Help Ban Plastic Water Bottles with “Bottle Free Badgers”

Hey everyone, sorry its been so long since I’ve written. I’ve been busy trying to save the world…well Im starting small. I’ve recently gotten an internship position at an environmental advocacy group where I have been and will be doing communication work. (Get ready for more videos 🙂 )

Right now though I need your help. The student organization that I am in on campus is trying to ban the sale of plastic water bottles of one Liter in size or less on campus. Plastic water bottles contribute to our landfills and take a long time to break down completely. They also contribute to the waste in the oceans where they kill wildlife and contribute to a massive amount of plastic trapped in the currents of the Pacific Ocean. With your own reusable water, typically around $10.00, by filling that water bottle up everyday during one week you have already made it worth while to have purchased that water bottle. Why keep donating money to companies who are taking “natural spring water” and selling it back to you when you can get your own water with a stylish water bottle for free essentially? For more information on that check out the documentary “Tapped”. My organization and I have started a petition and still need over 7,500 signatures. Please sign and pass on to family and friends. Thank you so much for your help!

Thank you for your help!!

Newtown, Connecticut My Heart is With You

What possess a young man to go into a grade school with three guns I will never understand. The amount of hate and anger that it takes to commit such an act is not an excuse nor a reason for why 20 families have to endure the event that happened this past week.

It’s finals week and every college student just wants to get home to see their families and friends and not have to look at a textbook for another month. Students complain about the long hours in the library and the confusing concepts and horrible exam times, but after this week I am not going to complain or bitch about the work I have to do before I get to go home. The reason is simple, I get to go home. I wrote a few months ago about what home means. Is it a place? A feeling? A group of people? The truth is it is all that. My home is where I know I am safe, surrounded by the special people in my life and the feeling of love. The children that went to Sandy Hook Elementary School this past Friday thought they would get to go home and see their family again. Continue reading “Newtown, Connecticut My Heart is With You” →

Accept People For People and Not For Their Religion

I am not sure this is appropriate for me to type here, but lets face it as a young person today the internet seems to be our outlet. Since its currently 12:53 AM, I am going to workout my thoughts below.

My brother is 26 and he just got engaged. I am so happy for him and his fiance and I can’t wait to have a big sister and have her officially in the family. My brother is Jewish, mother and father both Jewish. Having different dad’s I am half Jewish and half Protestant. Technically he is my half brother. (Hope youre still following). His fiance is Catholic. They plan on joining a church and temple together, getting married in the Catholic Church.

For those of you where religion is very important to you, you might wonder how will they manage this? As someone where religion is not a very prominent part of my life, I just want my brother and sister-in-law to be happy. Why does it matter what you believe, as long as you love someone and respect them. Some think it will “be interesting” to see if the church allows them to be married there. But why? Religion is different than when these “rules” and “beliefs” were written. Globalization has made it so that anyone, anywhere could believe in a different religion; religion is not as contained to specific areas as it used to be, so why havent these rules been adapted? Continue reading “Accept People For People and Not For Their Religion” →

Plastic Bottles Reused Around the World

As all of you should know, water is free!! Crazy I know, we spend so much money on buying water in plastic bottles that often times we forget that buying a reusable bottle once can reduce the amount of waste that we create. Now besides water: soda/pop/coke/, juices, teas, and a number of other drinks come in plastic bottles. Some of these things we can’t help-we enjoy the taste and as long as we recycle the bottle when we’re done it is not a harmful act.

Where does the waste go though once it’s recycled or heavens forbid put in the garbage (by mistake I would hope)? People often say that these bottles can be melted down and made in to new bottles or other plastic products. But what about the bottles that don’t make it into a recycling sort? What if they fall off the truck, or someone was too lazy to dispose of it properly and the bottle ends up in our environment? This slideshow put together by Bloomberg, some of these stories and photos you may recognize, shows plastic bottles in their life after our consumption. Hope you enjoy!

The Philosophy of National Treasure

This semester in my Environmental Ethics class we have discussed the objectivists, relativists, utilitarian, and deontology theories of philosophy. Most of the people in the class can come up with examples that challenge these theories almost instantly after learning them, but I take a little longer to understand these concepts.

Our professor told us that he wrote his graduate thesis about deontology and utilitarianism and how you cant consider both when making a moral decision. Deontology considers the motives and reasons for choosing to make a decision. Utilitarianism considers the consequences and only the consequences that benefits the majority of the people.

Nicolas Cage’s character has to choose first if he should steal the Declaration of Independence, but then had to decide what the punishment for his actions should be.

In the movie National Treasure Nicolas Cage and Justin Bartha follow a set of riddles and clues to find a treasure that has been hidden for centuries. During which, they must steal the Declaration of Independence. Now consider this act, to most this seems immoral act-after all it is wrong to steal- but in the movie they are stealing it for the “right” reasons. Since their intentions were good and moral, they were trying to protect the Constitution and keep it out of the hands of the “bad” guys. From a deontology, this would be a moral act because the intentions were good. Continue reading “The Philosophy of National Treasure” →