Lincoln East High School's home of Spartan news

The Oracle

Lincoln East High School's home of Spartan news

The Oracle

Lincoln East High School's home of Spartan news

The Oracle

Veggies? Or a bacon double with a side of smart fashion?

A+landfill+overfilled+with++clothing.
A landfill overfilled with clothing.

Environmentally speaking, most people don’t think about what they could do to improve our world or they make small changes like cutting their shower time or changing light bulbs to fluorescent bulbs instead.  With this in mind, I dove into a subject more deeply than usual: the clothes we put on our back and the food we eat.  

I recently found myself in the dreaded “showhole,” which led me to wading through Netflix’s massive library of movies and TV shows in the hopes of finding something to catch my attention. Eventually, I clicked on the documentaries tab.  Full disclosure: I personally have always found documentaries mostly boring. They simply have failed to really grab my attention. But after I read the synopses of many, I decided to click on Cowspiracy.  Now this wasn’t the first time I’ve heard of the film, so I thought I knew the basis of the movie…something about cow’s and becoming vegan.  As you can tell I didn’t know much and boy, was my assumption wrong.

As I delved into the movie, which started off slow, I continually found myself enthralled with all of the  deep questions being explored.  The movie explained what sustainable living was (which I must admit I had never even heard of before) and the Agriculture Industry in the United States.  I learned that cattle ranching was the leading cause of deforestation of The Amazon Rainforest, which deeply shocked me. But that was only the first of many realizations of the impact of cattle ranching, in particular in the United States, but also in other countries.  I learned that a ⅓ lb burger requires 660 gallons of water (this includes water used for grasses/grains to be grown and for processing of the meat).  Dumbfounded, I began to do a little Google searching about the Agriculture Industry in the U.S.

Cowspiracy goes on to explore sustainable ways to live, which became the obvious plot of the movie, and the director came to the conclusion that veganism was the best direction toward sustainable living.  

I think it would definitely help the environment tremendously if most of the population went vegan, but I’m not naive enough to think that it will actually happen.  I don’t know if everyone could give up bacon forever (I know that I couldn’t), but this begs the question: what could I possibly do to help the environment while still being able to eat what I want?  

This led me to: Sustainable Fashion.  The simple idea of having thought of how our clothing is made, who it’s made by, and what materials are used to press out the latest fashion trends could be a way to help.  It is noted that 8,000 chemicals are used to produce one article of clothing and 25% of the world’s pesticides are used, as well as non-organic cotton and slave labor, to make that one piece of clothing.  This chemical ridden clothing is kept at cheap prices while still representing the latest trends, but sustainable clothing-on the other hand- is much more pricey and hard to keep up with trends in the fashion world.  So quality or quantity? It’s up for you to decide or simply go vegan! Either way, I think we all should be more environmentally conscious, and not pretend global warming is not a thing.