Author Archives: JonnaFulford02

5 Ways to Be a More Eco-Friendly Dog Parent

Millions of households across the United States include a dog. And our dogs certainly have an impact on how environmentally friendly our lifestyle is. Ready to turn your dog into an eco-warrior? Here are five ways to be a more eco-friendly dog parent.

1. Spay or neuter your pet

Credit: DanBrandenburg/Getty Images

Spaying and neutering your pets would technically fall under the ?reduce? category of the three R?s (reduce, reuse, recycle). According to the ASPCA, roughly 6.5 million companion animals go through U.S. animal shelters each year. Some are adopted, and others are strays who go back to their owners. But sadly about 1.5 million shelter animals are euthanized each year. And in many cases, these are healthy, loving animals who simply weren?t lucky enough to find a household to adopt them.

That?s where spaying and neutering come in ? as well as adopting versus allowing a breeder to bring more animals into this situation. Every little bit helps to put a dent in the homeless pet population. Not only do you reduce the number of shelter animals, but you also minimize the strays on the streets who often lead painful, shortened lives and might become nuisances in the community. Not to mention spaying and neutering can help increase your pet?s health and longevity. So do your part to reduce pet overpopulation, as well as the resources that go into managing it.

2. Properly dispose of pet waste

Disposing of pet waste is a bit tricky because your ideal eco-friendly techniques typically won?t work. Here are some methods you shouldn?t use, as they can harm the environment, according to PetMD.

First, don?t flush dog poop down the toilet. This can send parasites and other pathogens that aren?t killed at water treatment facilities into the waterways. Consequently, this can harm ecosystems, especially marine life. Plus, people can become sick and actually end up using more resources (e.g., lots of toilet flushing for a stomach bug) than you thought you were saving by flushing the waste in the first place. Similarly, composting is not an option for dog poop (unless your community has a dog waste composting program), as it also allows the spread of pathogens.

So what can you do? Bagging the waste and throwing it in the trash is usually your best option. But on the bright side, you can go green with your poop bags. More and more companies are offering biodegradable bags, though sometimes that can be a bit misleading. Not all companies have appropriately tested their products in typical landfill conditions, so it?s important to do your homework before buying. ?Choose a company that has testing to back up their biodegradable claims,? PetMD says.

3. Reduce your dog food paw print

Credit: Chalabala/Getty Images

Buying dog food and other supplies in bulk helps to reduce packaging waste, as well as the number of trips you take to the store. ?Pay attention to packaging materials, and try to buy products packaged in recycled or recyclable materials,? the American Kennel Club suggests. Plus, look for foods that have eco-friendly ingredients, such as certified sustainable seafood.

Even better, skip the packaging altogether, and make food at home for your dog. You don?t have to cook their whole diet (unless you really want to and know how to do it right). But forgoing the bagged and boxed treats in favor of ones you make yourself ? or even just replacing them with some fresh fruits and veggies ? can reduce waste and energy consumption. And that will certainly add up over the course of your dog?s life to reduce their carbon paw print.

4. Choose eco-friendly pet products

You might already choose environmentally conscious companies for your human products. And it?s just as important to support those types of companies that make pet products to encourage their growth in the industry (but keep your antenna up for greenwashing).

Just like with dog food, look for items ? leashes, toys, cleaning supplies, etc. ? that are packaged in eco-friendly materials. And keep an eye out for plant-based products. ?When it comes to pet supplies, one of the most common plant-based materials you?ll find is hemp,? according to PetMD. Hemp ? used for items, such as leashes and collars ? is durable and doesn?t need much water or harmful chemicals to grow.

You also can look for toys and other products made from recycled materials, such as plastics turned into fiberfill. And to really recycle, look around your home for items you can turn into dog toys, bedding, etc. Plus, put in the effort to mend old items until they?re no longer safe for your dog.

Moreover, if you no longer need some of your dog products, consider donating them to an animal shelter ? a great form of reusing. Shelters often welcome gently used leashes, collars, harnesses, beds, crates, toys, towels and more. Just make sure you call ahead about your donations, as sometimes shelters have too much of a specific item.

5. Grow a green garden and lawn

Credit: ChristopherBernard/Getty Images

There are many reasons to grow a more eco-friendly garden. For instance, you contribute to a balanced ecosystem, reduce environmental toxins and use fewer resources. But what does that have to do with your dog?

Green gardening practices and being a dog parent actually go hand in hand. A major issue for both the environment and our pets is the use of synthetic lawn chemicals. Not only do these chemicals pollute our water and kill beneficial species (among other consequences), but they also pose serious dangers to your dog.

Ingesting fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and other products (including some organic varieties) can cause vomiting, diarrhea, muscle tremors and even death in a dog, according to VetStreet. Even if you don?t see your dog ingest anything while outside, they?ll still get the products on their paws ? which they?ll certainly lick later. So try to use the most natural products possible on your property. Or better yet, grow low-maintenance plants that don?t need these products, and take pride in knowing that your garden is benefiting both your pet and the planet.

Main image credit: al_louc/Getty Images

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Originally from:  

5 Ways to Be a More Eco-Friendly Dog Parent

Posted in alo, bigo, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 5 Ways to Be a More Eco-Friendly Dog Parent

Monsanto May Soon Cease to Exist

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

And then there were three?

On Tuesday, marriage negotiations between seed/pesticide giant Monsanto and its suitor, German behemoth Bayer, got hotter than a corn field at high noon in late summer. Bayer sweetened its offer to $56.5 billion Tuesday afternoon, just as Monsanto’s Board of Directors was scheduled to meet to consider the offer, according to Bloomberg News. The companies could agree to terms as early as Wednesday—but the merger could “still fall apart,” the news service reported, adding that “if successful, it would lead to the biggest deal this year and the largest ever by a German company.”

In its current incarnation, Bayer is mainly a pharmaceutical company, with interests in prescription drugs, over-the-counter staples like aspirin, and animal medicines. But it also has a large division devoted to selling seeds and pesticides—and it has been itching for months to expand those business lines by taking over Monsanto.

This deal would represent a massive step in a remarkable recent run of mergers among the handful of companies that dominate those markets. Late last year, Dow and DuPont—two US chemical behemoths with large agribusiness divisions—agreed to merge. A few months later, after fending off an aggressive and persistent bid from Monsanto, Swiss seed/pesticide titan Syngenta jumped into the the clutches of ChemChina, a conglomerate owned by the Chinese government.

Here’s what the agribusiness landscape will look like if Bayer buys Monsanto and these mergers clear regulatory hurdles—a big if. These charts are updated from my December post on the Dow-DuPont merger.

var embedDeltas=”100″:664,”200″:488,”300″:444,”400″:444,”500″:444,”600″:400,”700″:400,”800″:400,”900″:400,”1000″:400,chart=document.getElementById(“datawrapper-chart-bQVIy”),chartWidth=chart.offsetWidth,applyDelta=embedDeltasMath.min(1000, Math.max(100*(Math.floor(chartWidth/100)), 100))||0,newHeight=applyDelta;chart.style.height=newHeight+”px”;

var embedDeltas=”100″:556,”200″:461,”300″:400,”400″:400,”500″:400,”600″:383,”700″:383,”800″:383,”900″:383,”1000″:383,chart=document.getElementById(“datawrapper-chart-wtmJp”),chartWidth=chart.offsetWidth,applyDelta=embedDeltasMath.min(1000, Math.max(100*(Math.floor(chartWidth/100)), 100))||0,newHeight=applyDelta;chart.style.height=newHeight+”px”;

However, such hyper-consolidation of markets that are so crucial to the global food supply may be too much for US and EU antitrust authorities to digest. The European Commission recently threw doubt on the Dow-DuPont deal by halting its process for approving the merger, pending more information from the two companies.

Back in August, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa) announced the US Senate Judiciary Committee would soon hold hearings on the deal, based on concerns among farmers that the “sudden consolidation in the industry” would give remaining players the leverage to raise seed and pesticide prices. Earlier this week, 250 members of the National Farmers Union descended on Washington, DC, to protest the recent consolidation wave, complaining that it reduced competition and raises the price of seeds and chemicals “while farmers are already being squeezed by weak commodity markets,” Reuters reports.

But it’s the executive branch, mainly the Department of Justice, that has ultimate authority on whether Dow-DuPont and possible Bayer-Monsano tie-up passes US regulatory muster—and it has shown recent willingness to halt mergers in the agribiz space. Just two weeks ago, the DOJ sued to halt a relatively small deal between Monsanto and farm-equipment giant John Deere. Monsanto had agreed to sell its precision-planting arm—involving machines that allow farmers to plant seeds at variable rates across fields—to Deere for $190 million. Not so fast, said the DOJ in its complaint, noting that the deal would give Deere 86 percent of the US market for these tools.

As I noted back in the July, the Democratic Party, after years of acquiescence to a long wave of mergers in the agribusiness space and in corporate America at large, is recently showing showing signs that it thinks enough is enough. Even if Bayer-Monsanto gains support from those companies’ shareholders, the deal will likely have to hoe a tough row before its vast profit potential can be harvested.

Original article:  

Monsanto May Soon Cease to Exist

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Monsanto May Soon Cease to Exist