From Farm to Fridge to Garbage Can

From Farm to Fridge to Garbage Can

By: Tara Parker-Pope

Post by: Matt Bernanke

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/from-farm-to-fridge-to-garbage-can/?src=mv&ref=health


How much of the food your family buys do you think you waste? A study in Tompkins County, N.Y. showed that 40% of food waste occurs at home. Another study showed that 93% of those interviewed buy foods they never use. Author Johnathon Bloom says that we have a big role to play and we can have a huge impact if we reduce our wastefulness. Bloom tells us that wasting food is very cost inefficient and that a family of four that spends $175 on groceries a week wastes about $40 worth of food every week. He also tells us that if we let food rot in our fridges, then we are more likely to turn to unhealthy meals such as fast food.



My mom is always bugging us not to waste our food and to eat everything on our plates. This may have seemed tedious before, but now I know that it is necessary for me not to waste. On one hand, it will save my family a lot of money. On the other hand, it will keep me from eating fast food. Fast food may be a nice treat once in a while, but if you have a fridge full of rotting vegetables you are more likely to go get a cheeseburger than to make yourself a nice, healthy salad.



1) Have you vere had an experience where you had to deal with rotten food?



2) Why do you think that most people turn to fast food when they are confronted with rotten food in their fridge?



3) If people knew how much they could save by wasting less, do you think that they would change their ways?

Drinking Urine In The Future

Soon We'll Be Drinking Recycled Pee;

Some of Us Already Are

http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/soon-well-be-drinking-recycled-pee-some-of-us-already-are/19687450

From: Larry Knowles

Published November 1, 2010 6:42 PM

Copyright 2010 AOL Inc.

Summary

Robert Roy Britt, managing editor of LiveScience.com said,

"Someday, millions of Americans will be drinking their own urine."

LiveScience.com is a news site that prides itself on how it approaches science.

Because many people live in the area that most people did not live before in the past like the West, people will have to treat the raw sewage that they used and use it to drink or do other things with fresh water. In the future, people will have to use their raw sewage as a source of tap or drinking water.

Like many cities, Phoenix is 230 miles away from where it gets its drinkable water. That is Lake Mead. Many cities will go like Orange County, California and recycle their raw sewage. "From the toilet bowl to the punch bowl." Some people think it is just wastewater, but there is a process behind it all.

Orange County has highly treated water and the process takes only 45 minutes. After the various filtration and purification processes, they seep it back into the aquifer to blend with the natural water and then use it as tap or drinking water. This is a method called Groundwater Replenishment System or GWRS and it went online on January of 2008. It turns 96 million gallons of wastewater in to 70 million gallons of recycled water. It has an efficiency rate of about 75%.

This is something positive for the world because otherwise Southern California would dump 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater into the Pacific Ocean every day. There are discussions on expanding the 96 million to 100 million gallons per day of recycling the water. Some people are drinking their pee right now in Orange County and they don't even know about it.

Opinion/Reflection

I think treating wastewater and using it to drink is a better idea than dumping it in the Pacific Ocean. If there is a way to clean the water and help the environment, why not do it? If you are thinking there is no way I will drink raw sewage, you basically already are because the water cycle doesn't bring new water from space. The water is filtered naturally through many process. So you are already drinking filtered water that used to be some kind of sewage water millions of years ago so why not try the treated wastewater that used to be in your toilet?

Questions

1) Would you approve the use of raw sewage water for your neighborhood? Why or Why not?

2) Which would you rather drink? A bottle water from an unknown company that was there for years that is open or a cup of water from an aquifer that gets its water from filtered wastewater?

3) Do you believe eventually the Southwestern states will have to drink from the treated wastewater or use some other methods?

By: James Jung