Earth Day!

Hell yeah we can

This week yielded a very special and amazing time for people all over the world – Earth Day! Whether you celebrated Earth Day or not, it’s important to understand that it is so much more than a random date on the calendar – it’s a state of mind and a way of life.

Earth Day every year represents the awakening of the modern environmental movement. The first Earth Day ever was held on April 22, 1970 and was created as a day to inspire knowledge and appreciation for the Earth and it’s environment. There are many celebrations going on all throughout the week, both locally and internationally! The celebrations have been known to spread all around the world, urging people of all walks of life to get outside and appreciate everything that we have from the Earth. It is not just for hippies and potheads; it is for anyone who is grateful for the natural world.

Student Spotlight: Natasha Finch

Natasha Finch, a freshman Environmental Studies student at SUNY-ESF, is a star student, an active member on campus, and a secret composter? Yup! Natasha lives on campus but did not abandon her composting practices upon arrival, she merely tweaked them to better fit her situation. She has a bin in her room where she keeps soil, worms, old newspaper clippings, food scraps – all the basic necessities for a kick-ass compost pile!

Natasha and her compost bin

Global Warming

Will we let it get this far?

With the weather getting warmer, I honestly can’t stop thinking about global warming. It’s a serious crisis that has already taken a devastating toll on our world, but things can be salvaged if people force their government to enforce relevant, necessary reform. That is where we come in. We need to get our governmental leaders to realize the importance of the issues that we care about.
First on the list: habitat destruction.

Soil and Sunshine

We need to reclaim the agricultural roots upon which our country was built

Our country is in an agricultural crisis. People today have no understanding or appreciation for where their food comes from. Most people of our current generation have never been on a farm, have no idea where their food comes from, and more often than not, do not ingest anything of natural nutritional value. Most of the “food” products available on supermarket shelves are not real sustenance and have minimal nutrients, just chemicals and dyes.
This is a very bad situation for us to be in. By not supporting the agricultural industry enough, we are driving up the prices and soon it may get to a position that us Americans aren’t comfortable with. According to food writer Michael Pollan, “…with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close.”

The Problem of Pollution

A familiar sight for many Americans.

There’s been something that has really been troubling me lately: Pollution. But this problem goes much deeper than it does with most people. There are many definitions of pollution, but the one that has the most supporters goes as follows, “Pollution is the occurrence of chemicals at above-normal levels in any particular component of the environment.” There is a broad range of things that fit “above-normal levels.” It’s scary, actually. As the world’s population keeps increasing, so urbanized areas. More than 76 percent of the developed world is urbanized and almost 40 percent of the developing world is as well. And as more areas become urbanized, they increase pollution too.

The Power of Poop

CowPots are completely biodegradable, and can be planted right into the ground!

With the inception of March comes the promise of spring (well, it does for me anyway – I’m from New Jersey). People start to pack away their sweaters and pull out those shorts and sandals. It is a general time of new beginnings and fresh starts, blossoming relationships and…poop?

This is how brothers Ben and Matt Freund feel, anyway. These two dudes are second-generation dairy farmers from Connecticut. They were looking for a way to deal with a big issue on their farm: Cows produce so much shit! What do you do with so much poop? You turn it into fertilizer, you donate it to your fellow farmers, you pile it up in the back of the farm, and you make flowerpots? Yes, yes you do!

Eating Locally in February? WTF?

Delicious AND locally grown

The concept of “eating locally” is not exactly a new idea. It is the idea of eating only the foods that can be grown sustainably near to you, or within a certain circumference around your general area. The concept has been around since the conception of our nation. Our founding fathers and their generation ate only what they could grow in their back yards. Through the creation and implementation of modern technology, however, we are now able to import food from all across the world – a progression that may or may not be yielding positive results.

Waste Not, Want Not

Of all this perfectly good food up here...

Picture this: you wake up 15 minutes before your first morning class, pull on some dirty pants off the floor, chew a piece of gum, and run your fingers through your hair on the way to class. The average student does not get up every morning and eat a healthy, balanced breakfast, regardless of the fact that it has been drilled into our heads as the most important meal of the day since kindergarten. So you go throughout your day, you work your ass off, maybe sleep a little during physics. Then, come six o’clock, you run to the nearest dining hall, because let’s face it: you’re fucking starving. You grab as much food as you could possibly be stacked on the plate (maybe you use some techniques learned from that physics class). But you don’t eat even half of what you grabbed. So you throw it away.

That, my friends, is a serious problem.