16 April 2008

The World Hunger Crisis





    Did you hear about the hunger crisis?


    The world hunger crisis is all over the news this week. In just three
    years, the price of staple foods like wheat, corn and rice has almost
    doubled. If we don't do something soon, hundreds of thousands of people
    face starvation and a hundred million more could fall into extreme
    poverty.



    I just took action with the ONE Campaign and you can too, here:




    http://www.one.org/hungercrisis?rc=hctaf









Sread the word!




Learn more about the world hunger crisis.


Join the conversation on the ONE Blog.


09 April 2008

What is *in* the bag counts for more than what the bag is made of



paper-or-plastic.png

Prompted by Seattle’s proposed twenty-cent charge on grocery bags,
Sightline has once again highlighted their study of the environmental
impact of paper vs. plastic. Check out the handy graph on the right.



The vertical axis is “embedded energy,” meaning the amount of energy
required to produce and transport the associated goods. Embedded energy
equates roughly to climate change impact.



As you can plainly see, the stuff in the bag matters a lot more than the bag itself. In fact, it matters about 186 times as much.
The analysis compared “four servings of two different diets: the first,
a meat-based diet that included beef, potatoes, tropical fruit, and
drinks such as soda; the second a vegetable-based diet composed of
produce grown within the country where is was consumed and a soy-based
protein source.”



The moral, obviously, is not that we should waste bags. But if
you’re looking to lower your environmental impact, paper vs. plastic is
maybe not the only question to be pondering.


Source: TerraPass is a low-cost, verified way
to balance the global warming impact of your driving, flying, and home energy use...

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