Another evening, another great movie. Two nights ago I was flipping through channels and saw that the movie Addicted to Plastic was airing on the Sundance Channel so hubby and I sat down to watch it together. We both loved it.

It is basically a documentary style film that exposes how the average American is "addicted" to plastic. It also spans 12 countries and 5 continents to find out where plastic comes from, what is made with it, where it goes after its useful life, why it may be poisoning us and our oceans, and what we can do about it. I have to give BullFrog Films big props because it was a VERY interesting film.

Everyone should watch this film to get an idea of how much plastic is in our oceans… it was mind boggling. There were so many scenes that made me so angry about how people are trashing something so beautiful and let me tell you.. this movie might make you reconsider ever eating fish again.

My husband loved the industrial aspects of the show and the innovations in plant based plastics and ways to upcycle plastics. I liked how he got see other people (besides me) talk about the toxic effects of plastic and the leaching of chemicals. It was nice that they specifically mentioned two of the ones I am always telling him about… BPA and Phthalates. There was a really annoying scientist on there talking about how the risks were so tiny that people are blowing things about of proportion and I started arguing with the TV screen, which my husband thought was hilarious of course.

At one point in the movie the narrator wakes up on the floor with only a sheet for a bed, he gets up and walks through an empty house and brushes his teeth with baking soda and a stick. It was quite funny and meant to demonstrate that getting rid of our favorite products is not a good option but I actually liked the house with next to nothing in it… I kept thinking how lovely and easy it would be to maintain. I would want a bed though, LOL.

It was a great movie and impressed upon me even more that we need to do more to reduce the plastic in our life. It also motivated me to buy some of the aluminum garbage grabbers and pair them with resusable bags so that we can collect garbage whenever we visit our local waterways, lakes, rivers, and creeks. If everyone had some clean up gear when they went out for a day at the lake we could do a lot to clean things up. My kids will think it is great fun to spend a portion of the day looking for garbage… heck they already walk around picking up garbage in the gutters of our neighborhood streets. Its hard to tell how much garbage we generate when we have everyone else's garbage in there too!

When you have the time check out Addicted to Plastic. It is airing again on March 7 on Sundance. Hubby has already set it to record because he wants to watch again.

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Am I the last green blogger to see this? Probably. But thanks to Netflix… yeah I must be the last person to try Netflix too… I am catching up on all those green documentaries I have been wanting to see and for dirt cheap I might add. Netflix rocks!

Anyway, Food Inc is a documentary about our food, where it comes from, the true cost, why junk foods seems to cost less than the good stuff, and why looking at our food chain can be a terrifying experience. Factory farms and Monsanto are the stuff of nightmares I tell you.. I was agitated for days after watching it. Here were some of the main things I got out of it:

Monsanto is dark side of the force all the way. In the documentary we follow an elderly gentleman who runs a seed cleaning business that is being sued by Monsanto. He has to PROVE his innocence rather than them prove his guilt. Whereas he used to be one of 3 cleaners that existed in every county in his state, Monsanto has now sued and run every single one out if business in the entire state, save 3. Monsanto also regularly sues other companies that sell seeds, even though they have no basis for a lawsuit.. they bankrupt the companies with legal fees before a verdict can even be reached. At this rate Monsanto will be the one and only company you will ever be able to get seeds from in the future and since they have been allowed to patent seeds you will be sued for millions if you save any of their seeds. It was seriously scary enough for me to immediately start Googling places to get heirloom seeds and this year I WILL be saving seeds. My grandkids might need them!!

A mother whose child died from ecoli from a hamburger meat at a factory farm cannot tell the name of the company who sold the tainted meat or she will be convicted of a felony. The story of her son's death had me bawling… bring the tissues. He died a painful, horrific death as a result of an irresponsible industry and yet every year the the government makes it harder for us to to grow/raise our own food.

Veggie Libel laws exist in several states.. aka if you speak badly about food products you can be sued. In Colorado it is a felony even. If your apples made you sick or you were sold tainted beef you are not allowed to talk about it because that can cause "harm" to the producer. Remember Oprah was sued in a 6 year court battle because she said on TV that she could not stomach eating hamburgers due to mad cow disease. Talking bad about hamburgers is a "crime". How can the free market be free if you can't speak out (good or bad) about the products you buy?

Instead of changing their products to meet consumer demands when certain ingredients fall out of favor… these corporations opt to use their politician friends to pass laws so that the companies are not required to label those ingredients anymore.

Junk foods are subsidized by our government so that the costs can stay cheap. This is why you see a family buy two hamburgers at McDonalds for their kids instead of buying some veggies. If you add health and environmental impact though, those foods are not so cheap.

If you decide to boycott an unethical company you may be out of luck because that one company likely owns 10 other companies that make the same product under a different brand name so that you never know it is the exact same company. Those same companies are also buying up organic food and natural products companies left and right. Tom's of Maine is now owned by Colgate and Burt's Bess is owned by Clorox. The company you love to hate may now be the owner of some of your favorite products and if you continue to buy you are funding their bad behavior.

Food Inc. movie gets a big A+ for me for being interesting, thought provoking, and incredibly important. I highly recommend it!

I am super excited about a new movie being released on Earth Day. The kids and I have been seeing in-theatre trailers for months and we plan on spending a portion of Earth Day in theatres this year.

This movie is the first release from the new Disneynature label. Earth is narrated by James Earl Jones, and tells the remarkable story of three animal families and their amazing journey across the planet we all share.  Directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, the acclaimed creative team behind the Emmy Award-winning “Planet Earth” series combine forces again to bring this epic adventure to the big screen, beginning Earth Day 2009.  

I am a big fan of Disney films already so I love that they are combining some of my favorite things into one awesome package…movies, family fun, and the environment. And is it just me or does everyone get crazy goosebumps whenever they hear James Earl Jones??? Plus, Disneynature recently announced that it will plant a tree in the highly endangered Brazilian Atlantic Rain Forest in honor of every person who sees the film its first week.

We will let you know our thoughts of the movie on Earth Day but until then
you can enjoy a piece of it at home. Check out the official trailer before you go. It rocks!

Over the weekend we had some excitement with a native critter. For the third time since we moved into this house we got a bat trapped in the house. I have NO idea how they get in but they do. They live somewhere nearby…my attic crawl space maybe, LOL, because most warm evenings we see them swarm the pond nearby and then go hunting over the crop fields that are behind our street. They are lovely to watch but I don’t like them swarming around my head when I have laundry to do so out they must go when they get in the house. Hubs has been able to catch and release them all so far and that is very important to us because bats are very important to the environment.

If you have bats nearby then this is a sign that the area is in good environmental health without too much pollution. Bats are very sensitive to pollution and pesticides. When the bats go you have a big warning sign at hand.

Bats also love to eat mosquitoes and with all the concern about mosquito born illness like the West Nile Virus this is more important than ever. Spraying areas to kill mosquitoes will also likely drive away or kill their natural predators…bats. Not a smart thing to do. I wonder why cities aren’t looking into bat release programs and cultivating bat houses  instead of spraying noxious gas on our neighborhoods. Bats can eat up to 1000 of those blood sucking buggers an hour. They may not do it because of all the fear about rabies but only a teeny 0.5% of bats ever get rabies. In MOST cases (sans an epidemic) bats are considered completely harmless. You are more likely to get rabies from a raccoon than from a bat. Bats are also very mild animals…they don’t like to be around people anyway.

Bats also eat tons of other bugs and I know my local farmers should be grateful because they canvas those crop fields all spring and summer looking for bugs. If you DO get one in the house or where it is in close proximity to people you will want to remove them and keep kids away (just in case). A bat box would be a great relocation place.

So what do you think? Why is it so hard to break away from the evil blooding suck, rabid bat stereotype?

Two years ago…even last year, I would have defended my meat loving ways until the cows came home. But as I go further along in this great green journey it gets harder and harder for me to justify eating meat. The statistics for environmental devastation just get more and more depressing. The meat eating habit is killing this planet and I think it is time for more green folks to own up to that instead of treat it like the elephant in the room that everyone wants to ignore.

Just look at some of these scary statistics:

The US imports 200 million pounds of beef from Central America every year and much of the land used is rain forest land. For each hamburger that originated from animals raised on rain forest land, approximately 55 square feet of forest have been destroyed. Ouch! Rain forests are like the lungs of this planet and they house many different species of animals and could contain life saving medicinal plants. As a society though we have decided that meat is more important than our rain forests. As one man who lives in my small town said, “We don’t have a rain forests in the US so who cares.” We should all care that American dietary “needs” are destroying another part of the planet.

One pound of beef requires an input of approximately 2500 gallons of water, whereas a pound of soy requires 250 gallons of water and a pound of wheat only 25 gallons. With more than one billion people worldwide who “lack enough safe water to meet minimum levels of health”  our meat eating/water guzzling ways should bother us. Source 

Waste run-off and pesticide run-off from livestock crops create dead zones in our oceans where fish and marine plant life can’t live anymore.

Certain fishing practices endanger many fish species and result in overfishing that results in an imbalance of marine ecosystems.

To produce one pound of meat, an animal needs to consume as much a 10 pounds of grains that could be consumed directly by humans. Imagine how many people around the world we could feed if we stopped giving the bulk of it to livestock that will in turn feed just a few. We are literally living high off the hog while other countries are starving.

1.4 billion tons of solid fecal matter is produced by US farm animals per year and it is often left outside in open pits or pools that seep into groundwater, lakes and rivers. Because the animals are often diseased, and injected with hormones and antibiotics this renders their waste toxic and not suitable for fertilizing crops.

Livestock are responsible for over half of the country’s erosion and sediment issues. They are destroying the land they graze upon and rendering it useless for growing.

The global livestock industry is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the planes, trains and automobiles in the world combined. Yes we should feel good about our decision to bike instead of drive or use LED light bulbs but when we eat meat with every meal we are cancelling out the good we did in other areas.

This doesn’t even begin to cover the health issues we experience as a result of eating meat..for that side of the debate read my post over at Goddess of the Garden, Why Meat Consumption Is Bad for Your Health.

So should we all go vegan or vegetarian? Well, you certainly could…I know I lean more in that direction every day but in actuality you don’t need to go quite that far.  I love this post from Green Living Tips that shares a plan to only eat 3 meat meals a week. Many of us were raised in homes where meat was the centerpiece of every meal but it doesn’t have to be. Meatless meals are making a comeback. Try to make it  goal to only eat meat 3-4 times a week and go veggie the other nights. Slowly work toward that goal if you have to.

Cutting down or cutting out meat is a win-win-win situation. It helps in the fight against global warming, and environmental destruction and it’s good for you. Not to mention all of the animal cruelty issues it brings up. Watch a couple videos along those lines and you just might find the inspiration you need. If you do eat meat, it is soooo important that it be organic and raised by small scale ethical farmers. Same for other animal products like cheese and milk. But that kind of meat is expensive so factory farmed “cheap” meat is what most people buy. The video below illustrates what you are supporting when you buy that meat. It is graphic but if if you eat meat…you need to watch it.

Other sources