Sustainable Living Magazine
Spring 2019 COMM 328 Final
Spring 2019 COMM 328 Final
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SL<br />
<strong>Sustainable</strong> <strong>Living</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong><br />
THE PLASTIC<br />
PROBLEM<br />
WHAT IN THE<br />
WORLD<br />
CAN WE DO?<br />
March - April 2019 Volume 1, Issue 1 sustainableliving.com
SUSTAINABLE<br />
3<br />
12<br />
16<br />
38<br />
March - April 2019<br />
In This Issue<br />
LIVING<br />
Editor’s Note<br />
Learn about what<br />
sparked SL<br />
6 Home<br />
Stop doing that, start<br />
doing this<br />
Fashion<br />
The top sustainable<br />
brands emerging into<br />
the industry<br />
How-To<br />
Build a better living<br />
room with these<br />
affordable products<br />
DID YOU KNOW<br />
20 Climate Change<br />
The truth about its impact on animals<br />
24<br />
28<br />
32<br />
36<br />
World<br />
This small country is making a big impact<br />
on the environment<br />
Earth Day 2019<br />
How long do we really have?<br />
Policy<br />
Cities and states around the U.S. are<br />
pushing to become completely<br />
renewable by 2050<br />
You Asked, We Answered<br />
We took your online submissions and<br />
responded to the questions you<br />
were most curious about<br />
COVER (Photo via Marketing Week)<br />
The UN struggles to reach an agreement on the plastic crisis<br />
20<br />
FROM THE EDITOR<br />
Hello and welcome to the debut issue<br />
of <strong>Sustainable</strong> <strong>Living</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, your<br />
go-to publication for information and<br />
resources on living more sustainably.<br />
Looking out for our planet has always<br />
been a passion of mine, and I’m so excited<br />
to share with you all this magazine has<br />
to offer!<br />
Each issue, we will present you with<br />
new and innovative ways you can live sustainably<br />
in your workplaces and in your<br />
homes. We will offer you insight on the<br />
state of the environment while simultaneously<br />
showing you and giving you the<br />
tools to make a positive change in your<br />
own life.<br />
Climate change is happening and<br />
it’s happening fast. <strong>Sustainable</strong> <strong>Living</strong><br />
addresses this problem and highlights the<br />
effect humans have had and continue<br />
to have on our planet. In this issue, our<br />
cover story focuses on the plastic crisis.<br />
Human waste fills oceans and litters habitats<br />
of a variety of animals and sealife.<br />
While the world has attempted to come<br />
up with universal steps to combat this<br />
disparity, no real solution has yet been<br />
agreed upon.<br />
Aside from work, life and information<br />
on sustainability issues, we provide you<br />
with recipes and tips for sustainable cooking.<br />
In this issue, you can learn about the<br />
tomato and all the ways it can be used to<br />
create waste-free, homemade dishes.<br />
I hope this issue helps you learn something<br />
new, and keep living sustainably!<br />
Jasmine Patel<br />
Editor-in-Chief<br />
SUSTAINABLELIVING.COM MARCH - APRIL 2019 3
ON THE TABLE<br />
WORKING<br />
44<br />
46<br />
50<br />
52<br />
56<br />
Office<br />
Create a green, sustainable coworking<br />
space with these 10 easy tips<br />
Goodbye cubicle, hello outdoors: How<br />
these companies have brought nature<br />
into the workplace<br />
How-To<br />
Discover a cleaner, environmentallyfriendly<br />
commute<br />
Design<br />
Look at the architecture behind some<br />
of the most sustainable hospitals<br />
in the world<br />
There’s more to this desk than meets<br />
the eye<br />
58<br />
61<br />
The Tomato<br />
Learn what you can do<br />
with this simple<br />
ingredient<br />
60 Recipes<br />
Homemade tomato<br />
sauce<br />
62<br />
64<br />
66<br />
67<br />
68<br />
Mango and tomato<br />
salsa<br />
Veggie burgers three<br />
ways<br />
Tomato basil soup with<br />
a twist<br />
Vegan tomato tortilla<br />
soup<br />
Scalloped tomatoes<br />
and croutons<br />
Sundried tomato<br />
cheesy kale chips<br />
60<br />
LIVINGmagazine
FROM TOP<br />
KNOW?<br />
Climate change is affecting<br />
animals at an alarming rate<br />
By JASMINE PATEL | <strong>Sustainable</strong> <strong>Living</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong><br />
DID YOU<br />
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting<br />
industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard<br />
dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer<br />
took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen<br />
book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap<br />
into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It<br />
was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets<br />
containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop<br />
publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions<br />
of Lorem Ipsum.<br />
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted<br />
by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout.<br />
CONTINUES PG 23<br />
Elephants:<br />
Droughts due to<br />
global warming have<br />
led to food shortages,<br />
reduced habitat and a<br />
disruption to mating<br />
season, which leads<br />
to fewer offspring.<br />
Giraffes:<br />
Habitat loss due to<br />
climate change has<br />
contributed to the<br />
decline of the acacia<br />
tree, the main food<br />
source for giraffes.<br />
Birds:<br />
Oceanic birds are<br />
the most threatened<br />
group of birds,<br />
because rising sea<br />
levels are expected to<br />
submerge their nests<br />
and habitat.<br />
FROM LEFT<br />
Sea Turtles:<br />
Gender is determined<br />
by temperature of<br />
the surrounding<br />
environment. As the<br />
ocean gets warmer,<br />
fewer males will be<br />
produced, which will<br />
result in reduced<br />
reproduction.<br />
Great Apes:<br />
Prolonged droughts,<br />
decreased rainfall and<br />
forest fires limit the<br />
availability of food<br />
and destroys habitats.<br />
20 MARCH - APRIL 2019 SUSTAINABLELIVING.COM
THE<br />
WORLD<br />
CAN<br />
SOLVE<br />
THE<br />
PLASTIC<br />
PROBLEM<br />
BUT WILL IT?<br />
Although the UN did not reach an agreement on plastic<br />
pollution at the environmental assembly in Kenya,<br />
efforts to come up with a solution continue at<br />
national and international levels.<br />
By LAURA PARKER | National Geographic<br />
What can you do?<br />
Look out for tips<br />
throughout this story<br />
on ways you can reduce<br />
plastic use in your<br />
daily life!<br />
It didn’t take long after the recent United Nations<br />
environmental assembly in Kenya ended for<br />
environmentalists to sharply rebuke the United<br />
States for allegedly derailing global ambitions<br />
to prevent plastic debris from flowing into the<br />
oceans.<br />
“The tyranny of the minority,” their statement declared<br />
as environmentalists denounced the Americans for what they<br />
said was slowing progress on marine plastics by diluting a<br />
resolution calling for phasing out single-use plastic by 2025<br />
and blocking an effort to craft a legally binding treaty on<br />
plastic debris.<br />
Yet that unsparing critique doesn’t fully reflect the negotiations<br />
that played out in a small roof-top conference room<br />
on the UN’s campus in Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi. What<br />
happened is perhaps best viewed not as tyrannical but as<br />
isolationist, more akin to the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris<br />
climate agreement. Yes, the U.S. won concessions in Nairobi<br />
to the wording on two resolutions involving the fate of<br />
marine plastics, but it waged the argument essentially alone,<br />
with backing only from Saudi Arabia and Cuba.<br />
“I would not say the U.S. is making itself irrelevant,” says<br />
David Azoulay, a Geneva-based lawyer for the Center for<br />
International Environmental Law, who observed the negotiations.<br />
“But it is true that the U.S. is setting itself further apart,<br />
as it did with the withdrawal from the Paris accord, from addressing<br />
the critical challenges of our generation. The whole<br />
world is addressing the plastic challenge at its roots. The EU<br />
is doing it, India is doing it. The world is moving forward.”<br />
The Americans sought to define marine debris as an issue<br />
solved exclusively by waste management, said Hugo-Maria<br />
Schally, the European Union’s lead negotiator on marine<br />
plastics, in an interview, while “virtually everybody else in the<br />
room was focused on the idea that there is a problem with<br />
production and the use of single-use plastic.”<br />
Photo via National Geographic
Animals around the world are threatened by broken glass, plastic waste and other pieces of human litter.<br />
So, the goal of “phasing out” single-use plastics was<br />
replaced by the vaguer wording to “significantly reducing,”<br />
and target dates for action slipped from 2025 to 2030. The<br />
documents that emerged are not legally binding. But in the<br />
end, a deadline remains in place, and a UN working group<br />
on marine plastics will continue to work the problem, with<br />
the full backing of the UN purse.<br />
“It’s fair to say that the UN environmental assembly has<br />
put out a very clear message,” Schally says. “Single-use<br />
plastics are a problem. There are a variety of ways to address<br />
the issue. Waste management is one, but not the only<br />
one. We need to look at alternatives and reduce the use by<br />
2030. That’s the global message.”<br />
Ola Elvestuen, Norway’s minister for climate and environment,<br />
expressed disappointment after a panel discussion<br />
about the best solutions, but not defeat. “We didn’t get<br />
the wording we wanted,” he said. “But we have enough to<br />
continue.”<br />
KEEP IT IN A CONE<br />
Choose a cone over<br />
a cup with a plastic<br />
spoon. Talk to your local<br />
ice cream shop about<br />
switching to<br />
compostable utensils!<br />
Photos via National Geographic<br />
International treaties?<br />
The only existing international<br />
treaty addressing marine debris<br />
on a global scale is MARPOL, adopted<br />
by the International Maritime<br />
Organization, which banned<br />
ships from dumping plastic waste<br />
into the oceans as of 1988–so<br />
long ago, that in the fast-accelerating<br />
world of plastics production, it is almost antique. Age<br />
aside, the trouble with MARPOL is that 80 percent of the<br />
estimated 8 million tons a year that flows into the oceans<br />
originates on land, according to research published in 2015.<br />
Not surprisingly, as the visibility of plastic waste has<br />
become more prominent, so have calls for a new international<br />
treaty that gets to the crux of the problem. In 2017, a<br />
group of seven marine scientists tracking how microplastics<br />
have altered genes, cells, and tissues in marine organisms—<br />
causing death and decreased reproduction—reviewed those<br />
findings in an opinion piece published in PNAS that urged<br />
the UN to write a new treaty on plastic pollution.<br />
Later that year, at the UN’s last environmental conference,<br />
193 nations, including the U.S., endorsed a Clean<br />
Seas pact. It was nonbinding and toothless, though significant<br />
enough that Norway called it a strong first step.<br />
Adopting global treaties is not supposed to be easy. The<br />
UN is, by design, slow-moving, cumbersome, bureaucratic.<br />
It took more than a decade, Azoulay points out, for the UN<br />
to adopt a treaty protecting human health from mercury<br />
poisoning.<br />
What’s notable is how far marine plastic moved up on<br />
the agenda for this year’s conference.<br />
Delegates pushed for substantial action. Guðmundur<br />
Ingi Guðbrandsson, Iceland’s minister for the environment<br />
and natural resources, arrived in Nairobi with hopes the<br />
conference would lay the groundwork for a legally binding<br />
treaty on marine plastic.<br />
“Better<br />
to have a<br />
weak<br />
resolution<br />
than<br />
no<br />
resolution.”<br />
- Siim Kiisler, UN assembly president, on an<br />
international marine debris solution<br />
“It’s production of plastics that needs<br />
to be tackled,” he said in an interview.<br />
“We need less plastics. We need to look<br />
BUY IN BULK<br />
at how much we are putting into the<br />
Purchase items in<br />
system and we need to reduce that. We bulk to cut down<br />
on packaging<br />
need to increase reuse of what we already<br />
use so that we are trashing as little to put it all in a<br />
waste. Be sure<br />
as we can. Industry needs to find more<br />
resuable bag to<br />
solutions than we already have today and carry home!<br />
they may need a push from governments<br />
to do something.”<br />
Siim Kiisler, the UN assembly president, who also serves as<br />
Estonia’s minister of environment, opened the assembly by urging<br />
delegates to take strong action on marine debris, and called for the<br />
phasing out of single-use plastic by 2025. and called for the phasing<br />
out of single-use plastic by 2025.<br />
Even the visuals focused on plastics. A large dhow made from<br />
discarded plastic bottles and flip-flops stood tilted, as if tacking<br />
along the UN’s entry driveway, as its makers announced plans<br />
to sail from Kenya to Zanzibar to further the campaign against<br />
the plastic menace. A separate Clean Seas venue hosted day-long<br />
panel discussions throughout the entire week that drew in dozens<br />
of scientists, engineers, politicians, and activists from all corners of<br />
the world to debate best solutions.<br />
Joyce Msuya, acting director of the UN Environmental Program,<br />
cautions that global ambition “is one thing, but you have to<br />
translate that into what it means for the local condition.” Member<br />
states, she says, do not start “from the same baseline. We have to<br />
customize and look at what can be done and share the experience<br />
of what has worked elsewhere.” The two marine plastics resolutions<br />
under consideration included a proposed legally binding<br />
agreement, promoted by Norway, Japan, and Sri Lanka. The<br />
phase-out of single-use plastics, contained in the second resolution,<br />
was argued by India, drowning in an estimated 550,000 tons of<br />
mismanaged plastic waste every year, with strong support from the<br />
Philippines and other Pacific island groups.<br />
Few were surprised when the United States balked at targets,<br />
deadlines, and any reference to bans or levies on various plastic<br />
products or reductions in plastic production and consumption.<br />
The U.S. negotiators declined to be interviewed; a State Department<br />
spokesman said in a statement that the U.S. considers marine<br />
plastic “a growing issue” needing urgent action and that improved<br />
waste management is the fastest way to achieve that goal.<br />
“We support reducing the environmental impacts from the<br />
discharges of plastics,” the statement says. “And we further note<br />
that the majority of marine plastic discharges comes from only six<br />
countries in Asia where improved waste management could radically<br />
decrease these discharges.”<br />
Stewart Harris, director of marine and environment issues at<br />
the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, echoes<br />
the U.S. stance on waste disposal as the most practical immediate<br />
solution to reducing the flow of plastic litter to the ocean.<br />
“We are looking at actions that will make the largest impact<br />
in the shortest amount of time,” he says.<br />
CONTINUES PG 43<br />
SUSTAINABLELIVING.COM MARCH - APRIL 2019 41
FEATURED INGREDIENT: THE TOMATO<br />
What makes the tomato sustainable?<br />
T<br />
omatoes are simply dummy text of the printing<br />
and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been<br />
the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the<br />
1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of<br />
type and scrambled it to make a type specimen<br />
book. It has survived not only five centuries, but<br />
also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining<br />
essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the<br />
1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum<br />
passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like<br />
Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.<br />
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the<br />
readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point<br />
of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution<br />
of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’,<br />
making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing<br />
packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default<br />
model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many<br />
web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over<br />
the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected<br />
humour and the like).<br />
Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random<br />
text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45<br />
BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin<br />
professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up<br />
one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem<br />
Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical<br />
literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes<br />
from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et<br />
Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in<br />
Turn the page for recipes!<br />
ON THE TABLE