Dec/100
Considering Ecological Degradation — an “Externality” — in Overall Economic Assessments
In my business courses in college, we were taught that ecological degradation was an “externality”—something outside the purview of economic analyses. Now that the environment is of such concern, are economists beginning to rethink this? -- Josh Dawson, Flagstaff, AZ
Environmentalists want to put a monetary value on the negative impacts of industrial activities, such as polluting, and to force offending companies and utilities to compensate society for the harm they do. Photo: Thinkstock Images
By definition, economic externalities are the indirect negative (or positive) side effects, considered un-quantifiable in dollar terms, of other economic acts. For example, a negative externality of a power plant that is otherwise producing a useful good (electricity) is the air pollution it generates. In traditional economics, the harmful effect of the pollution (smog, acid rain, global warming) on human health and the environment is not factored in as a cost in the overall economic equation. And as the economists go, so go the governments that rely on them. The result is that most nations do not consider environmental and other externalities in their calculations of gross domestic product (GDP) and other key economic indicators (which by extension are supposed to be indicators of public health and well-being).
For decades environmentalists have argued that economics should take into account the costs borne by such externalities in order to discern the true overall value to society of any given action or activity. The company or utility that operates the polluting factory, for instance, should be required to compensate the larger society by paying for the pollution it produces so as to offset the harm it does.
So-called “cap-and-trade” schemes are one real-world way of monetizing a negative externality: Big polluters must buy the right to generate limited amounts of carbon dioxide (and they can trade such rights with other companies that have found ways to lower their carbon footprints, thus creating an incentive for polluters to clean up their acts). While cap-and-trade was invented in the U.S. to clean up acid rain pollution, it is a model used in Europe but not yet in America, which has yet to pass legislation mandating it. Until Congress acts to regulate the output of carbon dioxide in the U.S.—via cap-and-trade means or others—such emissions will remain “external” to the economics of carrying on business.
Recent news that has many greens excited is that the World Bank, the leading financier of development projects around poorer parts of the globe, is starting to think outside the traditional economic box. This past October, World Bank president Robert Zoellick told participants at a conference for the Convention on Biological Diversity (an international treaty signed by 193 countries—not including the U.S.—that went into effect in 1993 to sustain biodiversity) that “the natural wealth of nations should be a capital asset valued in combination with its financial capital, manufactured capital and human capital.” Zoellick’s comments are the first sign from the World Bank of its recognition of the need to consider externalities in any overall economic assessment. “[We] need to reflect the vital carbon storage services that forests provide and the coastal protection values that come from coral reefs and mangroves,” he added.
Critics are still waiting to see if the World Bank will walk its talk. “It’s a fine rhetorical start,” says the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin in his blog. “But the announcement by the bank of a $10 million ‘Save Our Species’ fund, with the United Nations Global Environmental Facility and International Union for Conservation of Nature, seems quite piddling in a world where money flows in the trillions,” he adds. Indeed, we may still be a ways off from including our environmental impacts into our measures of social wealth and health, but at least the World Bank has gone on record as to the need to do so, and you can be sure that environmental advocates will be working to hold its feet to the fire.
CONTACTS: World Bank, www.worldbank.org; Convention on Biological Diversity, www.cbd.int.
SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.
Oct/100
How Long Does It Really Take a Plastic Grocery Bag to Degrade?
Dear EarthTalk: I’ve heard conflicting reports regarding how long it really takes for a plastic grocery bag to decompose. Can you set the record straight? – Martha Blount, San Diego, CA
According to the Worldwatch Institute, Americans only recycle 0.6 percent of the 100 billion plastic bags they take home from stores every year; the rest end up in landfills or as litter. Pictured: An anti-plastic bag activist makes a point in Austin, Texas. Image thanks to Ret0dd, courtesy Flickr.
According to the Worldwatch Institute, Americans only recycle 0.6 percent of the 100 billion plastic bags they take home from stores every year; the rest end up in landfills or as litter. Pictured: An anti-plastic bag activist makes a point in Austin, Texas. Image thanks to Ret0dd, courtesy Flickr.
Researchers fear that such ubiquitous bags may never fully decompose; instead they gradually just turn into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic. The most common type of plastic shopping bag is made of polyethylene, a petroleum-derived polymer that microorganisms don’t recognize as food and as such cannot technically “biodegrade.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines biodegradation as “a process by which microbial organisms transform or alter (through metabolic or enzymatic action) the structure of chemicals introduced into the environment.” In “respirometry” tests, whereby experimenters put solid waste in a container with microbe-rich compost and then add air to promote biodegradation, newspapers and banana peels decompose in days or weeks, while plastic shopping bags are not affected.
Even though polyethylene can’t biodegrade, it does break down when subject to ultraviolet radiation from the sun, a process known as photodegradation. When exposed to sunshine, polyethylene’s polymer chains become brittle and crack, eventually turning what was a plastic bag into microscopic synthetic granules. Scientists aren’t sure whether these granules ever decompose fully, and fear that their buildup in marine and terrestrial environments—and in the stomachs of wildlife—portend a bleak future compromised by plastic particles infiltrating every step in the food chain. A plastic bag might be gone in anywhere from 10 to 100 years (estimates vary) if exposed to the sun, but its environmental legacy may last forever.
The best solution to plastic bag waste is to stop using disposable plastic bags altogether. You could invest a few bucks in reusable canvas totes—most supermarket chains now offer them—or bring your own reusable bags or backpacks with you to the store. If you have to choose between paper and plastic, opt for paper. Paper bags can biodegrade in a matter of weeks, and can also go into compost or yard waste piles or the recycling bin. Of course, plastic bags can be recycled also, but as just explained the process is inefficient. According to the nonprofit Worldwatch Institute, Americans only recycle 0.6 percent of the 100 billion plastic bags they take home from stores every year; the rest end up in landfills or as litter.
Another option which some stores are embracing—especially in places like San Francisco where traditional plastic shopping bags are now banned in chain supermarkets and pharmacies—are so-called compostable plastic bags, which are derived from agricultural waste and formed into a fully biodegradable faux-plastic with a consistency similar to the polyethylene bags we are so used to. BioBag is the leader in this field, but other companies are making inroads into this promising new green-friendly market.
San Francisco’s pioneering effort to get rid of polyethylene bags is a positive step, but environmentalists are pushing for such bans more widely. A California effort to ban plastic bags failed again recently, but will likely eventually succeed. Washington, Florida, New Jersey and North Carolina are watching closely and considering similar laws depending on what happens in the Golden State. Worldwatch reports that taxes on plastic bags in South Africa and Ireland have been effective at reducing their use by upwards of 90 percent; Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Philippines, Taiwan and the UK are also planning to ban or tax plastic bags to help stem the tide of plastic waste.
CONTACTS: Worldwatch, www.worldwatch.org; BioBag, www.biobagusa.com.
SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.
Aug/100
Wild Turkeys
By the early 1900s, only 30,000 wild turkeys roamed the continental U.S., having been exterminated across almost half their former range. Today, as many as seven million roam the countryside across every U.S. state except Alaska . Pictured: Wild turkeys photographed near Little River, Georgia. Photo by Vicki DeLoach, courtesy Flickr.
Dear EarthTalk: How are wild turkeys faring in the U.S.? Occasionally I’ll see some crossing the road, but how well could they be doing with all the development going on around them? – Harley Barton, Hingham, MA
No one can be sure how many tens of millions of wild turkeys roamed what was to become the continental United States when the Puritans dined on them at the first Thanksgiving in 1621 near Plymouth Rock, but there were obviously enough of the birds to make them easy prey. By the late 1700s turkeys across the frontier were being harvested with reckless abandon. The food shortages that accompanied the Civil War accelerated demand for wild turkeys, and their numbers started to dwindle to startlingly low levels. By the early 1900s, only some 30,000 wild turkeys remained; the birds had been extirpated across almost half of their former range.
But things started to turn around for wild turkeys in the 1920s. For starters, millions of acres cleared by the pioneers began to regenerate into the type of woodland habitat where the birds could thrive. But the real boost for wild turkeys came in the form of legislation. At the urging of hunters, state wildlife agencies, and the firearms industry, Congress passed the landmark Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act (Pittman-Robertson Act) in 1937, which placed an excise tax on guns, ammo and other hunting gear. A portion of the billions of dollars raised from the law have been and continue to be allocated toward restoring wildlife habitat across the country.
By 1959, wild turkey numbers jumped sixteen fold, topping half a million birds across the U.S. A 1973 wild turkey census by the then newly formed National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) turned up something like 1.3 million birds. NWTF, which was founded by hunters to aid in turkey conservation efforts, would turn out to be instrumental in shepherding the wild turkey’s recovery by channeling hundreds of millions of dollars in charitable donations and grants into habitat recovery and bird relocation projects. Although the birds will likely never return to the population levels pre-dating white settlement, they haven’t been healthier in 300+ years. These days as many as seven million wild turkeys roam the countryside and can be found in every U.S. state besides Alaska.
Of course, our success in restoring habitat for wild turkeys has also been beneficial for a wide range of wild animals. Conservations credit the visionary Pittman-Robertson Act (along with the hard work of dedicated wildlife managers) as instrumental in the recovery of not only wild turkeys but also once struggling populations of white-tailed deer, pronghorn antelope, wood duck, beaver, black bear, Canada goose, American elk, desert bighorn sheep, bobcat, mountain lion, and several species of predatory birds.
Besides the animals and biodiversity benefitting from species recovery, hunters can also rejoice, especially given that it has been their money that has funded many of the projects to restore habitat where they hunt. Turkey hunting is traditionally an autumn pursuit, culminating at Thanksgiving, of course, but each state has its own laws regarding when and where turkey hunting is allowed. NWTF provides a free online state-by-state “Fall Turkey Hunting Guide” with hunting season dates and other pertinent information to help hunters plan their next trip wherever it may take them in the continental U.S. The website also serves as an invaluable resource for information and resources pertaining to conservation, hunting and other topics related to wild turkeys.
CONTACT: National Wild Turkey Federation, www.nwtf.org.
SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.
Aug/100
Locally-Grown Food
Locally-produced foods are now more widely available than ever. To find local food near you, visit localharvest.org, which lists organic food sources by zip code. Pictured: the Kootenay Country Store Co-op in Nelson, British Columbia. Photo by Donkeycart, courtesy Flickr.
Dear EarthTalk: I know that local food has health and environmental benefits, but my local grocer only carries a few items. Is there a push for bigger supermarkets to carry locally produced food? – Maria Fine, Somerville, MA
By eating locally sourced foods, we strengthen the bond between local farmers and our communities, stay connected to the seasons in our part of the world, promote crop diversity, and minimize the energy intensive, greenhouse-gas-emitting transportation of food from one part of the world to another. Also, since local crops are usually harvested at their peak of freshness and typically delivered to stores within a day, customers can be sure they are getting the tastiest and most nutritious forms of the foods they like.
Luckily for consumers and the environment, local produce and other foods are now more widely available than they have been for decades. The first national grocery chain to prioritize local producers, perhaps not surprisingly, was natural foods retailer Whole Foods, which was buying from local farmers and ranchers since it opened its first store in 1980 in Austin, Texas. Today each of the company’s 270-plus stores in 38 U.S. states prioritizes local sourcing—so much so that its customers take it for granted. Whole Foods’ relationships and distribution arrangements with local producers serve as models for the leading national grocery chains, many of which are beginning to source some produce locally when the season is right.
Some are taking more initiative than others. Perhaps most notable is Walmart. Back in 2008 the company committed to sourcing more local fruits and vegetables to keep produce prices down and provide affordable, fresh and healthy choices. Today more than 2,800 Walmart Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets across the country rely on a diverse network of small local growers to provide produce—making Sam Walton’s company the nation’s largest purchaser of local produce. During summer months, at least one-fifth of the produce available in Walmart stores is grown within the same state as the given store.
The company’s Heritage Agriculture program encourages farms within a day’s drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that the company would otherwise have to source from so far away that freshness would be jeopardized and the fuel burned and greenhouse gases emitted in the process would be substantial. While the Heritage program currently accounts for only four to six percent of the company’s total domestic produce sales, the company is aiming for 20 percent within the next few years.
Other big grocery chains aren’t far behind. Safeway, one of the top three grocery chains in the country, prides themselves on local sourcing, getting nearly a third of its produce nationwide from local/regional growers. In heavy agricultural regions like California, the figure can be as high as 45 percent. The company has also made a big push into organic products, just like its biggest competitor, Walmart.
If the chain grocer near you doesn’t do a good job stocking locally sourced food, there are alternatives. Community Supported Agriculture programs, in which consumers “subscribe” to the produce of a given farm by paying monthly dues that entitles them to a box of fresh produce every week, are more popular than ever, as are local farmers’ markets, food co-ops and independent natural foods markets. To find local food near you, visit the Local Harvest, which lists organic food sources by zip code and offers a wealth of resources for those looking to learn more about where their food comes from and how it is produced.
CONTACTS: Whole Foods, www.wholefoods.com; Walmart, www.walmart.com; Safeway, www.safeway.com; Local Harvest, www.localharvest.org.
SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.
Jul/101
The Big Ideas
11 Solutions That Could Actually Save the Planet
By Will Harlan and Graham Averill
11 Big Ideas
The editors of Blue Ridge Outdoors, our sister magazine in the Southeast, asked Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, CEOs, and leading environmental experts: What is the single most important change needed to protect the planet and its people? Here are their 11 insightful, innovative, and inspiring responses.
1. Educate Women Worldwide
The most effective contraceptive is education for girls. When women are educated, they tend to marry later in life, to have children later in life, and to have fewer children. In effect, you have a form of population control that’s peaceful, voluntary, and efficient. Plus, women do better in business, raising economic growth rates and lowering societal conflict.
Empowering women through education provides the highest return on investment in developing countries. It is the single most cost-effective way to empower and modernize communities.
Of course, it’s also important to educate boys, but there are a couple of reasons why girls’ education brings an even higher return. First, it reduces birth rates very considerably, which brings the country a demographic dividend. Second, women are more likely than men to use extra income to educate their own children and to start small businesses.
—Sheryl WuDunn, Pulitzer Prize winning co-author of “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide”
2. Safe Drinking Water
Imagine if, instead of just going to a tap in your kitchen anytime you were thirsty, you had to hoist a heavy vessel onto your head and walk, up to two hours, to a well, where, after filling your vessel—now really heavy—you had to carry it up to two more hours back home. The water you carry would often be dirty and diseased. After your trek, how much more time and energy would you hope to have to farm, cook, take care of your family, especially the sick ones, or go to school? This is the dilemma facing over one billion women and children worldwide each day. A child dies every 15 seconds because of water-related diseases.
Fortunately, we already have the solutions to the world’s water crisis, and they are surprisingly simple: low-tech wells and small-scale water projects that are completely sustainable and maintainable by the communities they support. Hand-washing and basic hygiene education are also essential to prevent disease and contamination.
In the United States and other developed nations, water conservation is crucial. Improving water infrastructures and protecting watersheds are important governmental actions, but the Blue Revolution begins with each individual taking steps to reduce his or her own water footprint.
—Lisa Nash, CEO of the Blue Planet Network
3. No-Growth Economy
The rapid economic growth of the past two centuries has been felt very unevenly around the globe. Many have prospered while many others remain desperately poor. Economic growth has depended on a massive increase in the use of materials and energy, and on the spread of humans into virtually every corner of the planet, accelerating the extinction of other species. And yet the human population is forecast to grow by another 3 billion or so in the next 50 years.
It is most unlikely that the planet will be able to accommodate so many of us and raise the material living standards of those in greatest need, without changing the priority we give to economic growth. Having overshot the capacity of the planet to support us, starting in the rich countries we should reduce the demands we make on the planet to cater to our profligate way of life and forego the pursuit of endless economic growth.
An economy that doesn’t grow in material terms—a steady-state economy—can be healthy and even desirable, as economists as great as John Stuart Mill and John Maynard Keynes acknowledged. But it will require fundamental changes: we will work less so that more people stay employed with a reasonable salary, and consume less, scaling back to something like levels in the 1960s, so that citizens in developing countries can prosper. A world with fewer larger inequities between rich and poor would be more secure and would also help stabilize world population levels. And with more time to spend with family, friends and in our communities, we might well live truly richer and more fulfilling lives.
—Peter Victor, Professor of Economy at York University and author of Managing Without Growth: Slower By Design, Not Disaster
4. Think Globally, Eat Locally
We need a transparent and locally-based food system, where people understand exactly how food gets to their table and what the hidden costs of cheap food really are. In order to get that cheap tomato out of season, it takes a vulnerable labor force, big factory farms, and giant waste lagoons.
Cheap food is also responsible for our obesity epidemic. There’s also an environmental cost to shipping food around the world. From the perspectives of economy, ecology, health and taste, the actual value of a locally grown tomato far surpasses the actual cost of a tomato grown by a factory farm.
Once locally grown food becomes mainstream again, we’ll see a healthier population and a healthier environment. And the systems we have in place can handle this change. Grocery stores can be supplied by local farmers just as easily as corporate farms. Even large distributors are willing to accommodate local farms. They just need to see the desire in the marketplace.
—Charlie Jackson, executive director of the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project
5. Corporate Revolution
Benefit Corporations—called B-Corporations (or B-Corp)—is a certification to distinguish truly sustainable businesses from the pretenders and greenwashers. Instead of simply measuring economic performance, B-Corporations have also committed to meeting social and environmental performance measurements. The IRS audits the economic portion, while the B Lab — a public charity nonprofit — audits and rates the added performance measurements of all B Corps.
Maryland and Vermont became the first two states to enact B-Corporation law earlier this year, and already there are over 125 B-Corps in 31 industries comprising $1 billion of the market. It is the best way to definitively evaluate and separate the pretenders from those businesses that really practice what they preach. Best of all, consumers can know with certainty that the businesses they support have met certain social and environmental standards.
How you measure a successful business is changing in the 21st century: from “me” to “we.”
—Andrew Kassoy, co-founder of B-Lab, the certification organization for B-Corporations
6. Cash for Pollution
You have to show Americans the true price of pollution. That is best accomplished by levying a tax on fuels when they’re taken out of the ground or imported into our country. The companies will pass most of that cost onto the consumer, which will make turning your lights on and driving your car cost more. So give the $500 billion in tax revenues back to the American people as a “green check” each year, divided up equally, exactly like they do in Alaska with oil revenues. This gives citizens a chance to recoup the extra costs that are passed down because of the carbon tax.
The cap and trade system has to die before the carbon tax will live. The problem with cap and trade—where companies buy and sell a finite amount of pollution credits—is that once you have trading, you have Goldman Sachs—the smartest people in the room figuring out ways to game the markets and make a profit. The clearest, fairest, most transparent way to address the issue is with a straightforward tax.
There’s a dirty little secret with energy. Occasionally, the Americans see the truth when an accident like this oil spill (in the Gulf) or the coal ash spill (in Tennessee last year), but mostly, it’s a matter of out of sight, out of mind. We don’t see the true cost of this energy to our health, our environment, and our everyday lives.
—Charles Komanoff, co-founder of the Carbon Tax Center
7. Free Condoms
Our planet is simply overwhelmed by too many people. We’re doing all this work to clean up the streams, protect a habitat here and there, or reduce our carbon footprint, but it’s not going to do any good if our population continues to grow out of control.
Here in the U.S., which has the fastest population growth of any developed nation in the world—the impact of our population growth is compounded because an American child’s carbon legacy is 168 times more than a child born in a developing country like Bangladesh.
The way to stabilize population—both in the U.S. and overseas—is to make birth control universally accessible. Here in the U.S., birth control is not covered by many women’s health care programs, and worldwide, millions of women don’t have access to any health care. So we’re distributing free condoms, with endangered species depicted on them to help people make the connection between population and the planet’s health. We’ve already distributed 350,000 free condoms in the first five months of 2010.
We must look at birth control not as a moral or religious issue, but as a simple biological question: How many people can this planet sustain?
—Randy Serraglio, overpopulation project coordinator for the Center for Biological Diversity
8. Drive Less
On average, Americans spend 18.5 hours per week in our car, and over $7,000 a year in gas, maintenance, and taxes. Americans essentially need a part time job to pay for their car.
The solutions are attainable: first, try to drive 1,000 miles less per year (Americans average 22,000 miles per year). Next, keep a car diary detailing the number of trips you take in your car and how much time you spend in your car. Also compute the household car costs in this diary. Write down every tank of gas you buy, every set of tires you buy.
Once you start writing these trips and costs down, you’ll begin to see that owning a car is a trade off. If you’re spending $7,000 or more on your car every year, that’s a lot of vacations, take-out meals, or college tuition payments you could be contributing to.
Having a positive impact on climate change is a good reason to drive less, but it goes beyond that. Car-related accidents are the main cause of death for people ages 3 to 44. It’s a public health issue as much as it is an environmental issue.
—Catherine Lutz, anthropologist, professor at Brown University, and co-author of “Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and its Effect on Our Lives”
9. Play Outside One Hour a Day
We’re seeing a generation-long disconnect between kids and nature. The implications of this disconnect range from obesity, to media addiction, to attention deficit disorder. And there are volumes of research showing that time outside is good for a kid’s mind, body, and spirit.
Set aside a green hour everyday where your kids—and you—can explore the outdoors. Even 10 or 15 minutes of outdoor play is worthwhile. The important thing is for you and your family to immerse yourselves in nature, to rebuild that connection that we’re losing.
The amount of time kids spend exploring the natural world today will inform how they will see the natural world as adults. Before we ask kids to save the world, let them first come to know it and love it.
—Todd Christopher, author of “The Green Hour: A Daily Dose of Nature for Happier, Healthier, Smarter Kids”
10. Put a Price on a Priceless Forest
Forests are the world’s main reservoirs for carbon. Old growth forest is optimum for the sequestration of carbon. The older the forest gets, the more carbon it banks. The Smokies (the Smoky Mountains) sequester a lot of carbon, and there’s a lot of forest left on public and private land that’s still in good shape. So how do you convince America to protect it?
We need to establish a system that actually details the monetary value of these intact forests from a carbon sequestering, watershed protection, and public health standpoint. Paying to protect forests is cheaper than shooting carbon into space, safer than shooting into the earth’s core, and it’s the solution that’s readily available.
If we can develop a carbon trading system that puts a price tag on the carbon sequestration, watershed protection, and public health values of a forest, we can then use a percentage of those trades fund the acquisition of more conservation easements and forest protections.
—Hugh Irwin, conservation planner for the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition
11. Meatless Mondays
The United States is the world’s most obese country, and the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases. How do you kill two birds with one stone? Eat better meat, and less of it.
Our entire food system needs to be overhauled, and it’s not going to happen overnight. But what is realistic, what everyone can do, is reduce the amount of meat they eat, which will substantially reduce the amount of livestock waste that ends up in our water sources, the amount of fresh water we use for those animals, the amount of grain we use to feed those animals, the amount of antibiotics injected into our food system, and the amount of greenhouse gases we produce.
Meat is a great resource for protein, and in moderation, it’s fine. We just eat too much of it. A realistic and attainable goal we’ve created is Healthy Mondays, where people eliminate—or reduce—meat consumption one day a week. The impacts it will have on your own health and the health of your environment are substantial.
—Ralph Loglisci, project director for the Johns Hopkins’ Center’s Healthy Mondays initiative, a push to get schools, hospitals, and institutions to make better choices one day a week.
