Week 4 Post

For my final post for this class, I will discuss the environmental impacts of my meal. I don’t think that my meal was necessarily a problem to the environment. Sushi is a sort of specialty food; it isn’t eaten daily by most people, like cereal or bread could be. Even considering the pesticides used to grow the vegetables, this artificial aid is so common now that people don’t even give a second thought to whether they are contributing to the environmental problems or not.

If I were to make the meal more environmentally friendly, I would have fished in smaller quantities, shipped the food in recyclable containers, or even used a different fish as opposed to one who had to fly from Japan to my plate. I definitely would have used organic food as well.

Possible limitations of promoting my meal as a solution to the environmental problems is that most of my peers are college students like myself and we cannot afford to go out to a nice seafood place all the time. For college students, Qdoba is about as fancy as it gets. Still, we can help to cut down on the waste in many ways. 

Although sushi wasn't the best choice for environmentally friendly meals, it certainly wasn't a bad choice. 

Week 3: Where did it come from?

Last week, I wrote a post on a meal that I had had recently. This week, I will be writing about where some components of the meal came from. Since fish was the main part of my meal, we will start there. 

Several kinds of fish were in my sushi boat. One fish was Hamachi, or Yellow Tail. This particular fish comes from Japan and is often shipped via a plane from Japan to the US and other parts of the world for use in sushi. The Hamachi from Japan is the finest grade for use in sushi. Salmon is another popular sushi fish. Most sushi restaurants use Atlantic Salmon or Scottish (smoked) Salmon. Since I prefer a fresh taste to a smokey flavor, I chose the Atlantic Salmon. This fish is caught on the coast and it is shipped as quickly as possible to preserve the quality of the fish. 

Next, rice was a large part of the meal. The rice used for sushi is a short grained, sticky Japanese rice. If you search for sushi rice in the grocery store, it is becoming more easy to find. But generally, it can only be found at specialty stores. 

Finally, in the Bibimbap (mixed rice) dish that I got, a fried egg and scallions were in the dish. The egg and scallions both came from a farm (hopefully in Wisconsin). 

As the products mentioned above are produced, there are several effects they may have on natural resources. For example, fishing for the kinds of fish needed for sushi requires going out in deep water at times, and that involves running a boat, using gas, and polluting the water with the gas used. Fishing also depletes the natural resource of fish unless it is done carefully.

Rice is grown in a "rice paddy" which literally means that the rice is grown in water. Rice is grown in arable land that requires extensive irrigation, causing the water of nearby rivers or streams to often be diverted. If this is overdone, the water source will be depleted over a relatively short period of time. 

Since the vegetables were grown on a farm, often the fields are sprayed with pesticides. This is a double edged sword because, although the pesticides allow a larger crop to be produced because bugs are not a problem, the chemicals of the pesticides often get into the soil and into the vegetables themselves. Sometimes, the chemicals stay in the soil for a long time and can run off with groundwater to streams and other water sources. Also, on a farm, equipment which runs on gas and electricity are used. The gas-powered equipment gives off emissions and can potentially affect air quality. 

The egg used in my meal is the only part that I can think of that was entirely naturally produced. Although the chicken feed could have had chemicals in it or antibiotics, which could have gotten into the egg.

While the impacts of most of these effects begin locally, eventually many of them will become global. The farmland used to produce the vegetables can be full of pesticides, which, as I mentioned above, can run into groundwater and eventually end up hundreds of miles away as the water carries the chemicals. Also, the pesticides which can be present in the vegetable can cause a global effect as humans around the world will eat those vegetables. 

If the rice fields were to dry up the water sources, the weather and climate would be affected. This is a local effect that could translate to a global effect if the climate were to effect other layers of the atmosphere. 

As mentioned above, the products in my meal arrived at the restaurant in different ways. Some of it arrived by plane, some by truck, and some were purchased locally at a supermarket. The ingredients that traveled the furthest to get to me were the sushi rice and the Hamachi, since they came from Japan (halfway around the world). The ingredients that I would consider "local" are the vegetables and eggs, since they do not have a long shelf life and should be transported nearby. 

Some parts of my meal did produce waste. The vegetables and fish were wrapped in plastic and in wooden and cardboard crates, and the eggs came in styrofoam packaging. Although the restaurant that I went to promotes recycling and does their best to ensure that items like packaging will end up in a recycling bin, sometimes they end up in the garbage, which results in another trip to the landfill. As far as the food waste, my table finished all of the food that we ordered, but during the prep work for the meal, some parts were disposed of (fish bones/intestines and vegetable roots/leaves for instance). Often, this restaurant disposes of this food waste in compost buckets to be sent to farms. But sometimes, it ends up in the trash, too. 

Through this brief post, you can see how my food traveled from it's source to my plate. The environmental impacts of even one simple meal can be huge, and it is worth spending some time thinking about what we can do to cut down on some of this wasteful consumption. 

Sushi!

I went to Kanpai, a Japanese restaurant in the Third Ward, and shared a sushi boat and several small dishes with my friends. 

 Obviously, the sushi is made of fresh fish, such as salmon, tuna, yellow tail, and tilapia, along with other fresh ingredients. The sushi boat consisted of rice, the fish, and wasabi, which is made of ground wasabi root and water. Since wasabi is expensive, sometimes it is made of a mix of horseradish, starch, green food coloring, 

and mustard, but since we ordered fresh wasabi, ours was the real thing. The boat also held a maki roll made of salmon, tuna, rice, avocado, and seaweed. 

One of our side dishes was grilled chicken, which is chicken on a bed of grilled bok-choy and teriyaki sauce. The teri was made of  soy sauce, sake, and sugar. Another dish was bulgogi, which is a Korean dish made of ginger-marinated beef, glass noodles (made of sweet potato), fried egg, and scallions. 

Overall, these dishes were very healthy and all sauces and the like were made on site in the restaurant. I felt great eating a healthy meal and the food was delicious!

Plastic Bags

Plastic bags have a longer lifetime than most buildings. Lasting somewhere between 400-1,000 years, plastic bags fill the garbage dump with nearly non-degradable material. Although these plastic bags are reusable, only 1-3% of the bags are actually reused.  Considering that an average person may use approximately 1,000 plastic bags per year, the number of plastic bags that end up floating aimlessly about or in the dump is staggering.

One particularly sad effect of the plastic bags occurs when the bags end up in water. Animals like dolphins and sea turtles are particularly vulnerable. These animals swim, play, and eat near the surface of the water, which is where countless amounts of plastic bags are found. Dolphins will play with plastic bags like they would with seaweed; they do not know the difference. But when these plastic bags wrap around the dolphin's head or block its' air passage, things will turn deadly very quickly. Sea turtles often mistake the plastic bags as food floating on the surface. They will take bites of the plastic bags, and eventually the plastic blocks their digestive tracts, causing a slow starvation.

We have become so accustomed to seeing plastic bags everywhere that we do not often stop to consider the implications of our carelessness.

However, people around the world are beginning to fight against the plastic. In Britain, one person (a BBC documentary director), fought and won the battle for her town to use canvas bags. Although her cause was dismissed by the legislature, she went to the shopkeepers and gained their support to stop using plastic bags. In India, a police force set up specifically for the prohibition of plastic bags has been set up.

In my opinion, we need a combination solution to this problem. In some places, such as the little town in Britain, simply making the problem known and taking action to bring people together has solved the problem of plastic bags. But in our other example, India, the government has had to take action to solve the problem; in this case, the battle is still ongoing, and it may be for a long time to come. Contrary to the manufacturer, plastic bags are not misunderstood. Although most people do know that plastic bags are reusable, the majority of these consumers do not recycle the bags.

I did a little research and found an article about the Massachusetts becoming the first state to ban plastic bags. In the entire United States, only San Francisco, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C. and Montgomery County, Maryland have either banned or placed a tax on plastic bags. Although pressure from the plastics industry made the state of California unable to pass a statewide ban, in San Francisco alone, the annual addition to landfills has dropped by 10% with its ban on plastic bags. Just think of the great reduction in waste if the whole US were to ban plastic bags!

Plastic bags are an environmental hazard that can be cured by our own actions. Each person can make a difference, as we can see all over the world.