$2/day - Some food, many thoughts

I met up with Paul (ultra-cool guy) this morning, and broke into a light sweat while sitting with him under the sun outside of Big City Small World Bakery. I told him about this week long project I started on, and he recommended making a trip out to By The Pound, another bulk food store in Ann Arbor. We went there, and I bought some groceries that should keep me going for the next few days...roti flour, cranberry beans, black turtle beans, and rolled oats for $3.63. I then made my way to the People's Food Co-op to get some vegetables, and I ended up getting some cabbage, carrots, onions, a lemon, and some rooibos tea for $4.42. Let's see how far these eight dollars go. (Now that I think about it, I didn't even realise that the carrots and lemon need to be kept in the fridge!)

As you may have thought to yourself already, the number of two dollars is largely symbolic and doesn't mean much to us here in the US. Really living on two dollars a day in the US is impossible, I would think. The poverty line in the US is about fifteen dollars per day per person (however that line is determined). What this means is that what fifteen dollars means to us here is not what fifteen dollars means to people elsewhere. This is obvious. What I feel though is that maybe the issues people face, regardless of whether they are poor here or poor elsewhere, are similar, the inability to stand up against the causes of their poverty, and the consequent feeling of powerlessness. Yet there are some differences, particularly when it comes to food.

Having grown up in India, I observed that the food poor people eat, if available, is actually nutritious. They eat hardy grains, rice and fresh vegetables; they just don't get enough of this healthful food. Many of the poor in India are not obese, but they suffer from being underweight or from malnutrition diseases like beriberi, pellagra, scurvy, and rickets. This is in stark contrast to what many of the poor in the US face - a lack of access to healthful foods at all, and an increased availability to processed, highly salty foods leading to obesity and other health risks. And so even though the social manifestations of what it means to be poor may be similar, the outward, bodily manifestations influenced by food, a basic necessity of life, change from West to East.

On that note, let's see what the rest of this day presents to me.

Now

Probably the biggest obstacle that people face when trying to address environmental issues, and sustainability in general, is the sheer magnitude of the problems. We have billions of people, trillions of dollars and countless quantities of time and energy that are invested in the status quo and the continuance of unsustainability. The powers of those people and corporations are much greater than you as an individual; a sense of hopelessness is not surprising. Furthermore, the timescales over which the issues have developed, and over which they may be resolved, are enormous compared to the length of human lives. It may take several decades for any change to be realised, culturally and ecologically. This is also bound to generate a sense of hopelessness. At the same time, there is a limit to our comprehension of our actions - we may not know how harmful the effects of what we are doing are. But also, we do things in the present that we know are bad, for our health, and for the health of ecosystems in the future. We have a tendency to say, "I'll deal with it later," or, "I know this is bad (for me or for the environment). Whatever."  Eating unhealthily is a wonderful example of this. Access and availability of good food aside, many people know that such eating is bad for them, in general, yet satisfaction now supersedes degraded health later - diabetes, cancer, obesity, etc. Maybe we don't want those future ill effects to affect us, but out of habit we accept the ill effects and live in a state of fear knowing that the day will come that bad diagnoses loom.

It is really hard to imagine what the future is going to be like - Will our efforts pay off? Who will be the next President? When will the next oil spill happen? Which will be the next fish species to go extinct because of overfishing? How might we be able to deal with the fear of living in such a state, knowing that we are degrading what it is that sustains us, but are so invested in the way it is that we kick the stone down the road? Rather than think and worry about the future, we can all make decisions here and now such that tomorrow will be a good day. We all want to live in a world in which what we cherish is alive, healthy and sustained. To live in that world, we must act in such a way that we cherish, respect and sustain now, today. It is not complicated. If I respect the tree or the river today, it will be healthy and full of life and love tomorrow. If I respect and cherish my relationship with my friends and family today, those relationships will grow stronger and more resilient; tomorrow those people will still love me, and I will still love them. I do not have to live in the fear of a grudge or a toxic conversation. Now is easier to comprehend and experience and think about. Acting well now will save us much trouble tomorrow.

My issues with TerraCycle

Last year, at the Net Impact forum, I learned about a company called TerraCycle, whose motto is "Outsmart waste." Tom Szaky, the founder of the company, gave a lively and engaging talk about what his company is about. Here's what the website says:

TerraCycle makes affordable, eco-friendly products from a wide range of different non-recyclable waste materials. With over 50 products available at major retailers like Walmart, Target, The Home Depot, OfficeMax, Petco and Whole Foods Market, TerraCycle is one of the fastest growing eco-friendly manufacturers in the world. Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by finding innovative, unique uses for materials others deem garbage.

Founded in 2001 by a 19 year old Princeton University freshman named Tom Szaky, TerraCycle started as an organic fertilizer company and has grown into a multi-category, eco-friendly powerhouse. Tom’s dream was to find way a new, more responsible way of doing doing business that would be good for the planet, good for people and good for the bottom line! TerraCycle has won many awards and accolades for its environmentally responsible business model from Inc. Magazine, Red Herring, The Home Depot, The Environmental Business Journal, The Social Venture Network, Zerofootprint and many other highly regarded organizations.

TerraCycle also runs free national collection programs that pay non-profits and schools TerraCycle has exclusive partnerships with major CPG companies such as Kraft Foods, Frito Lay (Pepsi), Stonyfield Farm, Mars Wrigley and many more. The partnerships create free collection programs that pay schools and non-profits nationwide to collect used packaging such as drink pouches, energy bar wrappers, yogurt cups, cookie wrappers, chip bags and more! The collected materials are upcycled into affordable, high quality products ranging from tote bags and purses to shower curtains and kites. In addition, TerraCycle works with these partners to find innovative uses for all of their waste streams and, by making products from these various waste streams, TerraCycle prevents 1000’s of tons of waste from going to landfills.

It even says on the website, "Get paid for trash." At first thought, the idea of turning throwaway packaging into "products ranging from tote bags and purses to shower curtains and kites" may seem like a good idea. I mean, this is material that is going to go into the landfill, anyway. Why not just save the materials from going into the landfill and derive more utility from them? Well, here are my issues with the concept, and with the paragraphs (unedited) that I copy-pasted from the website:

1) The "upcycled" products (I have one - a pencil/pen case that was given away at the Forum) advertise in full force products like Kool Aid, Oreos and Pepsi. This sends messages and advertises to younger people that consuming products created by these companies is "good" and "cool" and maybe even "good for the environment." (Remember that post a few days ago about Coke encouraging people to recycle?) The creation of such products in no way reduces the amount of material that will continuously be extracted from our earth to produce the packaging for these artificial "foods." It will only encourage people to continue to buy food that comes in packaging that just can't go away.

2) How many tote bags and shower curtains and pencil cases do we need? The pencil case that they gave me is pretty durable - I expect it to last me a lifetime and more. Oh right, it is made from sturdy plastic that will take decades to ever "go away." So, say we come to a point where 6 billion plus pencil cases are made, and everyone in the world gets a pencil case, Barack Obama's daughters included, will TerraCycle keep producing the pencil cases? Well, as long as people continue to drink Kool Aid, more pouches will be discarded, and more pencil cases will be made. Hmm, the trash just seems to be cramming into our space above ground, now...

3) This is further exacerbated by the fact that this company is totally for profit. It is in TerraCycle's interest that people drink Kool Aid, eat Oreos, and continue to increase diabetes and obesity in the world.

But there may be something to learn from TerraCycle. The website claims that there are more than 10 million people that are "trash collectors." (TerraCycle relies on the consumers themselves to sort out the packaging such that it is hyper-separated into streams.) To get that many people to do something in concert is laudable. But in the end, it seems to me that the company is of the same ilk as Pepsi, Hollister and Coach - make people think that they are cool, hip, concerned, aware and with the times by making them buy your product, to fill the pockets of a few.