and more than 120 other scientists have called for a halt to the program, citing its lack of scientific justification and despite opposition from many hunters who see it as violating the sportsmen’s ethic of fair chase. Palin in 2007 even proposed offering a bounty of $150 per wolf, as long as the hunter provided the wolf’s foreleg as proof of the kill. And just earlier this year, she introduced legislation to expand the program and derail a scheduled August 2008 citizens’ vote on the issue. The bounty was determined to violate the state’s constitution and her legislation failed.

“Sarah Palin’s positions against America’s wildlife could put her to the right of even the Bush administration,” said Schlickeisen. “She is a promoter of one of our nation’s most ugly and cruel wildlife hunting programs and Americans deserve to know her views on such matters before they vote.”

The following video is disturbing, but important. Please let people know the truth behind this candidate for our nations second highest office.