Reflection: Weeks 7 and 8

Weeks 7 and 8

For Week 7
If we were to live by a big chemical plant that dumped all the harmful wast into our local water supply, would you feel comfertable with this? Harmful chemicals and waste is the theme of the week. The story of Becky Bradway and how she lived near a toxic chemical plant (Borden Chemical and Plastics Inc.) in Buffalo, Illinois is where we got the information of such tragic living conditions for some Americans have to deal with. The article in our textbook is "Reading 16 III Winds: The Chemical Plant Next Door". The discussion in class was about how the reading left a big gap as to what the conclusion of the story is. We interpreted it as an open-ended question that we talked about in class, and how these plastics we use everyday are killing people in some parts of America. We never think twice about where the plastic comes from or how its made.

The other part of the week was to watch the video "Green" in class. It was done by a graduate student. In the film they mention that 25% of the Nation's plastics are made along this relativly short stretch of the Lousiana part of the Mississippi River. What happens to the towns near these chemical plants is that every part of the wind, earth, and water is allegedly poisoned with carcinogenic substances. The people that live on this poisonous land are not able to move as their homes will not sell due to the poor living conditions, with these poverty stricken communities. Environmental Racisim is the focus of why this is happening. The government is turning a blind eye to the issue of health concerns for these people that live near the chemical plants, to benifit out of the plants and the money they can make. The companies are regulating themselves, which is a red flag. If there is no thrid party to observe a company to make sure they are being appropriate and safe, than we are putting a lot of risk into this decison to allow this to go on.

The Eye Opener we did this week is Environmental Working Group. This assignment is about finding how harmful our cosmetic products we use are to yourself and the environment. What I search about was the product Bert Bee's All-Natural Milk and Honey Lotion. It was able to score a 4 out of 10 for harmfulness. This I thought was very high at first, but then after some review it is a relativly low score, as very many lotions and especially hair spray/gels scored bad at an 7, 8, 9, or 10 . This activity lets you see if the product tests on animals, and also if they are apart of an agreement to Compact as Safe .


Week 8

We had a reading to do for the week. The reading is chapter 31 Privatizing Water. The story is about how water is being owned by private buisnessess, and sold by the ounce like gasoline is sold at the pump. If this happens we can be paying three times the amount for water we are paying now. In the chapter 31 example, the citizens of Cochabamba, Bolivia. The water was given a U.S. company "Bechtel", of which rose the price of water by 3 times the previous rate.

Along with that reading we watched a movie "Thirst" that is about Privatizing Water in Stockton, California. The mayor of Stockon in the movie is trying to change the public water to a private owned water company that will pay out more to the government as they charge the citizens for the water at a higher premium. To stop this change there was a grass roots effort established by local citiziens of Stockton to show the mayor the voters do not want this change. Their slogan was "Let us vote".

These two weeks have been very informative. It has showed me that grass roots campaigns can make a difference. If you believe in something you can work on getting it to come true.