Newsletter 7

~Hope is a motivator~

The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” ― Barack Obama

Post #1-Not All Honey is Created Equal

I love honey and have a teaspoonful every day!

Did you know that 76% of the honey sold in the United States is fake? According to the Food Fraud Database, honey is the third-most-faked food behind milk and olive* oil. Since most of the honey options found in US grocery stores are fake, or have been processed to the point that the majority of food laws around the world would prevent them from being labeled as honey, we need to be fully educated honey consumers, and support the brands that are selling good honey.

When shopping for honey, buy locally made honey when possible. If purchasing from the supermarket, here is a list of healthy and trusted brands.

The following are the three honey’s I currently have at home.

This one is my favorite. Plus the jar is reusable.

A locally made liquid honey. Not certified organic but the beekeeper doesn’t use pesticides. Reusable glass jar.

A medicinal grade Manuka honey. I have a tiny spoonful if I have a sore throat.

Be an informed consumer and learn about healthy honey options:

Medical-Grade Honey: This honey is exceptionally high in antimicrobial properties. These antimicrobial properties make it excellent to use when treating scrapes, cuts, and burns. Manuka honey is one of the most wildly used forms of medical grade honey.

Food-Grade Honey: food-grade honey is anything that doesn’t qualify as medical grade. This honey will not have as high of antimicrobial properties, but if you choose the correct brand, you will still experience health benefits.

Raw Honey: This is pure, unheated, unpasteurized, and unprocessed honey. In terms of preserving all the healthy elements of honey, consuming raw honey is vital.

Organic Honey: organic honey is usually also raw honey, but not all raw honey is organic. Organic honey is made in an area that is free of fertilizers and pesticides, including the flowers where the bees gather their pollen.

Pasteurized Honey: This is honey that has been heated and treated to ensure that certain pathogens are not present. However, this process kills the healthy bacteria within honey, eliminating the vast majority of its natural health benefits.

Why is raw honey healthier?

Raw (unprocessed) honey is filled with pollen, enzymes, vitamins, and other elements that can't survive the pasteurization process which means that their benefits do not survive, either. Raw local honey can help with boosting your immune system against allergies and is a powerful anti-bacterial since it contains hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Hydrogen peroxide is proven to have powerful antioxidant and anti-bacterial qualities that inhibits the growth of bacteria. Some people use raw honey to treat minor burns because it has such strong anti-bacterial properties.

*See newsletter #4 about Olive Oil

Excerpted from here

If you are interested in reading more about honey fraud, here is another article.

Post #2 Collaborating with Bees

Through his art, Tomáš Libertíny continually explores the beauty and intelligence of nature. Collaborating with as many as 60,000 bees, he had a hand in a series of vases that were completely "made by bees". After months of learning from beekeepers the inner workings of nature, Libertíny invited new colonies of bees to participate on sculptural forms.

These vases are expected to last over 2,000 years. Honeycombs containing edible honey were found in Egyptian pharaoh’s tombs…

Title: Thousand Years
Artist: Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny
Year: 2014
Commissioned by Christofle
Movie by René van der Hulst
Thanks to beekeepers Johan Beckers and Bart De Coo

Learn more about the artist

Post #3- Car brands are going all electric

This is indeed good news. Climate scientists said that vehicle electrification is one of the best ways to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States, the transportation sector is the largest source of emissions, most of which comes from cars and trucks. Plus gas has become an even bigger issue these days, due to the war in Ukraine.

Finally, car manufacturers are racing to go electric ahead of bans on new fossil-fuel vehicles in several countries, including the United Kingdom.

Dancing for joy for a cleaner future

Image by Paolo Verzone

Luxury brands may be taking the lead on manufacturing electric cars but mainstream models are also investing heavily in the industrial transition needed for the coming decades.

Here's a list of car brands that are making the permanent switch to electric.

Ford

American car maker Ford has said its passenger cars will be all-electric by 2030. The company expects 40 to 50 per cent of its global sales to be battery electric vehicles by that same year. Ford Motor and Korean battery partner SK Innovation announced that they would build an electric assembly plant and three battery plants in the US to open in 2025.

The $15.7 billion plan is the single-largest manufacturing investment in Ford's 118-year history.

Toyota

Toyota rivals Volkswagen Group as the biggest car maker in the world. The Japanese carmaker says it is committed to making its range zero emissions by 2050. Toyota's plan relies heavily on developing hydrogen cars rather than battery electric vehicles.

Nissan

Japanese car maker Nissan has said all its new cars will be electrified in the key markets of Japan, China, the US and Europe by the early 2030s.

The company, which is part of the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi alliance, has also set 2050 as its goal to go carbon neutral.

Volkswagen (VW)

German car maker VW, will only sell battery electric cars in Europe by 2035. It expects to stop selling internal combustion engines in the United States and China a little bit after that. VW is aiming to make its entire fleet carbon neutral by 2050 at the latest.

General Motors

General Motors, which owns Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac, will only sell zero-emission cars by 2035. The American company, which rivals Ford, also plans to be carbon neutral by 2040. GM is spending $47 billion on electric and self-driving vehicles through to 2025.

Honda

Japanese car maker Honda is aiming to go all electric in North America, China and Japan by 2040. The company plans to reach its goal by developing both battery-powered and fuel cell vehicles. It has said it expects both electric and hydrogen cars to account for 40 per cent of sales by 2030, and 80 per cent by 2035

Hyundai

Hyundai is aiming to go fully electric by 2040. The South Korean car maker has said it will gradually expand its battery electric car line-up in the United States, Europe and China. Hyundai's plan to go electric focuses heavily on hydrogen cars, also known as fuel cell electric vehicles. The Hyundai Group, which also owns Kia, has said it will become the first car maker to apply fuel cell systems to all commercial vehicle models by 2028. It has said it will also make fuel cell vehicles comparable to battery electric vehicles in cost by 2030.

Mini

Mini, another brand owned by BMW, said in March that it would only produce battery electric vehicles by the end of the decade. Its last internal combustion engine model will be released in 2025.

Volvo

Car maker Volvo has committed to making only fully electric cars by 2030. By 2025, it is aiming for about 50 per cent of the cars it sells globally to be battery-powered, and the other 50 per cent to be hybrids.

Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz, which is owned by Daimler, is working towards going all-electric by the end of the decade. The company has increased its target for battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids to make up 50 per cent of its sales globally by 2025.

Jaguar

British luxury car brand Jaguar will go all-electric from 2025. Its maker, Jaguar Land Rover, which also sells the Land Rover, has pledged to become a net zero carbon business by 2039. The first all-electric Land Rover model is due to be released in 2024, with an intention to eventually phase out internal combustion engines in that brand as well.

Rolls-Royce

Luxury car maker Rolls-Royce announced in September that it would only produce electric cars by 2030. The BMW-owned brand is due to release its first fully electric car, named 'Spectre', in late 2023.

Bentley

Bentley, which is owned by Volkswagen Group, announced last year it would be fully electric by 2030. The luxury brand says it will launch its first battery electric vehicle in 2025. Two of its three models are already available as hybrids, with the third due in 2023. It will phase out internal combustion engines by 2026, with only plug-in hybrids and electric cars on the market.

Source and here as well.

#4- We need a Superbonus too

This is an excellent idea: in this excerpt from George Monbiot’s most recent newsletter, he wrote about how some countries have started to step up to help home owners transition to more energy efficient homes: “ In Italy, the government provides a remarkable 110% of the cost of home energy improvements, which it pays as a five-year tax credit (the 10% covers financial and transaction costs). This superbonus scheme pays for everything: insulation, ventilation, new windows and doors, solar panels, heat pumps. It isn’t a perfect system yet, as it creates no incentive for builders to limit their costs and was, at first, open to fraud – but these issues are being addressed.

A home in Italy…

Finland has equipped roughly one-third of its homes with heat pumps. It installs about twice as many every year as the UK does, though it has only about one tenth of the number of homes. Almost every day, I hear professional ignoramuses announce that “heat pumps wouldn’t work in our cold climate”. But they work just fine in Finland, which is much colder.

A home in Finland…

The Netherlands proposes to disconnect all its homes from the gas grid. In Estonia, the capital city, Tallinn, and most other counties offer free public transport. If Italy and Estonia can afford it, so can the rest of the world. “

Subscribe here to George Monbiot’s Newsletter

#5- Join Me in Signing a Binding Global Plastics Treaty

-Together, let’s make positive change happen -

Nearly 1,000 organizations and one million individuals signed on to a call for the United Nations to negotiate a new legally binding global instrument that covers plastic pollution across its entire life cycle. Your signature still matters!  Join me in signing the petition, and please share!

Link to sign petition

Trash from a New York beach was assembled into sculptures of ocean detritus by photographer Barry Rosenthal.

Tell Amazon: Stop Polluting Our Planet With Plastic Packaging!
Oceana’s recent report reveals that Amazon generated an estimated 599 million pounds of plastic packaging waste in 2020, with up to 23.5 million pounds of this plastic waste entering the world’s waterways and seas. Find out more and sign our petition to tell Amazon to stop polluting our planet with plastic packaging.

Link to sign petition

By Barry Rosenthal

Post #6—Seek Silence

Silence helps us to explore our shared humanity as it speaks to the part of life that is beyond words. This video created by Green Renaissance and filmed in South Africa encourages us to hear the words that silence whispers to our hearts and to find a quiet space in the busyness of life, wherever we live. It invites us to explore what silence means to us.

Karmatube is dedicated to bringing inspirational stories to light, using the power of video and the internet to multiply acts of kindness, beauty, and generosity.

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No matter what seems to be going on in the world-at-large, I wish you and your loved ones an April of occasional sprinkles that flower into glorious blossomings.

See you in 2 weeks with Newsletter 8!

All the very best,

Priscilla

P.S. In issue 8, I’ll be sharing an extra post for paid subscribers of my favorite eco/nature/ it’s a beautiful world movies, and shorts that I have seen over the past 13 years, plus a few I can’t wait to see when they come out this year.