Blog Post #4: Reflecting on the environmental geography of your meal or product
In blog post #3 I discussed how the sugar mills primarily in China had a negative effect on the flora and fauna in the environment surrounding those mills. Primarily the pollution in the water such as the irrigation systems. It is also a matter of the amount of pollutants that are being dumped into bodies of water. the EPA passed a law in the 1970s that prohibited the dumping of dangerous amounts of pollutants that could effect the human body into bodied of water (NEPIS). They also need to establish limitations for all industrial plants.
In my opinion though on a smaller scale solution could be just the creation of small local sugar companies. Especially in the united states since we usually import sugar from these mills in china maybe making our own sustainable businesses with environmentally safe processes to produce the sugar and put the large industries out of business is the way to go.
Some actions that can be taken at an individual level could be searching sustainable sugar companies that use environmentally safe processes to produce their product. I am a strong believer that a little bit of research on where you food or other products are made and how they effect the environment and our globe is a great way to start a large scale change to help create a greener earth. I was raised in a pretty normal suburban family that was a very basic American family household. So until my high-school years when the curriculum became more modern and progressive. The topics of climate change, global pollution in our seas, sustainability and anything that falls in the environmentally effecting subject was all new to me. Since then I have enjoyed learning about things I may have thought that I knew a bit about but ha no idea. For example like the Plastic Bag epidemic. Until this course I had no idea that it was that bad until the part of the documentary that showed the family and how many plastic bags they had in just a month really shocked me.
The world needs to change it's norms that we are so culturally afraid to change because of the unknown repercussions such as the economic side of it. We only have 8 more years until the damage on our planet is irreversible(United Nation). More people need to realize that by just trying to make a conscious effort to be more organic and sustainable will help rebuild some of what is left of our planets ozone layer and environment.
Comments
Post a Comment