Toxic Sludge is Good For You

Ch.8

1. “You think of ‘biosolids’ and your mind goes blank.” I think this is a very true and important point because most green washing is PR language skills at its best. I believe it was in “Consuming Kids” where the strength in language use and application is brought up as a manipulative tool. I was also blown away by some of the different names that they came up with to make toxic sewage sludge sound more “tasteful”.
2. The scariest part of this chapter was definitely all the horror stories of people dealing with the long term health risks of living or working near sludge composting sites, and the way in which they were undermined for the irresponsibility of certain areas’ sewage disposal. Some of the explanations in defense of this method of disposal were ridiculous. One I found particularly perturbing was by Sarah Clark, a former board member of the Environmental Defense Fund, where she stated that sludge farming is the best means of returning nutrients that were originally removed from the soil, when in actuality, it provides 3% of usable nutrients to plants, and the remaining percent is highly contaminated with toxins.
3. The fact that this is a case where a high population density area is illegally “haul and dumping” sewage sludge in rural areas that are relatively poor and economically defenseless makes this a blatant case of environmental racism. I can’t believe it has effected so many people and animals that there’s actually a “Help for Sewage Victims” group.
4. The whole capitalistic aspect of “free fertilizer” that only reveals its negative side effects after two years of contamination is so evil and predictable. The very nature of this disparity between different economic and location based advantages portrays the industrial “use and abuse” relationship with the environment. I just don’t understand why its worth it for people to disregard other people in the short term when its obviously going to end badly and (hopefully) blow up in their faces.
5. The way the author refers to the fact that sludge people are really pushing to compost on organic farms is very scary to me. It just goes to show how flexible different aspects of our food industry is through corruption. Sometimes I think people go overboard when extremely limiting the foods their children are allowed to have, especially if they don’t follow their same example, but I would be just as paranoid if I had a baby depending on me and I was depending on our food system to provide me safe food. The combination of unknown, unregulated chemical wastes being leaked into public sewer systems and the toxicity levels that carry pathogens that can be carried and harmful in so many different ways is frightening, and its being dumped on the food we eat.

My question is… Why does most of the testing of company products or ecological effects done by the company itself? How can we eliminate this, and have separate research done in an efficient way?

Ch.9

1. The “Torches of Liberty Contingent” publicity stunt for “female emancipation” was very effective, “Within months, in fact, the politest of American ladies were puffing in public and sales of Hill’s Lucky Strikes were soaring.” Why are females constantly targeted and so easily influenced by the media?
2. “Also disconcerting is the fact that the 150,000 PR practitioners in the US outnumber the country’s 130,000 reporters”. I am curious what the ratio is in other countries and the different disparagements in comparison. The whole PR ordeal is so overwhelming to me, and it is scary to see modern day propaganda feeding so many industrial motives. The way in which people take advantage of the corporate system is so misanthropic and suicidal in its nature.
3. I was shocked at Kathleen Marquardt of Putting people first when she described the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, and The humane Society as a “radical animal rights cult” (Dowie, 127). I think that is a completely inappropriate assertion to make at a Wise Use Leadership Conference award speech, however that was in 1992, so I’m sure they’re no longer as cavalier about it, which is a small step forward.
4. The fact that green organizations are given cash contributions by corporate polluters is so obviously hush money to pay for the dirty work that works towards solving the very ecological damages they create in the first place.
5. The “Shifting the Blame” and “The Selling of Earth Day” sections were really interesting, they are both such cop-outs to solving real problems. It all boils down to a break down of the system and punishing those responsible to the fullest extent and charging them with true costs. I also think it’s a shame that Earth Day is a logo. Something so radically opposing justifies that there is something seriously wrong with its purpose and function.

My question is… How can environmental groups/ activism keep up with corporate legalities when they are constantly advancing and while we’re [companies] are working with them, they don’t have time to sue us.”-Frank Boren? How to outsmart the good cop/ bad cop scheme?