Will We Make It Out Alive?

In this episode we will learn more about the Roots of Success program from Grady Mitchell, a former participant and current Corrections & Reentry Program Director at Roots of Success.

In this episode we learn more about the Taylor's Checkerspot Butterfly Rearing Program with the Sustainability in Prisons Project.

We interview Kelli Bush, Mary Linders and Carolina Landa and learn more about partnerships and programs in the Washington Sustainability in Prisons Project.

Season 3 is all about the Sustainability in Prisons Project (otherwise referred to as SPP). SPP brings education and training into Washington prisons to reduce recidivism and protect and enhance our environment. In this episode we are honored to interview Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, whose curiosity and out of the box thinking led to the formation of SPP. We will also hear from Kelli Bush, current Co-Director of SPP.

In this episode we learn more about community gardens with a twist. We speak with Holli Prohaska from the Urban Farm Collective in Portland, where you don’t have to own land or even rent a community garden spot in order to participate in growing your own food, and where you may have been excited to see slugs in the past. We say, bring back the slugs!

For this episode, we interviewed the previous farm manager of the Mother Earth Farm, Liam McNamara, about the Emergency Food Network and the unique niche that the Mother Earth Farm plays in providing fresh local food to those who need it.

We're coming back, we promise! Just... not quite yet. We'll be back sometime next year for Season 2.

In this episode we will learn more about the the human and environmental health impacts of plastics, the history and future of plastics, the great recycling myth, a little bit about the zero waste lifestyle, and how to use Cartography to better display information on your maps, which will include my critique on a map that the Magical Mapper is designing. Most importantly, we talk about how You Are Loved!This is part two of our Plastics spotlight. Three months ago we shared some background on plastics, how plastic recycling isn’t working, the plastic ban from China, oh and a bunch of depressing plastic facts. So, if you haven’t listened to that episode and want a little more background before we delve into this episode check out Episode 18 first. Yes, we did this 2-part series in the correct order, just to keep you on your toes, then we added some episodes in between to see if you were paying attention. But before we get started, happy news! Here’s a link to an article about the grey whale we mentioned getting untangled.Environmental and Human Health Risks Associated with PlasticsPlastics pollute at all levels; during its manufacture, use and disposal. The poop detective gets right into some more depressing facts about plastic, starting with its manufacture. Plastic production can release airborne toxins and also cause fires and explosions.Many of the chemicals found in plastics are known endocrine disruptors. Amy drops a lot of facts, but if you want to go down the endocrine disruptor wormhole, check out the half hour video, Our Chemical Lives. Unfortunately 96% of Americans have endocrine disruptors in their blood, but there are all sorts of sources including the food we eat, oh which also has microplastics in it.Environmental ImpactsThe presence of plastics, particularly microplastics, within the food chain is increasing. In the 1960s, microplastics were first observed in the guts of seabirds, and since then have been found in increasing concentrations. There are estimates that around eight million tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans annually. Amy bums us out with a lot more depressing plastic facts, which I won’t repeat here, although you might see some of them if you follow us on Facebook.Ok, I’ll share one very depressing report from 2018; a survey by the Global Oceanic Environmental Survey (GOES) Foundation found that the ecosystem in seas and oceans may collapse in the next 25 years, potentially causing failure of terrestrial ecosystem and "very possibly the end of life on Earth as we know it"; the main agents of this prediction were hypothesized to be plastic, ocean acidification, and ocean pollution. In order to prevent such a catastrophe, experts have proposed a total single-use plastic ban, wood burning bans while planting "as many trees as possible," "pollution-free recycling of electronics, and by 2030 all industries have zero toxic discharge."Climate Change ImpactsAlthough plastic is often seen as a separate issue from climate change, both its production and afterlife are in fact major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, the Center for International Environmental Law published a new report on the impact of plastic on climate change, which Amy digs into. Finally, the disposal results in additional emissions.Also, an estimated 12% of all plastic is incinerated, releasing more greenhouse gases, as well as dangerous toxins, including dioxins and heavy metals. Industry is actually promoting an expansion of incineration in waste-to-electricity plants, which it describes as a source of renewable energy.The History of Plastic and Recycling and the Rise of the Single Use Disposable Consumerist SocietyThe mass production of plastic started about 70 years ago. Since then approximately 6.3 billion tons have become waste, clogging our oceans and landfills with a material that take potentially hundred to thousands of years to break down. Plastic might sit for hundreds of years without decomposing, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces.Amy goes over the history of recycling in the US. She also relays some interesting facts about plastic bags.In 1907 Bakelite was invented. It was the first synthetic plastic, which contained no molecules found in nature. Global production of plastics increased annually from two million metric tons in 1950 to over 400 million metric tons in 2015, outgrowing most other man-made materials.The Future of Plastics is Tied to the Oil IndustrySo now, we have major oil companies getting ready to ramp up plastic production as consumers try to be more savvy with their plastic purchases. The World Economic Forum predicts plastic production will double in the next 20 years. The Alliance to End Plastic Waste was founded by major petrochemical companies. They’re simultaneously promising beach cleanups and recycling campaigns, while its key members, including Shell and ExxonMobil, announce plans to build new multi-billion-dollar polyethylene and petrochemical plants that produce inexpensive, plastic products.According to a Mother Jones article on the origins of the anti-litter campaigns: the entire anti-litter movement was initiated by a consortium of industry groups who wanted to divert the nation’s attention away from even more radical legislation to control the amount of waste these companies were putting out. In 1953 the packaging industry teamed up with other industries including Coca-Cola and Dixie Cup to form Keep America Beautiful, which still exists today. Keep America Beautiful was basically a campaign against individual bad environmental practices instead of the businesses taking responsibility for their waste.“By pushing for curbside recycling, you’re mobilizing a nation to do a lot of labor for you, bring [trash] back to you at low cost and invest in a lot of infrastructure for you —infrastructure you don’t build and don’t own.”— Bartow J. Elmore - environmental historianRecycling, Circular Economy and Zero-wasteSo, is it time to trash recycling? The reality is most plastic is not recycled. We have been fed the idea that plastics are recyclable, but between the inability for many plastics to be recycled to the high level of contamination in the plastic recycle stream, much of it ends up in the landfill, or worse somewhere in our environment. According to a story on treehugger.com, for the last dozen years recycling has been described as a fraud, a sham, a scam perpetrated by big business on the citizens and municipalities of America.In the end, recycling is a poor substitute for meaningful solutions, such as reducing the number of materials and products we consume and ridding ourselves of our reliance on products with an end of life, which is oftentimes called a zero waste lifestyle within a circular economy. Amy discusses our current linear economy and how moving to a circular economy would be beneficial. Our happiness should not be predicated on purchasings goods.Is there any good news?Some countries have big plans to curb plastic waste, such as Indonesia, which aims to cut marine plastic waste by 70% within five years and be entirely plastic pollution-free by 2040.Companies are starting to listen, but only take baby steps to commit to less plastic. The American Chemistry Council aims for all plastic to be recycled or recovered by 2040, although critics dismiss the goal as unrealistic greenwash. Many of the major companies, like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle have made plans to include 25-50% recycled material in their plastic packaging between 2025 and 2030. But it seems these goals in no way match the severity of the issue.What can we do?The bottom line to really make change, we have to change the way we view our society. We need businesses to innovate their practices to move towards a circular economy that does not produce waste.To fix this, we need to quickly stop the idea of the throwaway culture being normal. But of course, changing it is going to be far more difficult because it permeates every aspect of the economy. Remember that we vote each time we make a purchase.We should all strive for a zero waste lifestyle, where individually, we attempt to minimize or eliminate waste and therefore avoid recycling altogether. The best way to start is just to buy less, and guess what, our stay at home orders should be making that easier to do!GIS - Cartography!After all of that depression, we finish out the episode on a high note! Jen finally gets to talk about maps! Head over to the GIS Tools blog for some helpful cartography resources, and to see the amazing map Jen created.Please don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts (like Tune In, Castbox Himalaya, iheartradio, etc). Please let us know what you think in the comments below or at facebook.com/WillWeMakeItOutAlive. Also, if you are more visually inclined, check out our YouTube page!

In this episode we discussed how long some plastics have been invasive in our remote environments. Then we met up with Liz from the Olympia Surfrider Chapter. We chatted about all sorts of interesting stuff, but tried to stay focused on what Surfrider does, how you can plug into their programs and continued discussing the issues with plastics.

In this episode we will FINALLY share the story that birthed the term backdoor style, we dive into the Puget Sound Partnership and the 2019 State of the Sound Report (we will not be recovering Puget Sound by 2020, since it’s already here), how GIS dashboards make life easier and the Call to Action from the State of the Sound report...even though it’s not gonna be recovered by 2020, that’s no reason to just give up and the Partnership has lots of suggestions for actions. So, get settled in, cause we are going full NERD on this episode.

Today we will be bringing you a culvert operation...we will learn more about culvert replacement prioritization in the Wenatchee Watershed. We also discuss GIS flow networks and how they play a role in the prioritization tool. We interview Robyn Pepin of Aspect Consulting, who helped develop a GIS tool that more effectively evaluates culverts for removal than existing ranking systems. While we realize that we haven’t introduced all of the intricacies of the salmon and their lifecycle, we hope to help illuminate them in a future episode. We might even try to interview someone again...although we did have some technical challenges with our long distance recording.

In Episode 13: Knights of the Nearshore, we talk about how we almost didn’t make it out alive in the San Juan Islands, the impacts of our armored shorelines, how to coax the hard armor off, how to use GIS to find your identity, and opportunities for shoreline monitoring.

In this episode Amy the Poop Detective and Jen the Magical Mapper discuss drought, what it is, what causes it, what areas in the Pacific Northwest are currently being impacted, future drought conditions under climate change and what you can do to conserve water. We also talk about the US Drought Monitor and how they use GIS to evaluate data and make weekly determinations for drought across the US. Finally, we discuss how you can report drought conditions or become your own meteorologist, by installing and maintaining a weather station!