Side effects of consumerism

Original post:  Dec 1, 2014

Here in the US, we just followed up the annual celebration of Thanksgiving with a new American tradition. Black Friday was given that name because it's estimated that some stores can do 20% of their annual sales over the weekend following the Thanksgiving holiday.

Ironically, the roots of this decision go back almost eighty years. Thanksgiving was traditionally celebrated on the fifth Thursday of the month until FDR officially made it the fourth Thursday to help extend the Christmas shopping season for retailers.

Mondays are trash pickup days on my street. It's quite easy to tell who recently acquired a major purchase by watching the types of empty boxes that land on the curb. Unless you take the time to recycle, 50" flat screen TV boxes are pretty hard to hide!

As more corporations strengthen their environmental programs, they are beginning to find that reducing the amount of waste materials is not only good citizenship, it can also help the bottom line. One way to help control costs without affecting product quality is to streamline packaging. That can result in fewer raw materials used which can help lower transportation and storage costs. This article in the New York Times quotes a director at Cisco:

“It’s good for Cisco, it’s good for our customers and it’s good for the environment,” said Kathleen Shaver, director of sustainability, risk and compliance at Cisco Systems, which says it has eliminated 1.9 million pounds of packaging this year. “Costs are reduced, not just with material you’re not buying, but with the material you’re not shipping and the material you’re not disposing of.”

All of this push to generate higher consumer sales does add up:

The volume of packaging is still vast and growing. Globally, consumer goods are encased in about 207 million tons of packaging each year, worth $384 billion, estimated a 2013 report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, using analysis by McKinsey & Co. consultants. Packaging could increase 47 percent by 2025, driven by increasingly wasteful practices and the worldwide growth of middle classes with rising purchasing power, the report predicted.

In the United States, packaging makes up about 30 percent of all municipal solid waste, down from 36 percent in 1970, said Susan Selke, interim director of Michigan State University’s School of Packaging. The overall amount of municipal waste, though, has more than doubled in that time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says. “Industry is paying attention, but not enough attention yet,” Ms. Selke said.

To learn more about how companies are helping to reduce this waste through innovative efforts, follow the link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/business/energy-environment/packaging-environment.html?ref=energy-environment&_r=1

Product of its environment

Original post:  Jun 4, 2014

I personally love sushi and sashimi. The incredibly smooth texture of fine raw fish is a wonderful dining experience. Have you ever wondered how this could be possible?

In order to survive, all species must adapt to their environment. At the same time, most of us prefer to eat our meat cooked. That is certainly true for animals that live on the land. But it isn't true for many sea creatures. This excerpt helps explain why:

"Fish are so soft. You can stick your finger through their muscles," he says. "Try doing that with a chicken or cow. Fish muscle is very different than that in land animals."

Why? Because fish can afford to be lazier than terrestrial animals. Fish essentially float all the time. So their muscles don't work constantly to fight gravity. (The buoyancy force in water counteracts the gravitational force, which makes fish virtually weightless.)

"Fish don't have to support their body weight," Mouritsen says, "so their muscle fibers are shorter and less tough than those in land animals." The same goes for the connective tissue holding the muscle fibers together: It's delicate and weak.

The result? Fish has a silky, smooth texture when it's raw, and a flaky, light texture when it's cooked.

Land animals must fight the constant pull of gravity and develop much more tough, fibrous muscle that needs to be cooked to break down that connective tissue.

Even among fish, there is a wide diversity in color.

"Fish that are constantly on the move — say, a tuna — have muscles that are always working and burning carbohydrates aerobically," Mouritsen says.

The muscles need oxygen to make energy. And the molecule that carries oxygen to muscle contains iron. Guess what color iron is in the fish? Red.

In contrast, fish that mostly hang out in one place or on the bottom of the ocean — say, for instance, flounder — have muscles that don't rely on oxygen to create energy. No oxygen means no iron to carry it, which means the muscles tend to be white. (Of course, most fish have a mixture of these two type of muscles and thus can look red, white or pink.)

Here is a link to the full article:  Sushi's Secret: Why We Get Hooked On Raw Fish : The Salt : NPR