What a waste!

     Evaluating what I actually throw away in a day was both eye-opening and not surprising all at the same time. I was aware that I dispose of quite a bit and that I can do a better job at wasting less. The part that was not surprising is that I really do not have the time that would be required to make a significant change. I am the mother of five, a full time student and a part time worker. With all of this going on I would need recycling to be less of a hassle. Unfortunately, here in Macon, recycling is not simple. Based on my disposal habits of yesterday, both at work, school and at home, I estimate that I threw away approximately 3.5 pounds of waste. From the packaging of the food I prepared, to the food that was not eaten, which in my home, is actually very little (i have 4 boys). I was able to do this evaluation by actually saving all of my trash until the end of the day and then bagging it separately. After the day was over I weighed the bag and it weighed 3 pounds 7 ounces. I would say that this was a fair estimate of a normal day for our family. Over the course of the year that would equate to 1,277 pounds of trash for just myself. If you multiply that times 5, for my five children, that's almost 6500 pounds of trash. In comparison to the rest of the population, I found that our waste production is very much in line with the typical waste of the average American. Since we lead the world in waste production, I can say that my family probably produces more than most families in the world.

• Totals 
• Per Capita

#	COUNTRY	AMOUNT	DATE	GRAPH
1	United States	760 kgs per person per year	2000
2	Australia	690 kgs per person per year	2000
3	Denmark	660 kgs per person per year	2000
4	Switzerland	650 kgs per person per year	2000
5	Canada	640 kgs per person per year	2000
6	Norway	620 kgs per person per year	2000
7	Netherlands	610 kgs per person per year	2000
8	Austria	560 kgs per person per year	2000
9	United Kingdom	560 kgs per person per year	2000
10	Ireland	560 kgs per person per year	2000
	Group of 7 countries (G7) average	560 kgs per person per year	2000
11	Belgium	550 kgs per person per year	2000
12	Germany	540 kgs per person per year	2000
13	France	510 kgs per person per year	2000
14	Italy	500 kgs per person per year	2000
15	Finland	460 kgs per person per year	2000
16	Sweden	450 kgs per person per year	2000
17	Japan	410 kgs per person per year	2000

     Trying to figure out how much water my family uses every day is more difficult. My youngest children take a shower every other day and my wife and I and our oldest son shower each day. Water is used in brushing of teeth, and the preparation of food as well. That's not counting the number of times the toilet gets flushed. All of our toilets are low-flow as well as having low-flow shower heads. So, since I cannot do the estimate myself, I turned to the internet and researched that average water use. In this I found a graphic that I believe reflects the typical use by my family.

Typical water use at home

Bath	A full tub is about 36 gallons.
Shower	2 gallons per minute. Old shower heads use as much as 5 gallons per minute.
Teeth brushing	<1 gallon, especially if water is turned off while brushing. Newer bath faucets use about 1 gallon per minute, whereas older models use over 2 gallons.
Hands/face washing	1 gallon
Face/leg shaving	1 gallon
Dishwasher	4 to 10 gallons/load, depending of efficiency of dishwasher
Dishwashing by hand:	20 gallons. Newer kitchen faucets use about 2.2 gallons per minutes, whereas older faucets use more.
Clothes washer	25 gallons/load for newer washers. Older models use about 40 gallons per load.
Toilet flush	3 gallons. Most all new toilets use 1.6 gallons per flush, but many older toilets used about 4 gallons.
Glasses of water drunk	8 oz. per glass (did you remember to drink your 8 glasses of water today?)
Outdoor watering	5 to 10 gallons per minute

All in all, this is a significant amount of water. I have always believed that my family can do a better job at consuming less and being more eco-friendly. I have learned in this class to be more focused on that and making my choices more in line with sustainability. I can't promise that I will make the significant changes that might be necessary, but something should be better than nothing. I hope that I will be able to have a small impact.

Fact Sheet: Ethyl-Vinyl Acetate

The Value of Money

 The Value of Money....

This question is so very difficult to answer. If you go with the literal answer, then the value of money is whatever denomintaion is printed on the paper. But even this is questionable...who are we relying on to uphold that value? After watching the Zeitgeist film I began to ask myself some of the same questions as the director. If we all are relying on the United States government and the Federal Reserve to honor the value of the money in our pocket, what would happen if they decided to stop? Worse, what would happen if the american people stop believing in the perceived value? 

I have often thought about the actual value of money.Two basic questions need to be answered: (1) What are the fac­tors that originally afforded value to money, and (2) What are the factors that effect changes in the “objective exchange value of mon­ey” or its purchasing power? It would seem logical to say that like any other goods and services, money would be subject to the laws that govern supply and demand. Why is money more valuable than the paper on which it is printed? Monetarists link the value of money to its supply and demand, believing the latter depends on the total value of the commodities it circulates. According to Prabhat Patnaik, this logic is flawed. In his view, in any nonbarter economy, the value we assign to money is determined independently of its supply and demand. Patnaik's theory of money, is also a theory of imperialism, and he concludes with a discussion of the contemporary international monetary system, which he terms the "oil-dollar" standard. I am inclined to also follow this train of thought. If the value of money were indeed tied to the same supply and demand system that other goods and services are, what accounts for the stability of money over long stretches of time? We don't see the same extreme up and down fluctuations as we do with other commodities. I attribute this to the fact that uncertainty in the nations monetary system results in extreme uncertainty in the population and can cause extreme over reactions to events. As a result, the government exerts tight controls over this system. In doing so, I find it very difficult to believe that there is no impropriety going on. I am not willing to go as far as the Zeitgeist film did, but on the surface it did raise questions that I myself have asked. 

El Cajon, CA

 Nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains, the city has acquired the nickname of "The Big Box". Its name originated similarly, from the Spanish phrase "el cajón", which means "the big box" or "the drawer." El Cajon, the Spanish words for "the box," was first recorded on September 10, 1821, as an alternative name for sitio rancho Santa Mónica, describing the "boxed in" nature of the valley in which it sat. The name appeared on maps in 1873 and 1875 as shortened to just "Cajon" until the modern town developed where the post office was named "Elcajon." In 1905, the name was once again expanded to "El Cajon" when California banker and historian, Zoeth Skinner Eldredge, insisted that the words be separated. 
During Spanish rule (1769–1821), the government encouraged settlement of territory now known as California by the establishment of large land grants called ranchos, from which the English word ranch is derived. Land grants were made to the Roman Catholic Church which set up numerous missions throughout the region. In the early nineteenth century, mission padres' search for pasture land led them to the El Cajon Valley. Surrounding foothills served as a barrier to straying cattle and a watershed to gather the sparse rainfall. For years the pasture lands of El Cajon supported the cattle herds of the mission and its native Indian converts.

It was not until the Mexican era (1821–1846) that titles to plots of land were granted to individuals. The original intent of the 1834 secularization legislation was to have church property divided among the former mission Indians. However, most of the grants were actually made to rich "Californios" of Spanish background who had long been casting envious eyes on the vast holdings of the Roman Catholic missions. In 1845 California Governor Pio Paco confiscated the lands of Mission San Diego de Alcala. He granted 48,800 acres of the El Cajon Valley to Dona Maria Antonio Estudillo, daughter of Jose Antonio Estudillo, alcalde of San Diego, to repay a $500 government obligation. The grant was originally called Rancho Santa Monica and encompassed present day El Cajon, Bostonia, Santee, Lakeside, Flinn Springs, and the eastern part of La Mesa. It also contained the 28-acre Rancho Cañada de los Coches grant. Maria Estudillo was the wife of Don Miguel Perdrorena (1808–1850), a native of Madrid, Spain, who had come to California from Peru in 1838 to operate a trading business.

With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho El Cajon was filed by Thomas W. Sutherland, guardian of Pedrorena's heirs (his son, Miguel, and his three daughters, Victoria, Ysabel and Elenain) with the Public Land Commission in 1852, confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the grant was patented in 1876. In 1868, Los Angeles land developer Isaac Lankershim bought the bulk of the Pedrorena's Rancho El Cajon holdings and employed Major Levi Chase, a former Union Army officer, as his agent. Chase received from Lankershim 7,624 acres (30.9 km²) known as the Chase Ranch. Lankershim hired Amaziah Lord Knox (1833–1918), a New Englander whom he had met in San Francisco, to manage Rancho El Cajon. In 1876, Knox established a hotel there to serve the growing number of people traveling between San Diego and Julian, where gold had been discovered in 1869. Room and board for a guest and horse cost $1 a night. The area became known as Knox's Corners and was later renamed. By 1878 there were 25 families living in the valley and a portion of the hotel lobby became the valley post office with Knox as the first postmaster.

El Cajon was incorporated as a city in 1912. 

"Silent Spring" Spawns a Revolution

Rachel Carson, citizen-scientist, wrote the novel "Silent Spring" in 1962. She presented information about pesticides in a way that had never been presented before. She showed that once the chemicals had entered the biosphere they would have far reaching effects.  Although the information that she used was not new, she was the first one to put it all together in a way that was easy for the general public to understand. In doing so, she sparked an environmental revolution. "Silent Spring" made the powerful case that if humankind poisoned nature, then nature would eventually in turn poison man. She was not the first to point out the effects of our destruction of the environment, but she was ahead of her time and spent many of her dying days fighting for her cause. Many people believe that we are more on top of these issues now and that they are not as damaging. If anything, environmental issues have grown larger — and more urgent — since Carson’s day. Yet no single work has had the impact of “Silent Spring." She was a pioneer and her legacy still continues today, more than 50 years later.