A: Though silicone baking sheets do leach trace amounts of silicone oils into foods, these oils are far less harmful than the manufacturing byproducts and gases associated with sheets containing PTFE (Teflon).
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It’s #plasticfreejuly and we’re continually trying to reduce our plastic use, as well as ingestion. One especially tasty way of skirting plastic bags is making homemade bread, which is WAY easier than commonly thought. With an enameled dutch oven pot, it’s as simple as throwing ingredients together, waiting, and letting the toaster oven work its magic. 

When baking bread, we currently use parchment paper to line the pot, which is regrettably single-use and non-recyclable. Certain versions are compostable, though most parchment paper is treated with a silicone coating that likely doesn’t compost very well. Additionally, most compostable single-use paper products still have a larger production footprint than multi-use equivalents. So, what are the best reusable alternatives for parchment paper?

Answering this question is mostly a matter of potential health risks. In the past, we lined our pot with reusable baking sheets, but have since realized that these sheets contain PTFE (Teflon) and can have detrimental health effects via pyrolysis and off-gassing when cooked at higher temperatures. Older teflon cookware also contains PFOA (used in the PPTFE manufacturing process), which is linked to multiple disorders and is now ubiquitous in the environment. Though phased-out in newer cookware, it’s unclear if the replacements (GenX) are any safer.

Reports and studies vary on at what temperature PTFE begins off-gassing toxic fumes, but one peer-reviewed study shows that about 1,000 broiler chicks died shortly after exposure to Teflon-coated heat lamps at 396°. While birds are known to be exquisitely sensitive to Teflon fumes (and there are unfortunate reports of pet birds dying after exposure to Teflon cookware), there is also some risk for humans, especially at higher temperatures. Since bread bakes at ~450°, we recommend opting for silicone baking mats, including those shaped specifically for dutch ovens.

Studies show that silcone baking mats do release PDMS, an inert silicone oil. Yet, PDMS is widely used as a food additive, especially for frying oils, in both the US and EU. When ingested it is nearly all excreted unabsorbed, and safe intake levels of 1.5 mg/kg have previously been suggested (equivalent to 120 mg or over a quarter pound of PDMS for an 80 kg person!), Therefore, we’re not too concerned over any comparatively tiny PDMS exposure from silicone baking sheets. 

In summary, a reusable silicone sheet seems to generate the least waste, with minimal health concerns compared to the alternatives (single-use parchment paper, most of which contain silicone anyway, or reusable teflon-based sheets). 

A. Vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, etc. diets seem much more mainstream in the media these days, and meat substitutes are no longer just a bad joke. Yet, the typical American eater is the greatest carnivore in all the world, with Americans consuming more meat and other animal products (per capita) than any other country. And meat consumption continues to climb, reaching record highs every year for the last five years, and averaging about 220 lbs of retail meat per person per year. 

First, let’s look at the big picture. How many animals does it take to give us, as a nation, over 70 billion pounds of retail meat each year? The USDA’s “Livestock Slaughter” and “Poultry Slaughter” reports provide the following slaughter counts for 2019: 34.14 million cattle and calves, 129.91 million hogs, 9.33 BILLION chickens, 227.68 million turkeys, 27.55 million ducks, and 3.05 million sheep, goats, and bison. Thus, nearly 10 billion farm animals meet their end each year to feed American appetites, with the unfortunate chicken representing just over 95% of this total. If we divide these numbers by the US population, we arrive at about 30 farm animals per American per year, with 28 of these chickens.

But now let’s add up all the animals eaten over an average American lifetime of 78.5 years. Using 2019 numbers, we arrive at these sums, rounded to the nearest animal: 2,232 chickens, 54 turkeys, 7 ducks, 8 cows, and 31 pigs [Image 1].

Okay, this is all very grim, but suppose one avoided meat on one single day of the week, a la “Meatless Mondays,” or essentially equivalently, left meat out of just three meals each week. Over a lifetime, one would spare roughly 319 chickens, 8 turkeys, 1 duck, 1 cow, and at least 4 pigs [Image 2]. 

Of course, fully vegetarian and vegan diets are much better, but I’d also like to champion the lazy, imperfect vegetarian who slips here or there, or even makes it their practice to indulge, say, once a week. Flipping the numbers above, and having a “Meaty Monday” while abstaining the rest of the week demonstrates the enormous potential of a harm reduction approach that does not demand purity. It may always be better (in almost every sense) to consume less meat, but the gulf between a typical American diet and that of a true vegan is vast, and the great good that could come of narrowing this divide should not be dismissed.Universal adoption of the “six-days-a-week’’ vegetarian diet would push total US meat consumption below 1909 levels, and the lifetime body counts would change dramatically [Image 3].

For full article, see link in bio or go to https://medium.com/the-innovation/just-how-many-animals-do-americans-eat-409699db229c

A: Phoenix is a confusing place. We live in the Sonoran Desert and receive about 8 inches of rainfall annually. Having experienced steady population growth since the 1960s and chronic drought since the 1990s, our water reservoirs are now at historic lows. But if you run anywhere in the city, you will inevitably see water-intensive lawns, parks, golf courses, and swimming pools. You might also see extensive, flowing canals and understandably wonder, “How bad is the water scarcity here, really? And what can we do to meaningfully address it?” In short, the problem is more complicated than just these visible examples of extravagance, and systemic solutions also merit a second glance.

I’m addressing these questions as part of @RunJanji’s #FollowtheH2Ocampaign, which asks participants to research their local water source, run near it, and raise some awareness about related environmental and social issues. Phoenix receives the majority of its water from the Colorado, Salt, and Verde Rivers, none of which are visible, as such, from within city limits. Though the Salt River originally ran through the Phoenix area, a series of dams now reduces it to little more than a trickle in town, and that’s on a good day. Most Phoenicians never see the natural sources of their water, nor do they know its most common destination, which is, in fact, farmland.

All of the aforementioned rivers travel through reservoirs, canals, underground pipes, and sometimes water treatment plants, before supplying local fields and faucets. It’s an elaborate process, first initiated by the Hohokam in around 300 CE for large-scale farming. These early settlers dug out Phoenix’s original canals in order to channel Salt River water for their vegetable and legume crops. Such irrigation enabled their civilization to flourish until they were forced to disperse in the late 1300s, during a mega-drought not unlike the one occurring now. 

So, while I imagine that many participants in the #FollowtheH2O campaign are summiting mountains and tracing whole tributaries, I’m plodding along a patchwork of urban waterways. Without this canal system —which now serves neighborhoods, citrus groves, and alfalfa fields alike— the very city I call home would not exist. Even as Lake Mead, the nation’s largest water reservoir and one of Phoenix’s major sources, dips to 37% full, these canal levels remain notably consistent. Looking at them, you do not see drought. But since surface and groundwater are both low throughout the state, some canals have acquired another function: they now also transport river water to large pools that help replenish depleted underground aquifers.

Still, can this canal system really save us from our current water scarcity?

Though Phoenix’s water demand has remained relatively steady, in large part due to reduced outdoor water use (e.g. xeriscaping), its water scarcity issue is regional in scale. Throughout Arizona, Nevada, California, and Utah, water supplies are shrinking and urban populations are growing. But since the vast majority of Arizona water (~70%) is still used by rural farmers, including those on the Phoenix outskirts, drought contingency plans have started with rationing canal water for agricultural, not municipal, use. This means the system could save us by (at least partly) abandoning its original purpose. Yet, if rationing canal water results in faster depletion of groundwater sources, which also serve most farmers throughout Arizona, those precautions could still backfire. It all depends on how long the current mega-drought and population boom lasts, as well as how local farmers and residents respond.

When I run along the local canals, I remember the Hohokam, as well as the farmers, ranchers, and developers, who have relied upon this impressive infrastructure. It’s likely that Arizona’s system, coupled with proactive drought contingency plans, will be able to sustain Phoenix through this and future megadroughts, though not without social, environmental, and economic costs. Those exact costs remain unclear, as our system has a lot of moving, and often invisible, parts. But if we think about where our water comes, as well as where it goes, we’re able to follow a flow of not just H2O, but also money, power, and possibility. In this sense, #FollowtheH2O means we start to know our city on two feet, and with two very wide eyes.

General Bibliography:

“In Era of Drought, Phoenix Prepares for a Future Without Colorado River Water”
https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-phoenix-is-preparing-for-a-future-without-colorado-river-water

“Could Phoenix survive a water crisis?”
https://thecounter.org/could-phoenix-survive-a-water-crisis-dcp/

“Water scarcity footprint reveals impacts of individual dietary choices in US”
https://news.umich.edu/water-scarcity-footprint-reveals-impacts-of-individual-dietary-choices-in-us/

“The Ancient Waterways of Phoenix, Arizona”
https://longreads.com/2020/02/05/the-ancient-waterways-of-phoenix-arizona/

“What is a Megadrought?”
https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-a-megadrought.html

“2020 State Agriculture Overview”
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=ARIZONA

Plus, there are few things cuter in life than trotting hens. 

We don’t have our own chickens (yet) but often babysit our family and friend’s flocks. Backyard chickens lay every 1 or 2 days and can produce around 250 eggs annually during laying peak years (first 2-3 years), but can keep laying as long as 10 years.

What do they need to “work that”? Daily water, grain-based feed, and, ideally, some pasture to graze and fertilize simultaneously. Chickens also eat bugs, including cockroaches and scorpions, and unwanted food scraps.

Because most pet chickens mainly eat processed grains, their diet relies on large-scale land, pesticide, and fossil fuel use inherent to modern agriculture. Large-scale commercial systems can actually be more efficient when it comes to transforming these inputs into eggs, but at the cost of extremely inhumane confinement systems: hens in battery cages live in less than half a square foot of space.

Providing 391 million laying hens with 108 square feet of pasture (typical standard for “pasture-raised” eggs), each, would require just under 1 million acres of land. This may sound prohibitive, but is utterly trivial compared to about 800 million acres of grazing lands across the US, and 40 to 50 million acres of lawn. Furthermore, a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report concluded that, since they can forage for food scraps and eat marginal crops, small-scale backyard chicken operations have about the same environmental impact as poultry farms.

While industrial operations are generally more “efficient” with resource and energy use than small-scale passion projects (ironic, we know!), this report gives us yet another reason to celebrate the welfare of our chicken friends. With a coop, yard, and TLC, they get to feel good, and so do we! Oh, and those eggs!

When it comes to sustainability and diet, what you eat is much more consequential than how you cook. But, an easy and cheap way to reduce your energy consumption while cooking is to get an outdoor TOASTER OVEN!

Though estimates vary, a toaster oven uses about 1/4 of the energy that full-size ovens require (and maybe even less), and savings are maximized when used in convection mode and over longer cooking cycles (most energy goes to the initial pre-heating).

The little guys have a max load of 1,200-1,500 kilowatts, whereas the big daddies can draw as much as 4,000-5,000 kilowatts. This difference means that toaster ovens both use less energy and radiate less heat into the house, which matters most in the summer!

In Arizona, we cook with our outdoor toaster oven year-round. It fits basically everything smaller than a turkey. Since we use it most often for vegetable dishes, tofu, quiche, bread, and pizza, all of which cook under an hour, we usually consume no more than 1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) per use (meaning 1,000 watts of power for a 1-hour time period). But even this is probably an overestimate. Pre-heating the toaster oven is the major energy draw over a cooking cycle, per an Energy Star report, so I’d venture we use more like 1/3-1/2 of a kWh.

Looking at our hourly energy usage, it’s obvious when the regular oven is used (minimum 1-2 kWh spike), but the toaster oven doesn’t even register to the eye, consistent with a four or fivefold energy savings. Saving a kWh or two might not sound like much, but over a year it adds up to several hundred kWh, equivalent to a week or two of all household energy use.

If you want to triple-down on this sustainability hack, look for a gently used toaster oven on Facebook Marketplace or at the Goodwill (ours was $6!). Oh, and finally, roast tofu in it!

A: Producing meat, as well as other animal products (e.g., dairy and eggs), is inherently wasteful, due to large losses of otherwise edible calories and protein when animal feed is inefficiently “processed” into a retail meat product. That is, when plant calories are consumed by animals, only a small fraction can be stored as biomass, and further losses are incurred when animals are taken to slaughter and hides, bones, and organs are removed prior to retail sale. Animal feed is the single largest end-use of crops grown in the US, requiring vast inputs in terms of (non-renewable) mineral fertilizers, synthetic pesticides, water, fossil energy, but most especially land, which is a finite resource. Habitat destruction (and not global warming), primarily for agriculture, is by far the greatest cause of wildlife loss and biodiversity declines worldwide. At the global scale, a majority of farmland goes towards animal production, but yields a minority of dietary calories and protein. American also consume more meat per capita (around 220 pounds per person per year) than any other society on Earth, and consumption continues to climb. Such an inefficient use of resources with such a great footprint is clearly not sustainable, although some meat can be part of a “sustainable” diet.

It should also be mentioned that animal agriculture has a significant global warming impact: Croplands store less carbon than natural or semi-natural lands, nitrogen fertilizer production is extremely energy-intensive and also leads to nitrous oxide emissions (a major non-CO2 greenhouse gas). Cattle and other ruminants have a unique digestive system that also produces appreciable quantities of methane, a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas, while manure stored in confined animal feeding operations also produces methane and nitrous oxide emissions.

Generally speaking, the per-unit environmental impact of plant-based protein sources is an order of magnitude lower than most meats and animal products. The impact of different meats also varies appreciably, with beef having the highest per-unit impacts in terms of land, feed and other resources, and greenhouse gas emissions. Poultry, being comparatively efficient at converting feed to biomass, has a lower impact, with eggs likely the lowest-impact animal product. However, one should remember than most cows spend much (not all) their lives on pasture, while poultry are condemned to much more nightmarish confinement systems for life.

Coming from such a high baseline average, it seems possible for typical Americans to cut meat consumption appreciably and still enjoy a relatively high meat diet, by historical and global standards. If everyone ate “just” 100 pounds of meat a year (still over a quarter-pound hamburger a day equivalent), this would be more impactful than half the country going strictly vegan, and spare large amounts of land and other agricultural resources. In sum, eating more plants and fewer animals is a necessary part of making diets more efficient on a resource basis, and therefore more sustainable.

A blog about trying to understand if the modern single family suburban dystopia can be sustainable (whatever that really means)…So, let’s get started with some particulars…

Our house was born in 1985, when most of the Phoenix area’s cotton farms were converted into tract home neighborhoods (more on that later). We bought it in early 2021, during a crazy juncture of all-time low interest rates, as well as real estate listings. Basically, the house is 1300 sq. ft of Saltillo tile and neutral tones on 6,500 sq. ft of chunky gravel and one manicured soul patch (concept credit: @mcmansionhell). There are a few trees and shrubs too, as well as ample evidence of herbicide and pesticide use. So, the house and neighborhood appear to be average in every way (which we’ll of course fact check) but we’re here to make it weird. The sustainable kind of weird.

Our initial questions:

• Um, did we just make the biggest sustainability no-no there is? That is, can single-family housing (own yard, own appliances, own everything) ever be sustainable?
• Uggggh, is all this low-water gravel landscaping really the best? Because we love bugs, birds, and homegrown vegetables.
• Oh my, homeownership requires a whole lotta buying and procuring. Furniture, tools, cleaning supplies, food: which choices make the most financial and environmental sense?

Stay tuned for our trials, many errors, and hopefully some lessons!