Newsletter #13

Glitch removed! Sorry for second a second issue! To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic.

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do not act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

~ Howard Zinn

Hello Friends,

Isn’t that quote just wonderful. It’s a great reminder during these challenging times we are in lately. Hope you enjoy all that I am sharing with you in this issue from the Fireflies, to why I avoid Sea Salt; a way or two to reduce Plastic waste; we can recycle our Corks, and the only kind of Strawberry I will eat!

#1- Fireflies

Billions of fireflies light up an Indian wildlife reserve in rare footage capture by Sriram Murali.

According to a study published in the journal Bioscience, fireflies are facing extinction due to habitat loss, pesticides, and artificial light.

According to the study, one of the main threats to fireflies in east Asia and South America is artificial light. Street lamps and building lights disrupt the insects' natural biorhythms and mating rituals. 

Humans destroying the insects' natural habitats pose another threat. During its larval phase, the Malaysian firefly lives in riverside shrubs that are often pulled out for human-made fish farms.

In Europe, fireflies are finding less food to eat due to the growing urbanization of what were once orchards and farmlands. In Malaysia, fireflies that usually prefer to mate in specific trees next to rivers are having to find new courtship areas because the trees are being knocked down for homesteads. 

No study on dwindling insect populations would be complete without mentioning the impact of pesticides. 

Organophosphates and neonicotinoids are designed to kill pests, yet they also have off-target effects on beneficial insects.

Solutions:

Preserve suitable habitats, minimize light pollution, reduce and eliminate the use of insecticides.

Do you love fireflies? Then you must watch this magical film by David Attenborough, Light on Earth. Luminous beings, creatures with their own internal light, enchant and astonish us. Anyone who has seen a firefly cannot help but fall under their spell.

Watch the trailer:

Entire film available here

Love to read? Here is a wonderful book about fireflies.

Find it at your local bookstore or order it from your local library.

What you can do to minimize outdoor light pollution:

#2- Salt

In case you weren’t aware…Sea salt harvested from the oceans, isn’t healthy to use anymore, because the waters have become progressively more toxic from plastic waste and other pollutants over the last few decades. 90% of sea salts have been found to contain microplastics.

There is a healthy alternative, which is salt harvested inland, from unpolluted ancient salt beds that are millions of years old and devoid of plastic pollution, aka microplastics. What this salt does have are trace amounts of calcium, iron, potassium and magnesium as well as lower amounts of sodium than regular salt.

For many years, I’ve been using pink Himalayan salt or mineral salt. The latter, Real Salt, is harvested in Utah, from an underground salt deposit, which was left there by a pristine ancient sea that covered much of North America millions of years ago, unadulterated by pollutants found in modern day seas.

-the salt I use at home-

The only way to avoid ingesting food that has sea salt in it is by eating at home, growing your own food and only buying unprocessed or raw foods. This is quite impossible for most of us, and even though I try my best to reduce my household’s exposure to sea salt, I do eat out occasionally. Just as I don’t ask every restaurant or dinner party host whether every ingredient in the meal is organic, the same goes for the use of sea salt.

Both salts are available at your local market.

#3- Plastic Free July

Did you know about Plastic Free July? It’s a global movement that helps millions of people be part of the solution to plastic pollution.

Do you think you can go completely plastic free for 1 month? You will need to avoid single use packaging, plastic bags, straws, cups, and bottles.

Try this. If you plan on getting take-out food, instead of accepting the plastic trays, why not bring a reusable glass container, with a cover. Ask the business to put your food order in the container you brought, instead of in their plastic one. They might say no, or they might say yes. I’m going to do this next time I go to a restaurant (usually Indian) where I most often bring my unfinished meal home with me.

- My favorite containers-

I remember years ago when I lived in Los Angeles, I had a method to reduce plastic waste from the dry cleaners. When I dropped my clothes off, I would also leave a reusable cloth garment bag (with several hangers inside), with my name on it. When I picked up my cleaned clothes, they would be hanging inside the garment bag. No plastic no waste. The dry cleaners loved it. Or so they told me as much.

I used to sell the washable and reusable cloth garment bags in my online store. I had 50 in stock and the director James Cameron bought all of them as gifts!

Learn more about Plastic Free July here

Also, this is an interesting read about why plastic recycling doesn’t actually work

#4- Recycle Corks

Recycling your natural wine corks helps replace environmentally harmful, petroleum-based materials in consumer products with a natural, sustainable alternative.

ReCorks recycling program is "plug-and-play" environmentalism, and they need our help to make it work.

Recycle your corks, buy products made from cork, and encourage others to recycle their corks.

-I store the corks in a repurposed netted produce bag, hung up in the pantry-

Did you know that cork oak trees are fantastic carbon sinks. They absorb carbon from the air we breathe and lock it away in their bark. When the time comes to harvest the bark of the tree, which is what wine corks are made of, it is done so by hand only every nine years. This process causes no environmental damage and not a single tree gets cut down.

Harvesting a cork oak tree's bark can extend the tree's lifespan to over 300 years. Every time a cork oak is harvested, it begins to regenerate its bark again. This process is also great for the planet as more carbon is taken out of the atmosphere and locked away in its new bark.

The harvesting of a cork oak is one of the finest examples of traditional, sustainable land use. Cork oak forests are harvested for generations and cover nearly 2.7 million hectares of Portugal, Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Italy, Tunisia, and France.

Every year, the equivalent of over 31 billion bottles of wine are consumed worldwide. Too many of the corks used as stoppers in these bottles are thrown away and litter our landfills.

Choose wines that are bottled with natural cork stoppers and recycle your corks at any ReCORK drop-off location when you are finished with them.

Become a part of the change, one cork at a time.

With the help of our thousands of partners across North America, ReCork has collected over 128 million natural wine corks.

Drop off your natural wine corks at your nearest ReCORK Collection Partner to give them a second life.

The recycled corks are ground down and the material is used in a wide variety of products, replacing environmentally harmful foams and plastics otherwise used.

-vintage corks I bought at an antiques fair in Maine-

Click here to go to the ReCork site

#5- Strawberries

-Be an educated and informed consumer-

Did you know that the average American eats about eight pounds of fresh strawberries a year – and with them, dozens of pesticides, including chemicals that have been linked to cancer and reproductive damage, or that are banned in Europe.

Non-organic strawberries tested by scientists at the Department of Agriculture in 2015 and 2016 contained an average of 7.8 different pesticides per sample, compared to 2.2 pesticides per sample for all other produce, according to EWG’s analysis.

What’s worse, strawberry growers use jaw-dropping volumes of poisonous gases to sterilize their fields before planting, killing every pest, weed and other living thing in the soil.

USDA tests found that strawberries were the fresh produce item most likely to be contaminated with pesticide residues, even after they are picked, rinsed in the field and washed before eating. For these reasons, strawberries continue to be at the top of the Dirty Dozen™ list.

To read more about why it’s best to buy organically grown strawberries, click on the EWG’s link and the source of this piece.

Stay well in all ways

See you in 2 weeks with Newsletter #14!

All the best,

Priscilla

P. S. One more thing! For everyone who lives in the Hudson Valley, and in case you didn’t know about it, there is a Climate Carnival in Chatham, NY on the Columbia County Fairgrounds on July 16th. I’m definitely going!