Farm Bill Craziness

By Madaline Goldstein

This week, I spoke to the group about our nation's farm bill- a $300 billion piece of legislation that is up for renewal next year. The Bill does a lot of good- it does the food stamps program, school lunches, and land conservation. But all of these beneficial programs are negated by the effects of a piece of the legislation- farm subsidies.

Why does giving out $25 billion per year to farmers hurt our country and the world? Because all they are growing with that money is corn, soybean, wheat, rice, and cotton. No vegetables. No fruit. And it's not even small, family farms receiving the aid- it's the huge agriprocessors who spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress to get these billions.

As a result, junk food is cheaper than produce. As a result, corn is in 25% of grocery products. As a result, Americans are not getting the nutrients they need. As a result, our environment is being destroyed with these vast lands of monocultures, killing biodiversity and demanding huge amounts of chemical, toxic inputs. As a result, farmers in developing countries cannot compete with America's cheap corn and are forced off their land.

This needs to change. You can watch this video to really see the pervasiveness of commodity crops and why we need to let Congress know how we want our tax money spent- not on huge corporations destroying our environment and our health, but on our local veggie farmer.

http://vimeo.com/21318179

Do We Need to Advertise Our Recycling?

by Ariel Drehobl


Northwestern has a wonderful recycling program that places recycling bins around campus to promote the practice. Most students know that the university recycles, but not all students know that we not only recycle paper and plastic products but also have recycling receptacles for batteries, ink cartridges, and plastic bags.

ECO established Northwestern's recycling in these alternative areas long enough ago now that they should be widely known, but still many students do not seem to know that they can recycling their ink cartridges and batteries on campus.

Last Friday ECO hosted an event hosted an event at the Rock on campus to promote our recycling efforts. I was surprised by the number of students approaching us who had no idea that the ink cartridge, battery, and plastic bag bins were in Norris. They had either been hoarding their batteries, bags, and cartridges, or throwing them away. This make me realize that we might need to start better promoting these services on campus so more people know that they can recycling these destructive items instead of disposing of them in a worse way.

I ran across this video by the Friends of the Earth, a British organization that works to promote sustainable living habits. The advertisement below for recycling uses strong emotional responses to influence sustainable behavioral changes:

A Love Story… In Milk from Catsnake on Vimeo.

ECO doesn't have to make emotional ads to promote our recycling, but I believe that advertisements in some way would greatly help students to learn about ECO's recycling efforts and hopefully influence them to participate!
ECO hopes that by putting on more educational events like the one on Friday we will be able to reach out to the campus at large and spread the word that ECO is here, ready and waiting to make a difference!