Blog Action Day 2010 - WATER

Third time is the charm!

It's my third time participating in Blog Action Day,
Three years have passed, time truly flies,
And yes, we all realized time does passes by in a blink of an eye,
So instead of sitting there doing nothing, we all can start a small habit change in order to make our world a better place to live,
Come on my beloved readers, let's get movin! (shuffle shuffle)

The theme of the year is water.

Let me present you the data distracted from Blog Action Day 2010 to showcase the importance of water, and the seriousness of this issue:

"The problem of scarce clean water:


Nearly 1 billion people lack access to clean water, which causes a litany of struggles, diseases and even death.


40 Billion Hours: African women walk over 40 billion hours each year carrying cisterns weighing up to 18 kilograms to gather water, which is usually still not safe to drink.

38,000 Children a Week: Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions.

Wars Over Water: Many scholars attribute the conflict in Darfur at least in part to lack of access to water. A report commissioned by the UN found that in the 21st century, water scarcity will become one of the leading causes of conflict in Africa.

A Human Right: In July, to address the water crisis, the United Nations declared access to clean water and sanitation a human right over. But we are far from implementing solutions to secure basic access to safe drinking water. Water over-consumption in industrialized countries:


While the developing world faces a water crisis, those in industrialized countries consume far more than their fair share.


Food Footprint: It takes 24 liters of water to produce one hamburger. That means it would take over 19.9 billion liters of water to make just one hamburger for every person in Europe.

Technology Footprint: The shiny new iPhone in your pocket requires half a liter of water to charge. That may not seem like much, but with over 80 million active iPhones in the world, that's 40 million liters to charge those alone.

Fashion Footprint: That cotton t-shirt you're wearing right now took 1,514 liters of water to produce, and your jeans required an extra 6,813 liters.
 
Bottled Water Footprint: The US, Mexico and China lead the world in bottled water consumption, with people in the US drinking an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year. Over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled."

As a food blogger,
All I'm asking is please stop or at least reduce the amount of bottled water consumption.

Try to order regular water (or so tap water) instead of bottled water,
Especially in a fancy restaurant, they always further ask if you would like imported bottled water,
No need ok? Really, no need.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally against bottled water,
I think every household should stock some only in the case of preparing for emergencies,
However, for regular consumption, just drink tap water,
Go get a filter or something if needed.

That's all I'm asking now. Something small.

*And recycle please.

Blog Action Day - Climate Change - What Can We Do?

This is the time of the year again,
The day when bloggers are united in order to raise the awareness of a particular issue around the world,
Each year carries a different theme,
It can be wildlife preservation, water conservation, fighting against hunger,
And this time, we gonna talk about climate change.

No matter where you are, you can definitely feel that there's something unusual happening to the weather,
Sudden snow storms, record breaking rain, heat waves, etc.

Back to where I came from, Taiwan, a tiny little island between the Taiwan Strait and the Pacific Ocean,
This small country is experiencing typhoons with unanticipated amount of rain and stronger wind power that cause numerous damages to people's homes, small businesses, and agricultural crops.

Anything we can do to help with the situation?

Let's pause here for a second,
Don't think that your own individual effort will be significant enough to make any changes to such a big mass of problems,
Remember, we, as the resident of mother Earth, we need all of your efforts to make this place a better place to live,
So please throw away thoughts like "It doesn't really matter," "it won't make any differences anyways."
It's time to be more considerate and responsible to yourself. Yes, yourself!

Am I getting too serious here?

Hmm....well...since it's a food blog after all, let's talk about what can we do to help with the situation by becoming a more environmentally friendly grocery shopper and mater chef at home!
(Don't know why being a responsible shopper and chef can help with the climate change issue?
Here's the link from Wikipedia, look under human influences and you'll have a better idea!)

Some suggestions on grocery shopping:

1. Use reusable shopping bags
2. Try to buy local grown, organic produce
3. Select farmed fish with less impact on the environment, here's a good link for detailed info regarding fish selection
4. Don't buy over-packaged products

Some suggestions on cooking at home:

1. Close the lid while making stewed or braised dishes
2. Unplug unused cooking appliances such as ice cream machine or food processor
3. Grow your own herbs or veggies, it saves a lot of money too!
4. Make extra food, for instance, make more chicken stock at once and freeze the unused broth with ice cube trays.
This also applies to pasta sauce, curry, etc.

All the things I mentioned here are extremely easy to accomplish,
Only requires a simple change of habits,
I remember reading a research paper a while ago,
It states that after doing the same thing for 30 something times, it'll become a habit,
So please, just make yourself doing these stuff for more than 30 times,
For the sake of our mother Earth!

Do it!

Blog Action Day - Let's Make Our Earth Happily Ever After

I was surfing online the other day then I came across a Chinese blog.
One of its articles was talking about the consumption of bottled water,
Which completely changed my drinking habit.

Let me use bullet points to send out the messages from the article:

1. 167 is the average number of bottled drinks that each person in America consumed last year.

2. The need for bottled water has been increased 20 times from the past 30 years.

3. 84 kg of CO2 is the result of transferring 1 ton of Evian water from Europe to Sydney.

4. In America, only 20% of the total plastic bottles are recycled.

I used to buy bottled water from the grocery store,
Not anymore.
I've decided to use the filter system and just drink the water from there,
If I'm still concern about the quality,
Just boil the filtered water again and store it in a container that I'll use over and over again.

Just a little more effort,
We make our Earth a better place to live.