This Boy Elroy

Wall-E

Brett penned a great post about his reaction to the movie "Wall-E," and I have to say that I was also really affected by this movie emotionally. I don't know if it's the movie plus the affect of a pride celebration hangover, but today I have been really depressed, not to mention drained of energy.

Out there Full of shine and full of sparkle Close your eyes and see it glisten, Barnaby Listen, Barnaby... Put on your Sunday clothes, There's lots of world out there...

Wall-E struck a chord with me mostly because of the irony that a lonesome machine longed for contact with another while existing on a trash infested, abandoned Earth. All the while, humans were floating in space getting fat, and were completely ignorant of their surroundings or one another. I thought the leitmotifs of "Sunday Clothes" and "It Only Takes a Moment" from Hello Dolly! were brilliant choices. Both songs are cheesy, trite, and hackneyed (I know because I performed them my sophomore year in high school), but the simple themes in both are often ones that make us smile and feel connected to one another, whether it be loved ones or strangers. In our world of technology and consumerism these simple pleasures are the most fragile, and when we begin to lose them, we begin to lose ourselves and our care for who and what is around us.

The levels that one can peel off from Wall-E range from ecological to sociological, and I'm glad that the shock of the magnificent desolation in Wall-E has caused Brett to pause and think about his consumption and and his interconnectedness to humanity. I hope that other adults react in this way, and more importantly I hope a generation of children are compelled to feel the same. Wall-E was the little engine that could, and he saved us and our planet in a movie but we all need to be a little like Wall-E if we're going to survive.

So, think about what you consume, and where it goes when you're done with it, and think about the people you love and strangers around you. Because if we don't, we're alone, in a world of junk.

And we'll recall when time runs out That it only took a moment To be loved a whole life long!

Green Question?

Recently the greenness of corporations has been called into question. For example, Apple and Nintendo were called out for not being green enough in their manufacturing practices.

Well, I have a question for CNN. Why do you allow the coal and petroleum industry to advertise about the "virtues" of fossil fuels on your network?

Not a very green choice in my opinion.

No more plastic bags at Whole Foods

Whole Foods Market® to Sack Disposable Plastic Grocery Bags by Earth Day.

This is the best news I've heard with regard to conservation in a really long time. I don't think anything this radical has been done for the environment in this country since we banned CFCs to save the ozone layer (a success story btw). Plastic bags are an insidious threat to our environment. I've read some reports that there are tons of them at the bottom of the ocean just sitting there, not to mention they're all over the streets in every major city. These things can take 1000 years to degrade and to make them requires the basic component of all plastics, petroleum. Eliminating them altogether is definitely a step in the right direction and I say bravo to Whole Foods for being a leader. I'd call them perfect if they'd stop importing water from New Zealand and Fiji, wasteful.

Not everyone shops at Whole Foods and it'll probably take some time for other grocery chains to follow suit but in the meantime I encourage everyone to stop and pause when buying groceries or whatever and think if you NEED a bag. A lot of the time we're automatically given bags for one item or we put products that already have handles in a bag, it's just wasteful. Also, produce where you don't eat the skin doesn't need to be put in a plastic bag so try to abstain there as well. The best thing to do though is to bring your own reusable bag to the store with you. The polar bears, and all the other species that are threatened by climate change, will thank you.

Bottled Water Redux

I wrote this letter to Whole Foods in May expressing my concern about importing bottled water from New Zealand.

Then I didn't hear from them and I wrote them again and cited an article in the New York Times about how some restaurants are refusing to serve imported bottled water because of the carbon footprint it leaves.

Whole Foods wrote me back recently and it was mostly gobbly gook about how the shoppers demand water from exotic locales. Yeah, well I think it'd be convenient if Whole Foods started carrying chemical cleaners so I didn't have to go to Target but I don't think they'll start selling Lysol products anytime soon. They also wrote about how shipping is the most efficient form of transporting goods across the world:

A great example of this difficulty came up in a discussion that our CEO, John Mackey had with Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, at UC Berkeley recently. As john pointed out in that discussion, the majority of food shipped internationally is shipped by relatively energy efficient ocean vessels. If you live in Berkeley, you may actually use less fossil fuel and produce less carbon dioxide by buying rice from Bangladesh than from certain parts of California, as ocean vessels emit dramatically less carbon dioxide per pound of cargo than trucks.

Wow, that's great...IF you live in Berkeley. News flash, not everyone lives and eats in Berkeley.

The email also mentioned about how they promote local farming and they have a Local Producer Loan Program. Red herring, thanks.

Anyway this issue seems to be getting legs in the media lately. In a recent issue of Business week there was an article about carbon neutrality and importing water: How "Green" Is That Water?

Today, a reader emailed me this story from the San Diego Union-Tribune: Pour choice - Restaurants make money on it; consumers drink it up; but the environment has a tough time with bottled waters

Let me say that I am not totally against bottled water. Many of these articles cite statements saying that municipal water is heavily regulated and is just as good as bottled water. Here, in Dallas, the water tastes like ass. A couple of months ago I purchased refillable bottles and I get my water, for $0.39 per gallon, from Whole Foods. The water is filtered from a municipal source on the spot, I walk home with the bottles from the store. At work, I drink Ozarka bottled water, which is a bottled water that comes from a source in the region and doesn't travel far to get to me. I do my best to recycle the bottles, but will be putting more effort into that from now on. I used to buy sparkling Italian mineral water from Whole Foods as well but have since stopped and now purchase locally produced (it's just filtered water that's been carbonated) and canned club soda.

Think about what you eat and drink. Think about where it's made, what it's packaged in, how far it had to travel, and how many resources were used so it could get to you.