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12 Simple Hacks for an Eco-Friendly Kitchen

Food waste. Energy-draining appliances. Toxic cleaning products. Your kitchen can be a very environmentally unfriendly room in your home ? if you let it. Fortunately, it?s also a space in which it?s easy to go green. Here are 12 simple hacks for a more eco-friendly kitchen.

1. Switch to energy-efficient appliances

When it?s time for a new kitchen appliance, be sure to do your homework on the most energy-efficient models you can buy. For instance, refrigerators with top or bottom freezers often are more efficient than the side-by-side models, as less cold air escapes when you open the door, according to HGTV. And if you?re in the market for an oven, consider convection. ?This type of oven uses a fan to drive heat rapidly from source to food so it cooks it 25 percent faster than a conventional oven,? HGTV says.

2. Conserve as you cook

Even if you have energy-efficient appliances, you still might be wasting energy. For example, cooking or reheating food in the oven when a microwave would have worked just fine uses a lot of unnecessary energy. ?Even small things make a difference, such as using lids on pots to bring them to a boil faster and using as few burners as possible,? according to the DIY Network.

3. Clean with natural products

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Choose natural cleaning products to tackle messes in your kitchen (and around the rest of your home). Natural cleaners can be just as powerful as their synthetic counterparts ? but without all the toxins that are detrimental to your health and pollute the environment. Plus, if you make your own cleaning products, you?ll cut down on production and packaging waste. You might even have some ingredients already in your kitchen that can help clean it.

4. Swap paper towels for reusable rags

Towels and sponges are major sources of germs in the kitchen. So in that regard, single-use towels help to cut your risk of getting sick. But instead of turning to paper towels, choose reusable rags for a more eco-friendly approach. Have a stash of kitchen rags, such as small microfiber cloths, that you can use for one-time cleanups and then toss in a laundry basket. Once you have a full load of rags, throw them in a sanitizing wash. Yes, it?s a little less convenient, but you might be surprised by how many paper towels (and how much money) you save in the process.

5. Opt for a full dishwasher over handwashing

These days, being a dishwashing eco-warrior is as simple as filling your dishwasher, turning it on and walking away. ?It may feel more virtuous to wash by hand, but it?s actually more wasteful: You use up to 27 gallons of water per load by hand versus as little as 3 gallons with an Energy Star-rated dishwasher,? according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. ?And just scrape off the food scraps instead of rinsing each dish before you load it.?

6. Grow a kitchen herb garden

When you buy locally grown food ? or better yet, grow your own at home ? you?re helping the planet. ?When you eat from your own garden, you eliminate the need to use fossil fuels to transport vegetables from a faraway farmer’s field to your plate,? the DIY Network says. ?Even growing your own herbs on the windowsill helps; when you buy fresh herbs at the grocery store, you usually end up wasting leftovers and throwing away the plastic package.? Plus, the more plant-based your diet is, the fewer resources it takes to produce your food.

7. Buy in bulk

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Buying food in bulk often is better for your wallet and the environment ? just as long as you actually consume the food you buy. Certain foods are usually easier to buy in bulk, thanks to their long shelf life. But it all depends on what you eat and how well you store the food. Make space in your kitchen to properly keep your bulk buys, and enjoy this simple way to do right by the planet.

8. Keep a full fridge

Sometimes your refrigerator needs a bit of help to run as efficiently as possible. For starters, keep the condenser coils free of dust and dirt. This allows the fridge to stay cool with less effort. Plus, make sure the fridge door seal is still strong. And if you don?t tend to keep much in your refrigerator, you might want to fill that space. The Kitchn recommends placing containers of water in empty fridge space to ?keep things cold so your refrigerator doesn?t have to work as hard.? The containers help to reduce the amount of air transfer whenever you open the fridge door.

9. Store refrigerated food the right way

Besides maintaining the actual function of your refrigerator, how you store your food also matters for its efficiency. For instance, allowing hot food to cool (in a safe manner to prevent bacteria growth) before you store it in the fridge prevents the appliance from having to work extra hard to cool it, according to The Kitchn. Likewise, cover your food to stop it from releasing moisture. ?When left uncovered, foods will leach this moisture into the air and the compressor in your refrigerator will have to work twice as hard to remove it,? The Kitchn says. And it should go without saying that storing food in reusable containers will score you major eco-friendly points.

10. Maximize efficient lighting

Bright lighting is necessary in the kitchen for safe cooking. So you?ll definitely want to make sure you?re using efficient bulbs to conserve as much energy as possible. If you haven?t already, make the switch to LED bulbs, which use less energy and last longer than standard bulbs. And don?t forget about the lights over your stove or in your fridge. Plus, maximize the natural light your kitchen gets by limiting window treatments and using bright colors that reflect light.

11. Start composting

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Up your green game turning appropriate food waste into compost instead of tossing it in the trash. ?It’s easy to get started with a small bin that you keep moist and mix the contents of about once a week,? Food Network says. ?Then, after a few weeks, you’ll have nutrient-rich compost to perk up your garden ? and much less food waste in your trashcan.? Even if you?re an apartment dweller, there are several composting options that could fit your needs.

12. Skip the full remodel

If you?re looking to renovate your kitchen, aim not to rip things down to the studs. ?Think ?refresh,? not ?remodel,?? DIY Network says. ?New paint and updated hardware for cabinets can give you a new look without producing the landfill waste that a remodeling project generates.? Try to donate materials you don?t need anymore. And if you bring in anything new, look for sustainable options, such as countertops made from recycled materials.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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12 Simple Hacks for an Eco-Friendly Kitchen

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15 Green Challenges Just in Time for Earth Day

April 22 is Earth Day ? a day of political and civic action focused on protecting our planet. Because every person counts when it comes to eco-friendly actions, here are 15 green challenges to try this Earth Day.

1. Take a shorter shower

Start your Earth Day on an eco-friendly note by taking a shorter shower than normal. Set a timer to really challenge yourself ? and bonus points if you keep the water on the colder side. ?Saving water reduces carbon pollution, too,? according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. ?That’s because it takes a lot of energy to pump, heat, and treat your water.? Be sure you also turn off the water while brushing your teeth. And if you have any leaky fixtures, make Earth Day the day you finally get them fixed.

2. Buy local

If you?re doing any shopping on Earth Day, make a point only to go to local establishments ? especially restaurants that serve food produced in the area. ?In North America, fruits and vegetables travel an average of 1,500 miles before reaching your plate,? according to the World Wildlife Fund. If you have a farmers market open near you, head over to stock up on fresh, local produce.

3. Green your commute

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Challenge yourself to a greener commute in the spirit of Earth Day by biking, walking or using public transit. ?If 25 percent of Americans today used mass transit or other alternatives to driving for their daily commute, annual transportation emissions nationwide would be slashed by up to 12 percent,? according to the NRDC. If ditching your car isn?t an option, at least see whether you can carpool with someone ? even if it?s just to run errands. Every little bit counts.

4. Take your car for a tuneup

Speaking of driving, Earth Day is a fitting day to take your car in for a tuneup. ?If all Americans kept their tires properly inflated, we could save 1.2 billion gallons of gas each year,? the NRDC says. ?A simple tune-up can boost miles per gallon anywhere from 4 percent to 40 percent, and a new air filter can get you a 10 percent boost.? So check your tires and schedule your car for other service if necessary to make sure you?re rolling as eco-friendly as possible.

5. Check for expiring food

Make Earth Day the day you finally clean out your refrigerator and pantry, checking for expired and almost-expired food. ?Approximately 10 percent of U.S. energy use goes into growing, processing, packaging, and shipping food ? about 40 percent of which just winds up in the landfill,? according to the NRDC. So if you find items that will expire soon, work them into your meal plan before they do.

6. Go vegan

If you eat a plant-based or mostly plant-based diet, you?ve already won this challenge. If not, at least make Earth Day a vegan day. ?Since livestock products are among the most resource-intensive to produce, eating meat-free meals can make a big difference,? the NRDC says. And who knows? You might discover some great vegan options to regularly incorporate into your meals.

7. Wash on the lowest settings possible

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If you have laundry to do, keep it as eco-friendly as possible. ?Using cold water can save up to 80 percent of the energy required to wash clothes,? according to the WWF. ?Choosing a low setting on the washing machine will also help save water.? Similarly, if you?re washing dishes, try to run a full load in the dishwasher instead of handwashing, which actually uses more water.

8. Switch off and unplug

You don?t have to go out on Earth Day and buy all new energy-efficient appliances (unless you really want to). But you can use the day to hunt for ?energy vampires? ? i.e., electronics and other appliances drawing power even when they?re not technically in use. Some examples include a computer sitting idle instead of fully shut down or even a coffee maker left plugged in just to keep that little clock functioning. Switch off and unplug what you don?t need to slay those vampires.

9. Green your lighting

Again, you probably won?t be purchasing new efficient appliances on Earth Day, but maybe you can pick up some more efficient lighting. If you haven?t already, make the switch to LED bulbs. ?LED lightbulbs use up to 80 percent less energy than conventional incandescents,? according to the NRDC. ?They?re also cheaper in the long run: A 10-watt LED that replaces your traditional 60-watt bulb will save you $125 over the lightbulb?s life.? Plus, instead of always using overhead lighting with multiple bulbs, try positioning some lamps around your home and even at work to lower your energy use.

10. Tweak the thermostat

Depending on where you live, you might be using the heat or the air-conditioning (or neither) when Earth Day rolls around. If you?re in a climate-controlled environment, tweak the thermostat just a little bit, so it kicks on less often. ?Moving your thermostat down just two degrees in winter and up two degrees in summer could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per year,? according to the WWF.

11. Look for air leaks

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Fixing air leaks in your home can potentially save around 10 percent to 20 percent on your energy bill, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Not only is that great for your wallet, but the environment will thank you, too. Some common places to look are around windows and doors, baseboards, vents and fans, fireplace dampers and the attic hatch. Plus, check your fridge to make sure its seal is still strong.

12. Broaden your recycling knowledge

If you already recycle, that?s great. Definitely don?t get lazy about it on Earth Day. But how well-versed are you in recycling protocol? Recycling rules sometimes vary by community, and there?s a chance you?re unwittingly recycling something that clogs the machines or otherwise just belongs in the trash. Find your local rules, and read through them to make sure you?re doing things correctly.

13. Take special recyclables to the correct facilities

As long as you?re thinking about recycling, use Earth Day to gather any special recyclables that can?t go in your normal recycling bins, and take them to the proper drop-off facilities. Often there are recycling events on Earth Day that accept items, such as old electronics and batteries. Check your community calendar, so you don?t miss events for any special recyclables you want to get rid of.

14. Sign up for e-bills

This Earth Day challenge should only take you a few minutes. If you?re still getting paper bills or other mailers you don?t need, change your settings to get the electronic versions instead. ?In the United States, paper products make up the largest percentage of municipal solid waste, and hard copy bills alone generate almost 2 million tons of CO2,? according to the WWF. Likewise, tell companies to take you off their mailing lists for advertisements (you can find all those online nowadays anyway), and ask for digital receipts and records whenever possible.

15. Ask for eco-friendly additions at work

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You might not have as much control at your office as you do at home in terms of making the place more eco-friendly. But you still can put in some requests. Ask for eco-friendly additions, such as recycling bins if you don?t already have them or 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper products. Challenge your colleagues to bring in reusable mugs and water bottles instead of using paper or (gasp) Styrofoam cups. And if you have an office coffee pot, try to get people on board with purchasing one of the more eco-friendly coffee brands (and definitely not the single-serve coffee pods).

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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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15 Green Challenges Just in Time for Earth Day

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Shell shows how Big Oil cracks up over climate change

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The decades-old alliance of fossil fuel interests is starting to fracture.

Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world’s biggest oil companies, recently said it had dropped out of a Washington D.C. industry lobbying group, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, or AFPM. Why? Because Shell supports the Paris Agreement on climate change and the lobbying group doesn’t.

“We must be prepared to openly voice our concerns where we find misalignment with an industry association on climate-related policy,” wrote Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden. “In cases of material misalignment, we should also be prepared to walk away,”

This could be a crucial fissure in a larger crackup. Shell also said that it might leave nine other industry associations — including the American Petroleum Institute, and the Chamber of Commerce — over climate policy. It’s unlikely to reconcile with all of these groups, said Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

There’s a recent precedent for corporations falling out over climate action. The once-powerful American Legislative Exchange Council has lost dozens of corporate members (including Shell) over recent years, as a result of its position on climate change and other issues. ALEC, which has worked closely with the climate-denying Heartland Institute, says that climate change is “inevitable” and that its causes are still up for debate.

None of this suggests that Shell’s corporate executives will soon join valve-turners to shut off their own pipelines. The oil giant is still trying to make a profit by selling fuels that contribute to climate change. Last year, it raked in $21.4 billion. It’s also still contributing to lobbying groups that fight efforts to curb carbon emissions .

But compared to it’s Big Oil brethren,, Shell stands out for calling on the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases and funneling money into clean energy efforts. In the end, this political realignment matters. If fewer powerful corporations are standing in the way of taking action on climate change, necessary legislation is more likely to pass.

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Shell shows how Big Oil cracks up over climate change

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Is Budweiser the king of green beers? We unpacked its Super Bowl ads.

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Super Bowl LIII made history yesterday as the lowest-scoring NFL championship of all time. In other words, it was kind of a snoozefest. But if the lack of touchdowns — combined with shirtless Adam Levine — didn’t compel you to turn off the TV, you may have noticed an interesting trend in the big game’s beer commercials. Budweiser, the so-called “king of beers,” is trying really hard to make itself the beer of tree-hugging, health-conscious millennials.

In at least two (we’re going to leave the nature-filled, ASRM ear porn one alone for now) of its eight Super Bowl commercials for various products, beer giant Anheuser-Busch InBev seemed to lean hard on environmentally-themed marketing messages.

In the most blatant enviro-targeting ad, the scene opens with a Dalmatian sitting atop a Bud-laden wagon pulled by Clydesdales romping through a picturesque field, which upon zoom-out reveals itself to be a wind farm. Cue the line “Now brewed with wind power, for a better tomorrow.” Oh, and did we mention it’s set to the tune of “Blowin’ in the Wind?” Subtle.

Then, in a Monty Python-esque epic sequence of royal mishaps and alcoholic adventuring, the company made it clear Bud Light is brewed with no corn syrup, directly calling out its competitors — Miller Lite and Coors Light — for using the much-maligned syrup.

Anheuser-Busch is far from the first company to take advantage of Americans’ growing concerns over climate change. Remember those midterm election campaign ads touting candidates’ climate credentials? We certainly do. But to see green issues front and center (at least for 30 seconds at a time) during the Super Bowl was a little surreal to some viewers.

“I never thought there’d be an intersection between AGRICULTURE and FOOTBALL, but then came the BREW-HA-HA about CORN SYRUP in BEER!” Washington Post columnist Tamar Haspel tweeted about the king’s quest ad. But as Haspel points out in her extended thread, being an environmentally friendly beer company takes more than a few commercials.

The criticism of Bud’s Super Bowl ads has been swift. Understandably, the corn industry was pretty miffed that America’s favorite beer would publicly turn on corn farmers.

Bud Light uses rice to do the same job that corn syrup or other added sugars do in competing brews. So … how much does that really matter, planet-wise? Corn syrup, rice syrup, or no syrup, beer has never exactly been a health beverage. Rice and corn both have their associated emissions — but so do all foods. So maybe we should just eat less meat, and get over it?

As for the wind power, Anheuser-Busch InBev is indeed making moves to get to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2025. That’s big coming from such a massive company — the largest brewer in the world. AB isn’t just responsible for big names like Bud and Michelob, it also owns hipster favorites like Elysian, Devils Backbone, and hundreds more. The company set goals to improve sourcing, water stewardship and packaging for all its brews over the next several years. This is all great, and so is the push for greater transparency of ingredients in alcoholic beverages — but before we raise a glass, there are a few more things to consider.

Anheuser-Busch InBev is still a gigantic corporation, and one with apparent ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose rejection of climate science and environmental regulation is so extreme that even Exxon Mobil decided to jump ship.

So at the end of the day, how should we view the green-tinged promise (and it’s not even Saint Patrick’s Day yet!) of these beer ads? Supporting progressive climate action on a political scale, in addition to its company-wide initiatives, would likely be in Anheuser-Busch InBev’s best interest. It’s also in our best interest if we want to keep drinking beer in the years to come. Climate change is coming for our crops, including rice, corn, hops, and barley — so unless we act fast, we won’t even have a frothy pint to drown our sorrows in.

Now if that doesn’t send you running for the vegan chicken wings and electric cars, I don’t know what will.

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Is Budweiser the king of green beers? We unpacked its Super Bowl ads.

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Factory farms no longer have to report their air emissions. That’s dangerous for their neighbors.

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This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Rosemary Partridge has lived in Sac County, Iowa, for 40 years. She has watched the state’s agricultural landscape change, with large-scale hog farms taking over nearly all the land surrounding her home. The stink of the neighboring farms is “unbearable,” making her nauseous whenever she is outside. She and her husband, once cattle and crop farmers who now plant their land with native grasses, suffer health problems — including her husband’s chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — that they worry are a result of the pollution their neighbors are pumping into the air.

Eleven hundred miles to the east, Lisa Inzerillo wonders how much longer she and her husband can tolerate living across the street from six chicken barns, one of the many concentrated animal farming operations (CAFOs) that make the area the poultry production epicenter of Maryland’s Delmarva peninsula. She says she suffers chronic allergies and her husband has had several bouts of bronchitis since the chicken farm moved in about three years ago. “At night, you see the dust from these fans,” she says. “That’s fecal matter, that’s feathers, god knows what else. And if you’re seeing it, you’re breathing it.”

The two families are united by the experience of living near large-scale livestock operations: unable to use their porch or land on certain days, keeping windows closed, and worrying constantly about long-term health consequences. Until recently, though, they could at least be assured that in the case of a major emission of hazardous waste, farm operators would be required by law to notify state and federal responders.

But recent actions by the GOP-controlled Congress and the Trump administration have exempted big livestock farms from reporting air emissions. The moves follow a decade-long push by the livestock industry for exemption and leave neighbors of large-scale operations in the dark about what they’re inhaling. If that weren’t enough, environmental advocates warn that the failure to monitor those emissions makes it even harder to assess the climate effects of large-scale agriculture.

Carrie Apfel, an attorney for Earthjustice who is leading a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency by a coalition of environmental and animal-welfare organizations, says the exemption indicates “further denial of the impact that these [emissions] are having, whether it’s on climate or whether it’s on public health.”

The EPA declined a request for comment on the consequences of CAFO emissions for human health or the environment.

The two laws in question, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), required farms to notify national and local emergency response committees, respectively, in the case of spills, leaks, or other discharge of hazardous waste. That included farm waste products like ammonia and hydrogen sulfide over a “reportable quantity” of 100 pounds. Most farms don’t meet that reporting standard, but large-scale livestock operations commonly do, according to researchers from the University of Iowa.

But in March, Congress added the Fair Agricultural Reporting Method (FARM) Act, which exempts farms from reporting air emissions under CERCLA, to its appropriations bill. And in November, Trump’s EPA issued proposed rules to exempt those same operations from air emissions reporting under the EPCRA. The agency’s public-comment period on the new rules ended December 14.

In response, a coalition of national and local advocacy groups — including Food & Water Watch, the Humane Society, Animal Legal Defense Fund, and North Carolina’s Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help — is suing the EPA. Advocates say these exemptions only serve the biggest farms and endanger community health and the environment. The EPA requested to stay the litigation for six months on November 29. The U.S. district court in Washington, D.C., has yet to rule on the motion.

These latest moves to exempt farms from reporting requirements follow a decade of push and pull between the livestock industry and community advocates. In 2008, at the tail end of the second Bush administration, the EPA issued its first EPCRA and CERCLA reporting exemption for farms. The exemption had been prompted by lobbying from the National Chicken Council, the National Turkey Federation, and the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association.

At the time, the EPA defended its decision by saying that “reports are unnecessary because, in most cases, a federal response is impractical and unlikely.” But the exemption was overturned by the court of appeals for the District of Columbia in April 2017, which said that “reports aren’t nearly as useless as the EPA makes them out to be.”

The livestock industry and its Republican supporters in Congress urged the EPA to challenge the court’s ruling. Several industry groups, including the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, National Pork Producers Council, American Farm Bureau Federation, and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association met with EPA leaders in July 2018. But rather than challenge the court’s decision, the EPA turned to its own rule-making process to create a local reporting exemption that dovetailed with the FARM Act’s national reporting exemption.

The exemptions have ties to Big Ag, too. The FARM Act was introduced by Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer in February and supported by the livestock industry. Senator  Fischer received more than $230,000 from agribusiness PACs in 2017 and 2018.

These exemptions come as scientists, citizens, and even the EPA’s own researchers express concern about the environmental and human-health effects of emissions from large-scale livestock farms. A September 2017 report from the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General said that the agency had not found a reliable method for tracking emissions from animal farms or of ascertaining whether the farms comply with the Clean Air Act. A recent report from the World Resources Institute lists reducing air emissions from livestock farming as a major step in addressing climate change.

People who live near these large livestock operations have reason to worry that their health is at risk. The major chemicals being emitted are ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, which can interact with other air pollutants to reduce air quality. Animal farms are responsible for more than 70 percent of the ammonia emissions in the U.S. Chronic exposure to the levels of these chemicals that come from big farms can lead to a range of health problems, according to researchers from the University of Iowa, from headaches and nausea to respiratory damage. More than 100 farm workers have died after being exposed to high amounts of hydrogen sulfide in manure lagoons or elsewhere on large-scale farms.

In the absence of detailed federal monitoring, some communities rely on citizen scientists to monitor waterways and air for toxic emissions. In Iowa, Rosemary Partridge once tested local water for nitrates with Iowa’s IOWATER program, which trained residents to do basic water monitoring. But those local programs are also vulnerable — Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources ended IOWATER in 2016 after several years of underfunding.

Partridge says the stakes of not monitoring farm waste are clear. “[This] should be of monumental interest to everyone,” she says. “These are major greenhouse gases. People don’t even know about it,” she says, referring to other emissions from animal agriculture like methane.

Both Partridge and the Inzerillos in Maryland have weighed whether to stay on their family land or move away. Partridge says she and her husband decided against uprooting their lives. “We’re going to stay here until we can’t anymore,” she says. “We love our land. There’s no reason that an industry should drive us off our land.”

Lisa Inzerillo says she and her husband would like to leave but aren’t yet ready to walk away from land that once belonged to her grandparents. “It was a dream place for us,” she says. “But living long term there, I just don’t know.”

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Factory farms no longer have to report their air emissions. That’s dangerous for their neighbors.

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Here’s what 3 Newark residents had to say about the city’s lead crisis

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Four years after lead was discovered in Flint’s drinking water, a similar public health crisis is playing out in New Jersey’s most populous city, Newark.

Residents of Newark say over the past year and a half, top city and state officials assured them that their water supply was safe. But as early as 2016, state-run tests that showed elevated lead levels at local schools.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, together with the Newark Education Workers’ Caucus, filed a lawsuit against the city in June, accusing it of violating federal safe drinking water laws. The suit alleges Newark both failed to treat its water properly to prevent lead from leaching off old service pipes into residents’ drinking water and failed to notify residents about the elevated lead levels.

For most of 2018, Newark’s website read: “NEWARK’S WATER IS ABSOLUTELY SAFE TO DRINK,” according to the New York Times. Since the lawsuit was filed, the city has sprung into action, giving away 40,000 water filters across the city of 285,000 people and telling parents their children should not drink the water.

The situation has drawn parallels to the Flint water crisis. “The actual facts of what happened in Flint may not be the exact same, but the overall arc of what happened is,” Mae Wu, an attorney and water expert at the NRDC, told Grist.

The revelation of this potentially widening public health crisis has angered many Newark residents. Here are three community members’ experiences, as told to Grist reporter Paola Rosa-Aquino. Their statements have been edited for length and clarity.


Though the city of Newark is distributing water filters, like these, for residents to mitigate lead levels in their homes, residents say there are not enough for those who need them. Image courtesy of Shakima Thomas

Debra Salters, community activist

I live in a building in the East Ward. We didn’t get water filters. The people who had something to say about it — the activists — we were turned away. We’re actually meeting with our building’s owners next week to find out what the situation is and if they can get the water tested.

Even now, not everyone who lives here knows about the lead in the water. More and more people are finding out, from family members out of state and other cities. Not only are we drinking the water, we’re bathing in it. We’re brushing our teeth in it. We’re washing our hair with it. It’s affecting our entire life here and no one seems to care, until the lawsuit, until they were made to care.

None of the top officials have really done anything to make the public aware of the public health crisis. They denied there was a problem when we, the citizens, were digging up information and bringing it to them to make sure. First, we found out about the lead in schools, and they tried to tell us the water was OK to drink at home. If you’re saying the water is not good in the schools, then how is it fine in our homes, if it’s all coming from the same source? We were shooed away like gnats at a barbecue.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (left) looks on as Senior Aide Andrea Mason (center) speaks to residents at a town hall concerning the city’s lead problem.Image courtesy of Shakima Thomas

Yvette Jordan, teacher and member of Newark Education Workers Caucus

My concern as well as other educators who I have spoken with, of course, is our students as well as small children and those most vulnerable, including elderly and women who are pregnant. We felt we represented a cross-section of our city and especially of those who would be impacted. A couple of us who were homeowners or parents of small children — we felt emotional about this. We could really speak to it with some credibility. My own home’s water was found to be 42.2 parts per billion which is over the federal threshold for lead.

Our teachers’ group was approached by the Natural Resource Defense Council and they asked if we could join them in a lawsuit against the City of Newark. We asked, “Why?” They said, “Well, your water actually rivals Flint, Michigan.” We were alarmed. We said we’d join them.

I mentioned it in my classroom with my students. Some students have heard something and others don’t know what I’m talking about. I feel it’s a failure of public trust in coming forward and saying exactly what is happening.

I think a lot of times people who are affiliated with those who are in power try to downplay what is going on. They try to say to those who are speaking out about it are being irresponsible, that we shouldn’t say anything because it will scare the public. Well, guess what? They should be scared.

Shakima Thomas’s son, 4, bathes in water in Newark, New Jersey.Image courtesy of Shakima Thomas

Shakima Thomas, social worker

I pay for water and it’s really confusing for me that I have to pay for toxic water. What I’m paying is not adding up to the service that I’m getting. I don’t appreciate it, especially as a hard working person. Even as a mom, I have to protect my son, who’s a four-year-old. He’s okay and doesn’t have any elevated levels of lead in his bloodstream, but this still is a public health disaster.

It’s people’s lives. Who wants to have lead in your bloodstream? Who wants that? None of us. We were just exposed to this toxic water. It’s horrible. I think it should be a federal class action lawsuit against this city. That’s what I would think. And I think that we should be reimbursed from the time that administration knew about the lead in the water up until now. From 2016 to now, I feel as though my fees for water should be waived, because I was buying poison, and it wasn’t even consensual. I’m not just going to go out there willingly purchasing poison. I’m just not gonna do that. So, that’s what makes this even more of a scandal.

The mayor keeps saying that this isn’t like Flint. It is the same as Flint in the way that they tried to cover it up. It’s the same thing. We were victimized by this administration. They gamble with our health. They put politics first before justice.

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Here’s what 3 Newark residents had to say about the city’s lead crisis

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Best climate scenario is still too hot for many communities of color

It’s no surprise that the U.N.’s new major climate report has a lot to say about heat. But as average global temperatures continue to rise, certain communities are more at risk of getting burned than others.

Extreme heat already kills more people in the United States than any other weather event, including hurricanes or flooding. And when it strikes, urban low-income and communities of color often pay the highest price.

To paint a picture of how serious this is, we’ll need to get into some numbers. Scientists say that if we want to prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change, we have to stop the world from reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2030. This is a hard number to hit, considering we’re currently on track to reach 3.4 Celsius by the end of the century. But even if we succeed, that moderate rate of warming would still lead to 38,000 more heat-related deaths each year compared to rates from the 1960s to 1990s.

Just how much heat mortality rates rise will depend on additional factors, including the vulnerability of specific populations, the built environment, and whether or not people have access to air conditioning. Older people, children, and people with pre-existing conditions are the most vulnerable to the heat. It can trigger asthma attacks and other complications as the body struggles to cool itself.

“You have more emergency room visits, more doctor visits, it’s just bad all around,” says Afif El-Hasan, a pediatrician and national spokesperson for the American Lung Association.

El-Hasan, who also serves on the Environmental Justice Advisory Group at the Southern California Air Quality Management District, says some of his low-income patients keep their windows open in lieu of air conditioning, inadvertently increasing their exposure to nearby sources of air pollution. Those pollutants can end up damaging their lungs, making them even more vulnerable to heat waves. The changing climate, coupled with socioeconomic inequities, trigger an avalanche of health risks, El-Hasan says. “Everything just cascades on top of each other and becomes a bigger problem than it might have otherwise been.”

Like real estate, heat vulnerability is very much about location. Not only are neighborhoods that border freeways more polluted, but they’re also actually hotter too. Plants and trees help cool the air, while dark pavement traps heat. As a result, places with more concrete and less green — often low-income, black and brown neighborhoods where there’s been a history of redlining or disinvestment — are several degrees warmer than their typically more affluent neighbors. It’s called the urban heat island effect, and in places like New York City, its consequences are stark. On average, 100 people die each year in the city — half of them African Americans, even though they only make up a quarter of the population.

“It’s becoming unlivable in urban cities,” says Cynthia Herrera, Environmental Policy and Advocacy Coordinator at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a community-based organization in Harlem. Over the summer, her organization tracked the number of weather advisories in the hopes of gathering information to help the community adapt to a warming climate. They recorded four heat waves this past summer — a number that’s likely to rise but already feels overwhelming to residents.

“Even if we just stay the same and have four heat waves every summer for the next 10 years we’re not prepared,” she said.

Heat-related deaths are entirely preventable, and there are still ways for communities to adapt — like greening cities and making sure people have places to cool down. Kim Knowlton, senior scientist and deputy director at the National Resources Defence Council, has hope that the U.N. report will be a wake-up call.

“The science about this has to do with everyone,” Knowlton says. “I hope that people start to demand protections for themselves.”

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Best climate scenario is still too hot for many communities of color

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California wants all of its electricity carbon-free. How’s that possible?

If you want to get electricity generated by fossil fuels in California you’re soon going to be out of luck. A bill that just made it through the legislature requires the state’s electricity to come entirely from zero-carbon sources by 2045.

Environmentalists campaigned hard for the bill. Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, called its passage, “a pivotal moment for California, for the country and the world.”

That’s assuming Governor Jerry Brown signs it into law. Brown reportedly said he won’t sign unless the legislature also passes a bill to expand the energy grid to cover several states.

There’s a key term of art in this clean-energy bill that’s easy to miss if you aren’t clued in. Activists and like-minded politicians often campaign for “100 percent renewable,” but this bill mandates 100 percent carbon-free sources of electricity. Catch that? It means California is likely to replace fossil fuels with more electricity from large hydroelectric dams (not considered renewable under California rules), nuclear reactors, and any new technologies, like fusion, that become viable in the next 30 years.

There’s a big debate among greens over how much wind and solar an electric grid can handle.

Right now, California gets about a third of its electricity from renewables. Another third comes from natural gas. The rest comes from large hydroelectric dams, nuclear, and a little coal.

Most experts say that California — and the United States as a whole — could eventually get 80 percent of its electricity from renewables, but it’s really hard to fill that last 20 percent (see explanations here and here). A few academics, most famously Stanford’s Mark Jacobson (a 2016 Grist 50 member), think 100 percent renewable energy is within our grasp.

The new bill says that California will have to get half its electricity from renewables by 2027 and 60 percent by 2030. That seems within reach because the state expects to produce 50 percent renewable electricity by 2020.

Where will the other half come from? California’s network of dams provides as much as a fifth of its electricity in some years, but that depends on the weather. In the middle of the drought in 2015, California hydropower was less than half of what it is in an average year.

California Energy Commission

In-state nuclear looks like a long shot. It provides 10 percent of the state’s electricity, but the state’s only nuclear plant, near San Luis Obispo, is slated to shut down in 2025.

And then there’s conservation: If people turn off their lights and air conditioners, the state won’t need to generate as much electricity.

Finally, there’s generation from outside the state, which is the most likely way that California will compensate for any shortfall. Californians already buy hydropower from Washington and Oregon, along with some nuclear electricity from Arizona. If Brown signs the mandate into law, they’re likely to get more.

Of course, climate action is a planetary problem, not a local problem, so there’s only so much one state can do. It doesn’t help the climate if California buys Arizona’s low-carbon electricity while Arizona buys the fossil-fuel power that California shunned. But California could prove to other states that switching to clean electricity isn’t so hard. Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington, D.C are considering bills to make the switch. Hawaii already has a carbon-free law — not just for electricity, but for all forms of energy.

Brown is holding out for another bill that would allow California’s electric grid to bring in renewable resources from say, windy Wyoming, to big coastal cities like Los Angeles. The larger the grid, the greater the likelihood that it contains a spot where the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. But many labor and environmental justice groups are fighting against that bill on the grounds that it would give away local control. The Sierra Club and Earthjustice oppose it; the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists back it.

In the meantime, it seems like every environmental group is cheering the passage of the zero carbon bill.

By shooting for 100 percent carbon free, instead of 100-percent renewable, California is shifting from the true north of activists’ demands. Yet activists appear exultant. It’s like what New York’s Governor Mario Cuomo said back in 1985, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”

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California wants all of its electricity carbon-free. How’s that possible?

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The U.S. forced Bikini Islanders to deal with nuclear tests and climate change. Now, it’s walking away.

Anderson Jibas, the mayor of Bikini Atoll, has for years wanted to assert his nation’s financial independence from the United States. And late last year, he found an unlikely ally in his battle: the Trump administration.

At the end of last year, the Department of the Interior released $59 million to the Bikini government to spend on whatever it wants, whenever it wants. The decision ended almost three decades of what Jibas has branded a colonialist system.

Bikini Atoll is part of the Marshall Islands, a widespread chain of more than 1,000 islands. In 1946, the U.S. evacuated its 167 residents and spent the next 12 years testing nuclear bombs in the area. To this day, Bikini is uninhabitable, and its natives’ descendants remain in exile — mainly on the previously uninhabited Kili and Ejit islands, roughly 500 miles to the southeast.

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Today, Kili and Ejit, as well as the entire Marshall Islands, face a grave threat from sea-level rise spurred by climate change. In fact, a new report funded by the U.S. military, which appeared in the journal Science Advances, argues that previous estimates of many tropical atolls being uninhabitable by the 22nd century were too conservative. The recent research suggests that rather than the sea swallowing these islands, titanic waves crashing over them will ruin freshwater supplies for residents closer to 2050.

The U.S. set up a trust fund to help the Bikinians settle on these unfamiliar islands, doling out a yearly allowance to local officials. The Bikini Resettlement Trust Fund, as it is known, has become the subject of an acrimonious battle and ideological debate over the future of Bikini. For the Kili-Bikini-Ejit (KBE) government, Interior’s decision to hand over control of the fund represents a move towards self-determination. It sees control over the funds as crucial to being able to fortify Kili and Ejit from climate change-related hazards. But others — including Lisa Murkowski, the Republican Senator from Alaska, which also faces threats due to a warming world — wonder if the U.S. has essentially washed its hands of the islanders, leaving atoll officials to face the future without any support.

In December 2017, Murkowski introduced legislation to re-establish U.S. oversight of the Bikini trust fund. In February, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing to discuss the bill.

“We need the opportunity to move ahead and not just sit back and get slapped in the face with old colonialist and paternalistic systems that demean our honor and our integrity and treat us like children who do not know what they are doing,” Mayor Jibas said during his testimony.

According to his government, its limited annual budgets are almost depleted by funding food, fuel, housing, and education on Kili Island, leaving little for climate mitigation. With the newly released money, the council is making plans to place riprap along most of the seashore, plant vegetation that will prevent sea water from pouring inland, replace the current housing stock with buildings three to four feet above ground, and install solar-powered pumps to redirect rising water.

If all this fails, the spectre of another relocation looms, and Bikinians will likely require a bail out from the world’s richer nations.

Jack Niedenthal is skeptical of the council’s sudden windfall. An American citizen who lives on the islands and managed the Resettlement Trust Fund for 30 years, he — like Murkowski — believes the U.S. is simply abdicating its responsibility to the islanders.

“Think about it: Here’s this embarrassing event that’s been a thorn in your side for decades; and now, in a congressional hearing, you have a Bikinian saying ‘We’re never coming back to the U.S. again for anything,’” Niedenthal says. “If I’m the U.S., I’m doing cartwheels.”

Gordon Benjamin, the Marshallese lawyer representing the Bikini government in its negotiations with Interior, says he’s pleased at the faith Department officials are placing in the council. “I don’t like Trump, I’ll say that right now,” he explains, before noting that the move is “very Republican: Basically, they love to see communities taking charge of themselves.”

The decision to hand the KBE government control over the nearly $60 million fund is a substantial change to an arrangement where Interior would essentially set a yearly allowance for the council, which would then decide how to spend these funds. Interior officials would occasionally inquire about proposed expenditures, but they largely approved whatever the islanders wanted.

But on August 2017, the KBE government passed a motion rejecting U.S. oversight of the fund. The trust was not supposed to last forever, it argued, and the current annual allowance was too meager to allow the islanders to make long-term investments. To the Bikini council’s surprise, the U.S. didn’t push back. In a letter sent this past November, Doug Domenech, assistant secretary for insular areas at Interior, told Jibas that the department would no longer ration the fund.

Lisa Murkowski, the U.S. senator from Alaska who has a history of standing against the Trump administration, argues the decision runs counter to a U.S vow made in 1946, which stated that, “No matter where the Bikinian people found themselves, even if they were adrift on a raft at sea or on a sandbar, they would be taken care of as if they were American’s children.” She has suggested that Interior is abandoning its responsibility to the people of Bikini.

The move represents an awkward deviation from her usual ideology, as she herself acknowledged during February’s hearing. “I need you all to know that I am very sensitive to the notion that Washington, D.C., should not dictate local government decisions,” she said. “Alaskans have dealt with that mentality since we were a territory.”

But Murkowski has always had a reputation as an independent-minded politician — she won her 2010 Senate election as a write-in candidate — and has a history of engaging closely with issues relating to the Marshall Islands. She visited the country in person in April, meeting with ministers and chiefs. As an Alaskan, she also sees common ground with the Marshallese. Amchitka Island, part of the Aleutian Island chain in western Alaska, was the site of three underground nuclear detonations between 1965 and 1971. She found that, there too, residents weren’t given the continuous support they needed to recover in the aftermath of the bombing.

But this debate could all be moot if Murkowski’s bill dies before it reaches the Senate, as Jack Niedenthal thinks it might. Recalling the hearing in February, he says that there was only one senator left in the room by the time the Bikinians had finished testifying.

As the legislation languishes in Congress, the KBE government is making big plans for its newfound millions. In addition to its climate-adaptation plans, it intends to lease an airplane, revive its diving industry, and develop an informational tour around the atoll, which UNESCO listed as a World Heritage site in 2010.

“These are things we wanted to explore,” Benjamin says. “And we couldn’t do that with $2.5 million a year.”

Niedenthal, however, is unconvinced of the council’s claims it will put significant amounts of the added money toward climate change. He fears the islanders could be left destitute, without money to run their power plant, make housing repairs, pay for health insurance, fund scholarships, or even hold council meetings. And, once the Trump administration is out of office, it could be a challenge to hold the U.S. accountable, even as the descendants of the people it once bombed sink into poverty.

“If they had put together a proposal, for example, and said, ‘Look, we need extra money out of the trust fund to spend on these walls,’ I think [Interior] would have said yes, if it was specifically going to be spent on climate change activities,” he explains. “I think what’s happening now is you use whatever excuses, and it’s just spending money.

“They can talk about investments,” Niedenthal adds. “But I don’t see any investing yet.”

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When criminal justice and environmental justice collide

Rhonda Anderson and her daughter, Siwatu-Salama Ra, have spent much of their lives working to protect their Detroit community from polluters. Anderson has organized for the local Sierra Club for nearly two decades. And Ra represented the Motor City during the landmark Paris climate talks.

Fellow activists credit Ra with bringing this year’s Extreme Energy Extraction Summit — where activists from vulnerable communities strategize on fighting polluters — to Detroit for the first time.

Ra, however, won’t be able to attend. Last month, a judge sentenced the 26-year-old mother, who is currently 7-months pregnant, to a mandatory two years in prison after she was controversially convicted of felony assault and firearm possession. She faces the prospect of giving birth in prison — away from her family, as well as the community she works to lift up.

“My daughter — my baby — she’s not doing well,” Anderson tells Grist. Ra, who had complications in her last pregnancy, is already experiencing contractions this time around. Her mother describes a pelvic examination her daughter recently had to endure while shackled.

“It’s medieval,” Anderson says. “And it reminds me of slavery.”

Black communities in the United States, like the one Ra and Anderson serve, face a host of structural challenges that impact day-to-day life — from environmental injustice to heightened policing and racial profiling. Black people are 75 percent more likely than other Americans to live in neighborhoods that border oil and natural gas refineries — and they face a disproportionate amount of health threats as a result of air pollution. As a black woman, Ra is more likely to be incarcerated than a white woman — four times more likely, in fact. These systemic injustices have collided in Ra’s case, as her supporters say a double standard and a flawed legal system have robbed her community of one of its most dedicated defenders.

“Siwatu has spent her life fighting environmental injustice and pushing back against the big polluters who are violating the law to poison her community,” the Sierra Club’s executive director, Michael Brune, said in a statement. “In this case, it does not appear that she is being afforded the protection of the law she deserves, as is all too often the case for women of color dealing with our criminal justice system.”

Here’s how Ra arrived at her current predicament: This past summer, at Anderson’s home, Ra got into an argument with another woman. As the dispute escalated, the woman reportedly rammed her vehicle into Ra’s car — which had Ra’s toddler inside — before allegedly aiming her car at Anderson. In response, Ra, who says she repeatedly asked the woman to leave, reportedly took out her unloaded, registered firearm. The woman called the police before Ra did, which authorities said made Ra the assailant in the case.

Michigan has a stand-your-ground law that protects people from facing criminal charges if they use deadly force in self-defense. It’s the same legal strategy George Zimmerman successfully employed in Florida after he shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was walking to his father’s Orlando-area home. To prove her innocence under the provision, Ra needed to convince jurors that she was afraid for her life.

“The prosecutor convinced the jury and judge that I lacked fear, and that’s not true,” Ra said during her sentencing. “I was so afraid, especially for my toddler and mother. I don’t believe they could imagine a black woman being scared — only mad.”

Ra’s advocates have called into question the fact that the jury was not informed that finding Ra guilty would result in a mandatory sentence. Because of the required punishment for a guilty verdict, letters of support from the community attesting to her years of service had no effect in lessening her punishment.

“In environmental-justice organizing, you’re dealing with a lot of small emergencies all the time, especially in an underdeveloped, under-resourced city like Detroit,” says William Copeland who worked alongside Ra at the East Michigan Environmental Coalition. Her incarceration, he adds, “is a big emergency.”

Copeland says Ra excels at getting people who are often left behind engaged in environmental justice work. As a teen, she founded a program to get urban youth involved in the East Michigan Environmental Coalition — reeling in a group that other environmentalists hadn’t been able to reach.

“The successes that she had shows the depth of being able to speak people’s language — to be able to read something that’s written in one language and translate it to the language of the ‘hood or the language of the people,” Copeland says. “[Without Ra], those folks wouldn’t be getting involved.”

That’s one reason why he and Anderson say they need Ra back in the community immediately. In the past, she’s also worked to hold a Marathon Petroleum refinery and the Detroit Renewable Power trash incinerator accountable for their emissions. “Get her back out here so she can continue the work that she’s been doing all these years,” Anderson says.

Ra’s attorneys are working toward an appeal and asking that she be released on bond so that she can give birth outside of prison. On Wednesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations Michigan Chapter filed a complaint on behalf of Ra and other Muslim women at the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, noting that they have not been allowed religious meal accommodations or access to a hijabs.

As part of her campaign to free her daughter, Anderson is calling for the larger environmental community to realize that pollution is just one of many inequities people in fence-line communities face. But polluting and criminalizing these groups essentially go hand-in-hand, she explains.

“As long as we find a whole group of people dispensable, the environment is going to continue to be impacted. You can pollute them and do whatever to them, and white folks and anybody else can sit off to the side and say, ‘I’m safe — it’s not me,” Anderson says. “We are the ones that are preyed upon.”

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When criminal justice and environmental justice collide

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