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Post 4: Environmental Geography of My Meal

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In this post, I took a deep dive into the environmental impacts of my meal that include black beans mixed with brown rice, skinless rotisserie chicken, and plantain chips. This meal is very healthy, and indeed has some green qualities that can help us think about better food choices. Global Scale In a global scale point of view, my meal supports the concept of lower proteins and plant-based foods. Like beef or dairy carry much of a larger footprint than comparing it to brown rice and black beans. While chicken isn’t perfect, it uses fewer resources than other meats such as red meat. Plantain grows in tropical regions, which often require less use of chemical inputs than other industrial crops. If more people in this world replaced heavier impact meals with meals that included these kinds of food, it would help lower greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to reducing stress on water systems and land.   Local Scale From a local scale point of view, chicken, beans, and rice are widely ...

Post 3: Environmental Impacts of My Meal

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  For this post, I looked at the environmental impact of my meal. This included: Black beans mixed with brown rice, skinless rotisserie chicken, and plantain chips. Environmental Impacts/produced Black beans in the U.S. grocery stores usually come from the states like Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Nebraska. Outside the U.S., they might also come from Brazil. Black beans farming uses a lot of land, requiring irrigation. This can lead to strain on water supplies. However, the benefit of growing beans is that they add nitrogen back into the soil, helping soil health.  Brown Rice is mostly grown in the south of the U.S.. You would find these grown specifically in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. If we're talking outside the country, some might be imported from India, Vietnam, and Thailand. Rice farms need huge amounts of water, and flooded rice paddies cause methane to be released. This is a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Since the farmland replaces na...

Blog Post 2: What I had For Dinner

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My Dinner Plate  For dinner, I had a simple, yet a delicious meal. What I had on my plate was grilled chicken breast, mixed with some lettuce. In addition, I had a side of brown rice and black beans, with a side of crunchy plantain chips. The chicken was juicy and went amazingly with the fresh lettuce. While the rice and beans were warm and content. The plantain chips added the perfect combination of sweet and salty crunch that put everything together. For my drink, I had a nice cold Agua de Jamaica with ice to accompany it. Overall, it was a nice, satisfying, healthy, flavorful filling meal. Plantain Chips Rice and Beans Agua de Jamica                                                                            Information on Agua de Jamaica:   The Popular ...

Blog post 1: Thinking geographically about environmental impacts

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  One local effect of plastic bag waste that I found interesting was how bags end up blocking drains in some cities. I never knew bags could be the cause of this. Due to the plastic bags blocking the drains, this can cause flooding during heavy rainstorms. This can lead to damaging homes severely. This just demonstrates how one small item like a plastic bag, can have such a big impact in local environments.  A solution I found from the video that is very effective is encouraging people to bring in their own reusable cloth bags. To help encourage people to do so, some places would give discounts to people who brought their own bags. This not only helps the plastic bag problem but helps encourage people to change a bad habit into a good one. Bringing reusable bags helps out the environment by cutting down the usage of plastic bags and the chances of them being thrown outside. I think we should deal with plastic bag waste with a combination of scales. This is due to the fact that...