By Leah Karpus on September 11th, 2009
Breakfast: good for you and the planet!
Many teens either skip breakfast or grab something starchy and sugary on the way to school. However, from a nutritional point of view, breakfast is the most important part of the day. The solution? A fast and easy breakfast smoothie. You can make your own with protein powder, yogurt and frozen berries, or try Vega smoothie mixes. They have protein for energy, plus all your vitamins and minerals to start the day right. Vega compared its Whole Food Optimizer to a “traditional North American breakfast” including hashbrowns, eggs and bacon, and a “light North American breakfast” including yogurt, cereal and banana. According to the Vega website, there are 38 times more greenhouse gas emissions created by traditional breakfast and 10 times more greenhouse gases created by the light breakfast compared to Vega. Thus, switching to Vega for a year would be equivalent to turning off a 60 watt light bulb for 12,500 hours, or 521 consecutive days (Source: http://sequelnaturals.com/).
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By Carter Lavin on March 4th, 2009
I play soccer in a large park in the eastern part of Salamanca. West of the park are the train tracks and on the other side of the tracks is a large elementary school, immediately east of the park is a nearly 100 year-old ammonium fertilizer plant. Map here
The plant’s smoke stacks are pretty short since the plant was built way before that part of town had anyone living there. This means the smoke doesn’t travel all that far from the plant. The lucky thing for the students and park users is that the winds blow the smoke south, not west (generally). This is bad news for the soccer field that is just a little bit further south of the plant. My Air Pollution professor explained how he used to play on that field when he was younger and how you would get mild rashes or slight chemical burns from the grass. He said now practically no one uses that park. If the wind blew to the west, my park would not be nearly as healthy and breathing would be a lot more difficult when playing soccer. Knowing whether or not you live near a large source of air pollution is very important, but knowing the wind patterns in your area is important too.
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