Green Talks Rundown
Written by Aimee Ascano
“To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.” – Helen Keller.
With the end of April, we end Earth month 2022, and with Earth month we celebrated our 6th annual Green Talks with a return of in person presenting!
Green Talks is UCSD’s Ted-talk styled event that gives our presenters the opportunity to speak to the UCSD community about how they bring environmental awareness into their professional decisions, and how we as students can do the same in our own lives. This year we had the privilege of hearing from six speakers based in the San Diego area, all of whom brought very different perspectives on our shared environmental challenges.
Green Talks 2022 Speakers:
Bob Hill – EDCO Disposal, Director of Recycling
Carolina Martinez – Environmental Health Coalition, Climate Justice Director
Lowell Jooste – LJ Crafted Wines, Owner
Rowdy Keelor – Factory Farming Awareness Coalition (FFAC), Classroom Program Manager
Josh Kavanagh – UC San Diego Auxiliary Services, Executive Director
Amy Lerner – UC San Diego Urban Studies and Planning, Associate Teaching Professor
Presentation summaries:
Bob Hill – EDCO Disposal, Director of Recycling
Bob Hill confronted the ever-present issue of recycling, and the emphasis that change requires people to push for change to happen.
There seems to be a split opinion on recycling, some people think, and rightfully so. The US constructed a recycling system that required countries such as China to buy our recycling and ignoring the transportation issue with transcontinental shipping on such a s scale, which became an issue when China refused to continue buying our recycling a couple years ago.
Part of the reason China stopped taking our recycling is also part of the reason a lot of US recycling currently ends up in landfills, it’s contaminated. And contaminated products are labor and time intensive to sort through, so it’s merely easier and cheaper to just, through it in a landfill. Especially because most facilities just won’t accept such a mess of recyclables.
Bob, and the rest of the EDCO Disposal team, created a system to just deal with the recycling material themselves. Their facilities have more people on the line, and slower movement speeds that allow their workers to complete a more thorough sorting job. This manpower in conjunction with their top-of-the-line facilities, and mechanical sorting technology enables them to create high quality product for various companies to buy derived from San Diego’s recycling.
In addition to high quality facilities, Bob has also worked with San Diego communities to increase the amount of material people recycle. Other than traditional recyclables, EDCO collects demolition debris such as drywall, concrete, and metal that are processed and used by various industries. They are also currently working on increasing the amount of organic material (compost) their facilities can process and working with communities to set up collection systems for businesses and residents alike.
Carolina Martinez – Environmental Health Coalition, Climate Justice Director
Carolina Martines spoke on behalf of the Environmental Health Coalition and emphasized how personal stories can and are used to push for climate justice actions. Her talk was specifically focused on the need for public transit in the San Diego area, and the importance of local community action.
As UCSD students, we’re accustomed to limited transit lines in our immediate area, especially those of us who lived here before the trolley expansion opened. However, this is a problem on a much wider scale in San Diego. 70% of San Digo residents have jobs, schools, or other necessary destinations that aren’t accessible via public transit. Carolina works as an advocate with the San Diego Transportation Equity Working Group to push for greater public transportation access and greater transit quality.
The 10 Transit Lifelines are the immediate priorities for improvement of the San Diego transportation system. All of which have been proposed because of real life experiences. Some of these goals are youth opportunity passes, so people under 25 can ride for free (and a current one year pilot program for those under 18), New Trolley lines along the 805, increasing bus frequency to every 10 minutes, and extending the blue line to South of downtown, which is currently has less transit lines than Northern communities yet has the majority of public transit riders.
One of the ways they are communicating the urgency for the completion of the 10 Lifelines goals is through videos with real people’s stories. Here they are https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_ewL4o1zjJEhEMaef39FG6sKq8Ynu7CZ.
This kind of communication strategy gives local voices the attention they deserve and shows the kind of benefits that real people will experience with the completion of these goals.
Lowell Jooste – LJ Crafted Wines, Owner
After a couple of talks focused on systemic action, Lowell Jooste came up to speak on how his business, LJ Crafted Wines, is pioneering a method to reduce packaging waste in the wine industry.
Lowell used his own life experience to bring a novel idea into the wine world. He noted that there were beer breweries that utilized reusable growlers that their patrons would return after usage. These bottles would then be sanitized and reused for future purchases. Therefore, eliminating the one-use containers on the consumer side. Very reminiscent to the days of milk bottles, before our one-use culture became the standard.
So, Lowell created his own business model to increase sustainability in the wine industry, without compromising quality. He still sources his grapes from Napa Valley and ships out barrels of wine where it will be transferred to growlers on demand in his store located in Birdrock La Jolla.
Now wine is a sensitive product, and to maintain the quality of his carefully sourced wine, Lowell patented a serving technology that allows him to pour wine from the barrel it ages in without allowing oxygen, or other contaminants, to contaminate the rest of the barrel’s contents. As wine is susceptible to oxidation, which can change or degrade the flavor of the wine. Therefore, this serving apparatus plays a vital part in maintaining a viable personal growler wine business model.
Why would such a simple change make a difference in one’s environmental impact? Well, glass is responsible for 50-73% of the wine industries carbon footprint and 45% of the industries carbon emissions. If the environmental reasons aren’t enough to sway you to the growler way of life, perhaps the fact that 70% of the US’s wine bottles are sourced from China, and, due to tariffs and other international trade coast, wine bottles from China double in costs in the span of a year. So reusing bottles also has an economic benefit as well.
Clearly, there is a demand for such a business model. In the six years LJ Crafted wines has been operating, it has saved 123,000 bottles, and gathered a loyal customer base.
Rowdy Keelor – Factory Farming Awareness Coalition (FFAC), Classroom Program Manager
With a focus more on the consumer side, Rowdy Keelor gave us a rundown on industrialized animal farming and its effect on the environment.
First, the disclaimer, Rowdy, with the FFAC, focuses on education, and running programs in classrooms. So, his talk was very fact heavy, all of which I am not able to write about here, but he has interesting content out there if any of this strikes your fancy.
Onto the breakdown, here in the US, we raise 10 billion land animals specifically for consumption, and 80 billion worldwide. We raise more animals for food here in the US than there are humans on this planet currently, and the way we have accomplished such a feat, is through factory farming utilizing intensive confinement. Intensive confinement is the practice of housing a large number of livestock in a small space. By the nature of intensive confinement, this livestock doesn’t eat through grazing, instead they are raised on a diet of soy a corn. So, when you drive by California’s huge soy and corn fields, remember how this is the only diet of the animals in these types of facilities.
Pivoting away from what our farm animals eat, we shift wo what they drink. Anyone know how much of the water on Earth is freshwater? How about how much of that water is actually accessible to humans? The answer to those questions may be surprising. About 3% of water on Earth is freshwater, and of that water, only 1% is accessible to us humans. Yet, how much of our water usage is actually for us? Only 5% of our water usage is from households, while 85% of out water usage is for agriculture, and most of our agricultural water usage goes to goes.
Not only are cows responsible for a large amount of our water usage, but they also generate large amounts of waste, and the current way we deal with this waste is to dump it in giant open aired cesspools. A giant health hazard due to the toxic fumes they release into the air. Think this is an exaggeration? Well, this toxic sludge is responsible for 10-15 thousand of deaths due to the air pollution they cause.
Thiis isn’t even touching on the emissions caused by transporting all the crops to feed livestock, and then transporting the produce from livestock to markets. Or even the inherent health dangers from pumping livestock full of antibiotics, a very real pandemic risk, and have caused localized outbreaks in the past.
Yet despite all these drawbacks of factory farming, we continue to use such techniques, but why do we? Customer demand.
So here is where individual choices become important. The US has a heavy meet and dairy based diet that is both cultural and systemic. If we as individuals, and as a society, make the conscious choices to turn away from meat and dairy based products, we decrease the necessity and benefits of factory farms. That’s not to say we should go vegetarian or vegan, but merely making small changes to our diet can already make a difference.
Rowdy has mastered the ability to convey all of this information in an interesting way in order to educate the current youth. These kids can then go on and educate their parents and other family members and have the foundations to lead a more sustainable lifestyle in adulthood. As consumer demand plays an important part in changing production methods. Just look at meat and dairy alternatives, just a couple decades ago these industries were small and lacked variety, and now there are multiple brands and meat alternatives are getting very convincing.
For those who want to learn more about industrial agriculture, and develop their advocacy skills, the FFAC has and Advocacy Institute for both high school and college students. See more at: https://ffacoalition.org/advocacy-institute/.
Josh Kavanagh – UC San Diego Auxiliary Services, Executive Director
Josh Kavanagh brought us back onto the topic of transportation, but this time with a focus on what UCSD is doing to make its “fleet” greener. The primary answer to this is through shifter to electric vehicles.
Firstly, Josh confronted some of the current stigmas against electric vehicles. One of the major beliefs against transitioning to electric vehicles is the fat that most of our electricity, as a country, is still from fossil fuels. This belief misses a couple of key points; one, the electric cars and needed infrastructure being used stay the same while we switch electricity sources; two, it takes about 10 years for a turnover in vehicles in the US.
Therefore, to prepare for a future of renewable energy available nationally, we must start switching to electric vehicles, and creating the infrastructure needed to support it now.
Infrastructure is especially important for enabling a fully electric fleet in the US. Installing charging stations is one, a commitment, and two, requires the ability to install a charging station in one’s home or apartment. This isn’t really feasible for those who don’t own their homes, and leads to a simple solution, public charging stations.
UCSD houses San Diego’s largest and most diverse charging stations and is still striving to improve it. As UCSD increases its renewable energy sources, this infrastructure will remain the backbone behind supporting electric vehicles around campus. All of which are carefully placed to be in strategic positions around campus. The fast chargers with short time allotments are arranged along the edges of campus, for those who are only in the area for short periods of time. While the 12-hour smart chargers, which take in estimated leave time and prioritize energy direction based off of this information and when our renewable energy sources can generate the most energy, are located at more central locations of campus.
This is for our charging stations located around campus, and UCSD is in the process of creating the Voight Electric Mobility Hub. This will house more 12-hour EV chargers for people who have business on campus all day, and more charging locations for our fleet of electric scooters. It will also host a public electric car sharing program that will be available for one-way trips and won’t require a membership. Of course, there will also be a UCSD specific car sharing program as well.
For more information, check out UCSD’s transportation initiatives at https://transportation.ucsd.edu/initiatives/raise/index.html.
Amy Lerner – UC San Diego Urban Studies and Planning, Associate Teaching Professor
Professor Amy Lerner rounded out the talks with a shift away from climate actions, and instead acknowledged the anxiety that many of us face when it comes to climate issues.
As a person with a both and ecological and social sciences background, Amy is used to looking at the human side of things. One of the fundamentals of environmental action, yet we as a species tend to glaze over how our environmental losses make us feel, even though there’s a word for it. Solastalgia, a term coined by psychologists to describe the feelings of sadness and lost caused by our progressive environmental losses. Or more simply, eco-anxiety.
While images and descriptions of what we’ve lost so far are thought provoking, they also conjure up a feeling of deep sadness. Think of the white expanses of bleached corals, swaths of forests and neighborhoods alike ablaze, the asphalt and cement cities and towns many of us call home that lack even a speck of greenery. For many, these realities also cause deep anxiety due to how large the scale, or from how irreversible and unavoidable they may seem.
A rather unpleasant as well as unhelpful mindset. But to move past it, we must first acknowledge it.
Amy drew from many other environmentalists and authors to convey the importance of cultivating our climate wisdom. As a society, we have to develop climate resilience through passing over our idealism, sweeping away our nihilism, and establish a resilient mindset. In this process, we will also develop our climate wisdom, and a culture with practices that will allow us to survive climate change, as well as mitigate its influence.
We must develop new practices, such as eating less meat or supporting electric vehicles, and learn from other perspectives who have historically been ignored, see the Forest Services increasingly working with indigenous peoples in land management. Even just having a house plant can both bring the benefits of greenery into your life and help improve your mental health.
Of course, Amy also brought up some of our campus initiatives, such as our community gardens, which currently have a waitlist due to the demand for access to greenery, as well as out numerous researchers. Part of the reason our campus is so green (literally) is due to research on student health with campuses incorporate more of nature into campus design. A melding of environmental supporting action, and assisting in decreasing student anxiety, whatever the cause it may have.