Food Intake/ Packaging for 24 hours

Breakfast -

• In the morning I grabbed a banana, peanut butter Kashi bar and a glass of iced water for breakfast before heading to work. Both the banana and the Kashi bar were both previously purchased from target. The banana which was raised and produced on one of Chiquita's organic food farms in Central America that ended up going to one of Target's distribution centers located in Lakeland, Florida. Once assorted and prepared for sale it was loaded into one of Target's delivery trucks and traveled a couple hours south to the Target in Gulf Coast Town Center. Since there was no packaging of the banana the peel was garbage and thrown away. The Peanut Butter Kashi bar was produced and packaged in Kashi's only facility in Solana Beach, California. Kashi only uses organic ingredients in its all of its products. Since this is the only facility Kashi operates in they constantly have trucks delivering across the nation. Kashi's facility operates all on machinery assembling all granola bars and cereals. Kashi bars are grouped into twelve bars per cardboard box and then wrapped into pairs.

Lunch -

• In the late afternoon while on break at work I went to a nearby Subway and got their meal of the day which was a six inch meatball sub, chips and a drink. After reading some information I found out that Subway is a franchise and each individual owner of the Subway gets there meat, cheese, bread etc. from the closest supplier at a cheaper cost. My meatball sub was freshly prepared in front of me within a minute or two. It took the energy from the truck to get all ingredients, the oven to bake the bread and the heater to boil the water to keep the meatballs hot. Water was most likely used in the dough and also the cheese. The sub was wrapped in a piece of paper is not recyclable because it was covered with food and then put into a non-recyclable plastic Subway bag. The Miss Vickie's Jalapeno kettle cooked chips were part of my meal with the sub. Since Miss Vickie's is a Canadian brand of chips that were made in Ontario, Canada at their potato chip factory. Miss Vickie's then transfers trucks full of boxes of these bags of chips across both Canada and the United States which go to the local distributors that each Subway owner buys all the ingredients from. The energy used in making these chips were the grease that the chips were kettle cooked in and the machine that makes and seals the plastic bags which end up becoming garbage. The bottle of Dasani water was also used during my lunch and was made at the local Coca-Cola plant that is off of Alico road. Coca-Cola actually uses tap water from local supplies and then adds magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride and salt after it is thoroughly purified. The making of the plastic bottle which is actually made up to thirty percent plants and is still one hundred percent recyclable. 

Dinner -

• After getting home from work I prepared some Gold'n Plump grilled chicken and brown rice for dinner. The chicken and rice were both purchased from Target later earlier this week. The Gold'n Plump chicken was originally started at a family farm where the chickens were raised humanely following animal welfare standards set by the American Humane Certified farm program. The chicken is separated by cut and grade then packaged into Styrofoam with a plastic seal that are not recyclable. The family farmers send out the fresh chicken to the Gold'n Plump facility to be inspected, graded and labeled by the USDA then sent out to the grocery stores by delivery truck. The energy and the water used to make the chicken was also consumed by the chicken which was the pure natural hormone free food such as corn and then purified water. The brown rice was prepared in the microwave in sixty seconds as the chicken was cooking. The Minute rice was packaged in a non-recyclable plastic container and seal. This rice was made at one their facilities where they use machines to dehydrate the rice before packaged and shipped out.

Based on what I ate this day I do not think my food choices were the best choices possible towards being sustainable. Although I was working and on the run I tried to make decisions to the best of my ability thinking about how much waste is created after consuming from leaving the packaging and if it is natural or not such as the banana peel. While shopping for groceries I do try to be both as healthy and reasonably sustainable by buying natural items with minimal packaging that is not recyclable. The best way to improve my food choices would be buy more produce and to find more natural farms and places that do not use packaging or at least try to minimize the waste created by packages.  

  

Koreshan State Historic Park

Taking the trip to Koreshan State Park I knew was going to be interesting from beginning to end even though I have previously visited there multiple times. The park itself is something everyone has to experience for themselves especially the locals. Out of the previous trips to visit the state park I never had a clue they had canoeing until now. Going canoeing down the Estero River was very interesting since it was a first for me. Seeing all the nature while out on the water was awesome even though we all kept running into each other.

After experiencing what it is like getting more water in the canoe than in the river we went through the nature trail which was once again another thing I did not know they had. I thought walking through the nature trail seeing and learning about all the exotic species of plants the Koreshan community loved to plant.

Some of those plants we saw along the way included both Chinese and Japanese bamboo. We learned the difference between the two types of bamboo is that the Chinese is bigger while the Japanese is thinner. Other than finding exotic and invasive plants we also found an invasive species of lizard named the brown anole which has a relative that is also invasive called the ring anole. Our naturalists also pointed out a patch of red berries which I forgot the name of having similar looks of a cherry growing right off the trail that should never be eaten. One of these berries when eaten can kill a human in four hours or less.

Although I had a slight overview of the Koreshan community background I still left the park with a whole knew set of facts that I never had a clue about. The Koreshan community was definitely an interesting group of individuals to learn about. The whole background on their view of the universe basically being inside out and actually backing that up with Dr. Teed’s telescope and other equipment to show how the earth bends upwards instead of downwards was very interesting to learn about and looking at all the artifacts.

Before the Koreshan State Park became a historical park it was not as big because the water level was higher but there were more homes in the area for the couple hundred followers in the community. The Koreshan Park quickly became an urban environment as more people became aware and later turned into followers that helped develop that area by building mills, stores etc. After Dr. Teed’s idea about the universe being inside out made the community as well as Dr. Teed to believe that they were the center of the earth.

Preserving historic parks such as the Koreshan State Park keeping their natural settings is key to finding the history behind them. Although many of the artifacts were duplicates they still knew everything about the artifacts and buildings by preserving them. Many things changed over time at the Koreshan State Park because of how old it was but they still repaired and preserved the leftovers to maintain a similar environment as back then.

Waste to Energy Facility

The field trip to the Covanta Waste to Energy facility was extremely interesting and full of technology and systems I never knew existed. When I first think of a waste to energy facility I picture an area where the trash is separated and then burned in order to create energy. During our sit down with one of the facility leaders I honestly was surprised about how much information he threw at us about the importance of the organization of each individual step throughout the process of making the energy from all of Lee County’s waste. Among the many facts he discussed the ones that stuck out to me were the 1,800 tons of solid waste the facility processes in a single day and the average amount of energy they turn that waste into which I believe was about sixty megawatts of pure clean and renewable energy that the entire facility uses to operate with.

 

          There are about twenty one different steps involved in this process starting with the collection of all materials in the big pit that holds around a few hundred tons at a time and ending with the separation of the fumes from combustion, metals leftover, and the leftover ash.

 

 

Before visiting this waste to energy facility I figured most of our counties waste went straight into a landfill or a furnace. Visiting this facility first hand definitely changed my view about how I deal with my waste by making sure that all recyclables are actually recyclable and rinsed off before thrown away and also making sure all unwanted electronics are carefully and correctly dealt with. It is more comforting to realize how useful our everyday unwanted items are still used. Overall I was very impressed with the Lee County’s waste management system ensuring that all waste collected is never wasted.

 

         The Public Policies on More-Sustainable Consumption chapter can easily be connected with what we both learned and saw during our visit to the waste to energy facility. First of all the majority of consumers around the world buy things they will either barely use or not use them at all which in turn will turn into waste. If the consumer market cut down on unnecessary materials then the amount of waste would drastically decrease worldwide. As said in the chapter there needs to be a push for a more sustainable consumption system since research shows that well-being is rarely connected to consumption.