6A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 2009
ENVIRONMENT
Senior finds Earth Day just one of 365 to live green
BY AMANDA THOMPSON
athompson@kansan.com
This week's events and activities celebrating Earth Day encouraged students to focus on Mother Earth. But Sara Thompson, Salina senior, lives a sustainable lifestyle every week of the year.
Her conservation efforts extend to mealtime, too.
Thompson tries to minimize her impact on the environment in her daily activities. In school, she studies civil environmental engineering and environmental studies. On campus, she can be seen wearing vintage clothes with a stainless steel water bottle in tow. To get around town she walks, takes the bus, rides one of her two bikes or, when she has to, she drives.
"Even when she does drive she has a hybrid, which is handy," said Anna Hoard, Topeka senior and a friend of Thompson's.
Thompson is a vegan, which means she doesn't eat any animal products of any kind. That means
no meat, eggs, cheese, milk or any other animal by-product in her canvas grocery bags. Thompson said she chose a vegan diet because she thought it meant she used fewer resources.
"It cuts down on a lot of the resources used to produce our food," Thompson said. "It takes a phenomenal amount of water and grain to just grow the crop to feed the animals that we would be eating."
Cooking vegan hasn't limited the quality of her meals.
Hoard said Thompson was an excellent cook and spent a lot of time maintaining her vegan diet.
"She makes almost all of her food from scratch, which saves a lot of energy and packaging." Hoard said.
Thompson said that though it was important for her to recycle all that she could, she said reusing materials so that new things didn't need to be produced was equally important.
"People in the U.S. consume so much when we don't really need to, so I feel like that's really not
equitable at all in terms of a global scale". Thompson said.
Thompson also doesn't buy chemical cleaning products, but instead cleans with vinegar, baking soda and hot water.
Thompson'sfriend Sara Shannon. Ottawa senior, said Thompson was good about cutting down her use of materials.
"Living green isn't just about buying certain products. It's about cutting down your consumption," Shannon said. "It's something that you're not doing just for yourself when you're doing it. I think it's living by example."
Thompson said she didn't try to impose her lifestyle on other people, but that she does support education about sustainable living issues.
"We only have one earth and one environment, and I think everyone should make an effort to preserve it," Thompson said.
Edited by Sonya English
Sara Thompson, Salina senior, limits her environmental impact by using resources sparingly in her everyday activities. She maintains a vegan diet and drives a hybrid car when she can't avoid it by walking, riding her bike or taking public transportation.
Jon Goering/KANSAN
NATIONAL South Carolina wildfire blazes across four miles
NORTH MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — South Carolina's biggest wildfire in more than three decades — a blaze four miles wide — destroyed dozens of homes Thursday and threatened some of the area's world-famous golf courses at the height of the spring tourist season.
The flames, fed by tinder-dry scrubland, forced hundreds of people to flee.
The blaze scorched about 23 square miles over the past two days and then veered north, heading away from the high-rise hotels that line Myrtle Beach. There were no reports of injuries, and authorities said they had not determined what sparked the flames.
Associated Press
NATIONAL
Missouri factory defends its environmental record
BY MARGARET STAFFORD
Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A company whose factory in northwest Missouri gave farmers fertilizer that critics said contained a cancer-causing chemical disputed the claims Thursday and defended its environmental record.
Prime Tanning Corp., of Hartland, Maine, issued a statement in response to a lawsuit filed Wednesday accusing it of knowingly distributing sludge containing hexavalent chromium as free fertilizer to farmers in four counties. The metal, also known as chromium 6, is a known carcinogen.
The company's St. Joseph
plant was purchased this year by National Beef Leathers, a subsidiary of Kansas City-based National Beef Packing Co. that also was named in the lawsuit. On Thursday, National Beef Leathers said it would stop distributing the sludge while it conducts its own investigation.
Environmental activist Erin Brockovich told a crowd in Cameron on Wednesday night that hexavalent chromium may be linked to what some area residents believe is a high number of brain tumors in the region.
State and federal agencies have tested several areas in and around Cameron in the last year in response to concerns about brain tumors, but not for chromium 6.
The lawsuit and Brockovich's meeting were the first time hexavalent chromium in fertilizer had been publicly identified as a possible cause.
"Based on our preliminary investigation, we believe there is no basis for the claims made in the litigation," said Grover Elliott, vice president and chief financial officer of Prime Tanning Co. "We look forward to cooperating fully with state and federal agencies in their review and investigation."
The lawsuit, filed by two northwest Missouri residents, accuses Prime Tanning of not telling the state that the sludge left over from tanning processes at the plant contained hexavalent chromium. Prime Tanning's statement does
not address that allegation, and the company said it would answer no other questions.
More tests will be conducted to determine how widespread the use of the fertilizer was, but an environmental investigator at Wednesday's meeting said it has been distributed since 1983 primarily in Andrew, Buchanan, DeKalb and Clinton counties.
National Beef Leathers said the due diligence it conducted before buying the Prime Tanning plant did not uncover any irregularities with the application of the sludge.
Elliott said in a statement that application of the sludge "is an environmentally responsible practice that is done in accordance with all Missouri laws and regulations."