OyChicago blog

I’m not a hard line environmentalist, but I try to do eco-friendly things like support local agriculture through a CSA share, bring my own bags to the grocery store, and recycle. I know these small things are important, but my motivation to be green pales in comparison to the environmental passion of my best friend Erin.

Sometimes it feels like too much work to wash the moldy leftovers out of the plastic container so it can be recycled. It is much easier to just throw it away. “Lazy!” My head screams as I toss it in the garbage. “At least Erin isn’t here to see you,” it says next.

I feel a little guilty that I don’t share her level of passion for the subject, but I’m always interested in learning more. Erin has taught me that putting your TV and other appliances on a power strip saves power. She’s shown me that organic cottons can be fashionable. She’s warned me that clean water is rapidly becoming our most endangered natural resource. Most recently, Erin introduced me to this organization called No Foam Chicago, which is working to encourage the city of Chicago to join the 100 plus cities that already have a ban on Styrofoam food packaging. There are some striking facts about polystyrene (a.k.a. Styrofoam) on their website. Here are three examples:

-­ Styrene, the basic building block of polystyrene, is a large environmental health concern as toxic chemicals leak out of these products into the food that they contain (especially when heated in a microwave). These chemicals threaten human health and reproductive systems. (Protect The Winks of the world!)

- Americans use and discard over 2.5 billion Styrofoam cups each year. That’s more than one cup for everyone living in India and China combined. These cups are made with petroleum, a non-sustainable and heavily polluting resource.

- Chicago Public Schools serve school lunches on Styrofoam trays, endangering students to these harmful chemicals while choking our landfills with unnecessary harmful waste. 400,000 trays are discarded every single school day, never to biodegrade. Ever. That’s more than the entire population of Minneapolis.

And if Styrofoam isn’t your green cause of choice, how about water? I recently heard that it takes 2,000 gallons of water to make one pair of jeans. Two thousand! And that a normal toilet uses 3-5 gallons of water per flush. Whoosh, it’s gone. I won’t go into the details of the composting toilet I recently heard about, but apparently people are having them installed in their homes right here in the city.

Whatever eco-cause you take up, Judaism is there to back you up. Here’s a little story I like about our responsibility to take care of the environment.

Two people were fighting over a piece of land. Each claimed ownership.  To resolve their differences, they agreed to put the case before the rabbi.  The rabbi listened but could not come to a decision. Finally he said, “Since I cannot decide to whom this land belongs, let us ask the land.”  He put his ear to the ground, and then straightened up. “My friends, the land says that it belongs to neither of you – but that you belong to it.” (Jewish Folk Wisdom)

For more on Judaism and the environment, check out the JCRC Environmental  Initiative  and Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life ( COEJL ). To find out more about No Foam Chicago and how you can help, check out their  website  or stop by their  event  next week Wednesday, August 26 at Joey’s Brickhouse.