What’s in the ground:

Hopefully everyone’s sheet mulching adventures went well. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me on the comment page of this site. It’s a pretty straight forward process, but it can be a little tricky.

What’s going on in sustainability:

Today while reading the paper, I came across a very interesting little bit of information. I learned that BPA, the chief agent in many household plastics, was originally developed as a supplement to increase estrogen in woman. Aside from the recent scare that BPA could cause cancer, which forced Nalgene to pull their products off the shelf, a new study of 8 chinese men whom work in a plastic manufacturing factory found that high level of exposure to BPA can cause severe erectial dysfunction, which I guess is a side effect from the estrogen build up. 

I spent a long time pondering why each inning during the world series was punctuated with commercials for cialis and viagra. I now imiagine it’s because of America’s obsession with plastics. The study pointed out that BPA can be found in the urine samples of 93% of Americans. When thinking of plastic I always remember that part in the movie “The Graduate” when the old man tells Dustin Hoffman’s character, “When it comes to investment, I have one word for you, plastics.” If the old man could have only been forsightful to add to the investment erectial dysfunction meds, they could have been billionaires.

But I have a better investment for everyone. Get a stainless steel water bottle. Now, I hope I’ve convinced my male readers that a long sustainable life just loses its flavor when your penis stops functioning. But for my female and puritanical male readers, there are many other issues at stake here. The first most obvious is health of the planet. Our earth cannot take the strain in its landfills with the waste of plastic bottles. And if you think you’re doing some great service by drinking your morning fair trade coffee in those trendy brown paper cups, that recycled paper still had to originate from a  razed forest probably in South America.

But the biggest problem you create when you drink out of a plastic bottle pertains to water. Buying bottles of water in a store is a relatively new concept. Historically, access to fresh water has always been a natural human right. If one needed water, a stream was usually accessible. And if it wasn’t, societies were set up to provide water for its citizens. But as industrial development has polluted and overtaken rivers and lakes, the access to fresh potable water has been limited severely, especially in South America and Africa. In Bolivia they fought a whole war over water.

But, we as Americans have sat securely with this modern development, happy that we have access to fresh water at the corner store near our house. Well,  if the erectial dysfunction piece has not scared you, then the fact that our world is slowly running out of water should. This issue will just be perpetuated if we don’t make a conscious effort to stop supporting the commodizationof water. Free, fresh water is a right to all people. And if we accept that it’s proper to buy this resource, then we accept that it’s okay for some to go without. By bottling your own water from your tap or well, you continue a culture where water is a community resource.

If these points strike you, and you want to make an effort to always carry a bottle for water and a mug for coffee or tea, there are many options. The one I will tell you to stay away from is SIGG. Although they recalled all of those bottles from Whole Foods for their possible cancer causing agents in the lining, I still was not happy with my new one, as the new lining began to peel off. Kleen Kanteen is the way to go, but if you can’t find that product, a simple stainless steel bottle with no inner lining will do the trick.

So, the next time you see those plastic water bottles or paper coffee cups piling up in the trash, I hope you remember this article and you do something about it.

Until next week, this is the note from the urban homestead.