Environmentality 8 August 2012

Dear Environmentality Listeners,

Jaime and Yolande had the pleasure of being joined in the studio by Grahame Best, General Manager of Right Now, an organisation focused on raising the profile of human rights in Australia through the arts, media and writing.

Right Now is volunteer based and engaging of young people.  Each month Right Now invite submissions on human rights issues in Australia and publish these on their website.  Submissions include mulitmedia (eg. photography, art), opinion pieces and interviews. A large variety of human rights topics have been explored including health, indigenous peoples, asylum seekers, employment rights and many others.

In August, Right Now have the theme of Environment.  So far, Right Now have already featured many interesting opinion pieces and articles on their website.  Environmentality Listeners will greatly appreciate the content.  Right Now also have a human rights radio show Thursdays 6:630pm on 3CR Community Radio 855 AM.   Go to: www.rightnow.org.au for more information. 

Graham talked about how the environment is connected with human rights in specific cases (for example the Bhopal disaster in India), examples of human rights cases and the environment in Australia, the role of the arts in attracting attention towards human rights issues and more.  

Graham also talked about a number of questions raised when considering the environment and human rights.  Like how to agree on environmental measurements in order to assess when human rights have been violated? Another interesting idea, does the environment need to be considered in terms of human rights at all, rather, should the environment have its own set of independent rights? 

Thankyou very much to Grahame Best for speaking on Environmentality 98.9 FM.   If you missed the show, be sure to listen to the podcast!

Environmentality 1 August 2012

Dear Environmentality Listeners,

Smokey and Jaime were joined by the newly recruited Yolande to interview Tim Silverwood, co-founder of the wonderful 'Take 3 - A Clean Beach' initiative.  Tim shared his knowledge about plastic rubbish and debris in the ocean and beaches and what we can all do to help.

Tim Silverwood, image courtesy of Take 3

Take 3 is a simple but highly effective concept.  Each time you visit the beach, you pick up and take away with you three pieces of rubbish!  This concept can be applied to water ways or any other location.  Take 3 also encourages people to reduce their consumption of plastic. Go to www.take3.org.au

Tim has travelled himself through the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch', one of five such areas in the world where debris and rubbish is collected due to the movement of currents in the ocean.  The size of the Pacific patch is estimated at either 700,000 sq km or more than 15 million square km (there is no standard measure of pollution in the ocean, hence the large difference in size estimate). Tim described these areas as having many small pieces of floating plastic, pollution which is incredibly damaging to ocean wildlife in such ways as ingestion, smothering and choking.

The chemicals being emitted through degrading plastics is a further hazard to marine birds and animals.  It is already known that many plastic chemicals significantly threaten human health, as in the instance of Bisphenol A (BPA) being linked to disturbances in the endocrine system. Thus it can only be expected that these chemicals are negatively impacting the health of ocean wildlife, and likewise humans through the consumption of affected seafood in the food chain.

Kamilo Beach in Hawaii, image courtesy of Take 3

There is more that you can do!  To start with, we all need to be aware of the ways in which we needlessly use plastic, as in the case of purchasing expensive bottles of water rather than remembering to bring our re-usable drink bottles. Tim is also advocating that the whole of Australia uses a container deposit system to improve our rate of recycling beverage containers.  You can find an online letter you can send to the Premier of your State here: http://www.boomerangalliance.org.au/component/content/article/38.html

You may have taken a liking to some of the groovy music featured on the show.  We played:

Esquirrel - Chant to the Night
Toro Y Moi - Chi Chi, New Beat
The Field Mice - If you Need Someone
Caribou - Sundialing
Confetti - It's Kinda Funny
The Beach Boys - Barbara - Ann

Listen to the show!