Hello everyone!

Here you can watch the story of the bottled water.

The animation is like the story of stuff. I think it's really useful and interesting to know theese things abaut the bottled water: Did you know that to product 1 liter bottled water you use one liter water (for the water in the bottle) and two liter to make the bottle?

 It's a fact, that in the USA the people buy 500 million bottled water every week. But why they do it? If you watch this video, you will know it. :)

Orsi

Shake! Fold!

You use paper towels to dry your hands everytime you're in a public toilet, but chances are, you're doing it wrong. In this enlightening and funny short talk, Joe Smith reveals the trick to perfect paper towel technique: http://www.ted.com/talks/joe_smith_how_to_use_a_paper_towel.html

The Matrix(off topic)

Have you seen the movie Matrix? What do you think about it? A great film? Well, let me tell something to you. It has a message. I am sure you thought about what the "Matrix" is. I'll give you a hint(tipp). The Matrix is an existing thing, but not in the way ypu can see it in the film. The Matrix in real world is about consumption and shopping to manipulate people. It's focused on scaring you to be a brainwashed "animal" to just work, consume, and sleep. In the video below, you will see an exploit of people fighting against the Matrix.

City and Food

TED - ideas worth sharing - City and Food

Food is a shared necessity - but also a shared way of thinking, argues Carolyn Steel. Looking at food networks offers an unusual and illuminating way to explore how cities evolved.

 
The question of how to feed cities may be one of the biggest contemporary questions, yet it's never asked: we take for granted that if we walk into a store or a restaurant, food will be there, magically coming from somewhere. Yet, think of it this way: just in London, every single day, 30 million meals must be provided. Without a reliable food supply, even the most modern city would collapse quickly. And most people today eat food of whose provenance they are unaware.

More about Carolyn Steel.

Watch this video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMfSGt6rHos&list=WL995EAB093C5D3A1E
The film, by film-maker Johnny Kelly, depicts the life of a farmer as he slowly turns his family farm into an industrial animal factory before seeing the errors of his ways and opting for a more sustainable future.
The music is the 'The Scientist' from Coldplay.
I loved it and I think the animaton and the music are so cool.
By: Orsi

The Greenhouse Effect

The greenhouse effect is something, what is caused  by several gases called Greenhouse gases. The main type of gas is carbon dioxide. There is a lot of water vapor(hidrogen dioxide) and nitrous dioxide in the atmosphere too.

The picture is explaining the Green House effect in detail. The main thing what is going on, is that we produce  greenhouse gas in factories and also generate it with cars, and so on. This gas traps the solar energy inside the atmosphere, raising the temperature significantly. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the burning of fossil fuels has contributed to a 40% increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 280 ppm to 397 ppm. Here is a % amount of contribution to the greenhouse effect by various gases.

Gas	Formula	Contribution (%)
Water vapor	H2O	36 – 72%
Carbon dioxide	CO2	9 – 26%
Methane	CH4	4 – 9%
Ozone	O3	3 – 7%

Heres another picture of how the greenhouse effect works:

So it's possible, that in several years, the time it takes for greenhouse gases to leave the atmosphere, will increase significantly, and therefore the temeperature too.

The true cost of food

We are going to talk about food and the true cost of food soon...



THE PROBLEMS WE'RE FACING

Food consumption is an area where individual decisions can make a difference; supply will follow demand and it's already happening. But first we need to look at the current landscape: The way food is produced and the way we eat create huge costs that are not reflected in our food bills.

Some are actual dollar amounts (subsidies and cleanup costs that we pay for in taxes);
some are damage to the environment (pollution and loss of wildlife habitat);
some are loss of quality of life (tasteless food, loss of the pleasure of preparing food and eating together); and
some are health issues (obesity, diseases, poor nutrition, contaminated food).

Agribusiness farms employ chemical-intensive systems that pollute land, air, and water. We transport much of our food from centralized factory farms instead of buying it from local sources which is a poor use of resources and a contributor to air and water pollution. We're losing our wild places because of wasteful agricultural practices such as uncontrolled grazing and fattening up animals with diets of factory-farm corn. Americans get much of their meat from pollution-causing factory farms and feedlots. More and more of our food production is controlled by a few large producers. Buying from small, independent producers allows us some input into how our food is grown.


Let us find the key words for this topic... demand, landscape, subsidies, pollution, fuel, free range, obesity, industrial farming etc.

This is a very useful site for ESL learners and teachers,  with Global Issues and Activism in English Language Teaching

Gabi