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November 19, 2007

Focus On Flushing: World Toilet Day

You're going to tell me this is TMI (Too Much Information) but I am tickled by this little tidbit so I am going to share. Your average toilet is going to use several gallons of water each time you flush. Even the low-flow models of late still use about 2 gallons each time you pull the lever. Now for the TMI - I have a pregnant friend (who shall remain anonymous) who has been peeing so frequently of late, she has switched to flushing once every couple trips (in the private of her own home, when no one else is home) to save water. I think that's awesome.

Monday November 19 is World Toilet Day. And no, this is not a joke. Even National Geographic is covering the World Toilet Summit in New Delhi, India this year.

The number of people living in the world without basic sanitation is unbelievable. According to the WTO (not the World Trade Organization but the World Toilet Organization), only about 14% of the world's sewage is treated, the rest is discharged directly into the environment. According to a UN report from about a year ago, about about 40% of the world population lacks basic sanitation, putting them and everyone else at risk of disease, not to mention it has a profound impact on the environment - especially the need for clean, safe drinking water.

Perhaps these numbers don't surprise you. When you think about the Third World, you think of people living in slums, in huts? Well, much of the third world does live in primitive housing.When there are toilets, they are shared by many, many people and you're often safer going elsewhere. For example, I challenge you to find a usable public toilet anywhere outside of tourist facilities in Kenya - especially outside of the major cities. Frankly, much of the time, you may have to squat behind your vehicle while your mates watch for lions. Wouldn't want to be caught with your pants down.

Even here in the US, where we've got numerous toilets in the average household (I've got three), we've still got problems. The water we flush here in the US is generally filtered by sewage treatment facilities. We filter certain stuff out, but we do not filter out everything - treatment generally produces two results: filtered liquid and sludge.The filtration requirements change often and vary by location. Not everything can be filtered for but eventually the filtered liquod meets a set of standards for being disposed of back into nature. The filtered liquid often goes straight into our environment, pumped directly into our rivers and oceans, and what hasn't been filtered out now has the opportunity to affect our environment. In California, for example, California Sea Otters are dying due to a parasite found in flushable cat litter that is reaching the Monterey Bay. Elsewhere, fish populations are reacting to the hormones being flushed by women taking birth control pills.

Last week, the news - all the way up to NPR - was talking about the public interest story about the two young boys who invented "wedgie-proof" underwear, featured on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." This week at the World Toilet Expo, various sanitation-related technologies are being demo'd. I think we should take the toilet war to the people who will give it the thought it deserves: our toilet-humor loving kids. If every school had an invention convention for toilet tech, imagine what we'd come up with. So many ideas, like the paper toilet seat cover, are so simple but effective for improving sanitation.

Posted by sorsha at 1:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 16, 2007

Creature Countdown: Ticking Down To Extinction

This Conservation International website is really disturbing me. I don't know what else to say...

Update:

Conservation International has launched their Season’s Greenings campaign – an alternative to traditional gift giving and an opportunity for all of us to make a “green” difference this holiday season. You could give the gift of saving a lemur, keeping freshwater flowing or preserving a whale birthing ground. There are lots and lots of options.

So go green this holiday season!

Posted by sorsha at 3:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 8, 2007

Siding With The Shark: Fuming On A Fish's Behalf

As a long time resident of the Monterey Bay and a marine enthusiast, I got really excited when I saw that the TODAY Show was doing a piece on an incident with a great white shark in Monterey Bay. It's always interesting when our area makes the news, but I was hoping for a fresh perspective.

Not necessarily that they'd ask difficult questions like: Surfer, what were you thinking swimming where half the great white shark attacks in the world occur? Didn't you read the signs? Anyone who lives around the bay already knows the answers to these questions. We all know how far some will go for the perfect wave. I'm cool with Monterey Bay surfers doing what they do - just don't blame the sharks for taking a nibble when these wave-catchers in their neoprene seal costumes hit the beaches.

White shark occurrences happen pretty often here. The Red Triangle (north of San Francisco to the Farallon Islands to south of Monterey) has the highest concentration of the great white shark in the world – and it happens to be endangered and an apex predator.

They're here for the good eating: the Northern Elephant Seal rookeries like Año Nuevo, various seal and sea lion colonies, not to mention fish and whales. In point of fact, nearly all Monterey's beaches have signs that warn against swimming.

The TODAY Show story, which could have been an exciting tale of survival as well as informative about the area it happened, fell way short. The surfer, Todd Endris, was cool. He told his story, about how he was surfing, got attacked by a white shark (called a monster in the write-up but frankly, 12-15 feet long is average in these waters), fought his way free, and was rescued by a pod of dolphins and his surfer buddy. It was the TODAY Show interviewer,Natalie Morales, who pushed for gruesome details.

While the gorey details were revealed, what did the TODAY Show do? They showed stock footage of the Monterey Bay Aquarium great white shark on exhibit. That is a juvenile great white in the Outer Bay Exhibit and Monterey Bay Aquarium proudly boasts the ONLY great white sharks successfully held in captivity. They did not identify the footage as being from this amazing and unique exhibit, only as a backdrop to the gruesome details of the incident.

It would have been so easy to turn this news item into something a bit more informative and a bit less sensational without detracting from the amazing story of survival being told. But the TODAY show chose not to.

Shame on them. Shark PR is already bad enough. They need more support, not less. Even the late Peter Benchley, author of Jaws, regretted how his work influenced people's view on sharks.

If there's one thing that his research in Australia and off the coast of South Africa taught him, it's that he could not write "Jaws" today.

"I could not posit the situation now that I posited then - sort of a rogue shark that came around and wouldn't go away because it had found a steady diet of human beings," Benchley said in an inter-view over a seafood lunch (crab, not shark).

Scientists have learned that much of the shark behavior they used to ascribe to aggression is simply curiosity.

"I attributed to them a kind of marauding monsterism that became what 'Jaws' was," he said. "Now we know that sharks do not attack boats. The way they decide what to eat is by biting it."

More At: Peter Benchley: Jaws Today

Posted by sorsha at 10:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 6, 2007

The Lowdown On Lake-Effect Snow

There's a cold front moving towards us and according to Weather.com, it brings with it some abnormally cold temperatures and a strong chance of lake-effect snows.

Despite living in the Northeast for decades, I have never heard that term before: lake-effect snow. This is likely due to the fact that I relied upon my parents to tell me when to wear a coat. And I barely listened, even then.

Now I have a pretty high tech weather station that tells me all the little metric details, including flashing little comments I can understand, like "It's raining cats and dogs!!!"

At first, I was just excited. The first snow of the year! Yay! Then I got suspicious. Does lake-effect snow stick? It better. I need to take pictures or I will get in trouble with Shane.

Anyway, turns out, it does stick. According to Wikipedia, it can actually pile. Lake-effect snow is a type of snowsquall (another word that makes me giddy!). It occurs when cold air passes over warmer lakes and picks up energy and a lot of vapor. Narrow, intense areas will then have high precipitation - basically a snowbelt (when it's snow) or very intense rain if it's warmer. This is why some of upstate New York gets nailed with snow all the time, since it's right next to the Great Lakes, and arctic winds come whistling down from Canada and blast the Northeast.

Some areas are expected to get as much as 8 inches of snow by tomorrow night!

Posted by sorsha at 11:02 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 5, 2007

It's a Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

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