VOA--CONNECT
Episode 18
[AIR DATE: 05 18 2018]
[TRANSCRIPT]
OPEN ((VO/NAT))
((Banner))
Saving the Bay
((SOT))
I would like to see it continue so that we can get more oysters and a healthier bay for our future generations.
((Animation Transition))
((Banner))
Conserving Water
((SOT))
I mean, for me it is important because it is such a big thing that we can all do so much to improve on. You know we can do as a community, as a world.
((Animation Transition))
((Banner))
Keeping it Clean
((SOT))
But this trash wheel has been a real opportunity to inspire people to become part of the solution.
((Open Animation))
BLOCK A
((Banner: Recycle))
((PKG)) RECYCLING OYSTER SHELLS
((Banner: Double Duty Oysters))
((Reporter: Faiza Elmasry))
((Camera: Adam Greenbaum))
((Adapted by: Martin Secrest))
((Map: United States / Annapolis, Maryland))
((Banner: Mike’s Crab House is part of Maryland’s Oyster Recovery Partnership. The Partnership has collected shells and planted 725 million oysters since 2010))
((Tony Piera, Co-Owner, Mike’s Crab House))
It’s about four years ago we started saving shells, just putting them in the trash cans and they would come and get them. It’s a win-win for us, it’s a win-win for the environment. I think it’s a win-win for the landfills, because the product doesn’t go to the landfill. It saves the bay. Oyster Recovery replants the spats. I think if you’re on the Oyster Recovery list, I think you get a lot more people that are environmentally friendly come to eat at your restaurant, because they know you’re saving the shells, instead of throwing them in the dumpster, and they’re going to the landfill. I think I’m getting more customers here because they know I’m recycling them, and they know it’s good for the environment and the Chesapeake Bay.
((Karis King, Spokesperson, Oyster Recovery Partnership))
We started out in 2010. We had a handful of restaurants just interested in helping us, kind of, grow this program. We had an idea, and from there, it’s been really well received. We’ve continued to grow and expand. After the shell leaves your plate, our shell recycling collectors will come pick it up, put it in a large truck, and then it will be hauled to Cambridge, Maryland. And the reason we take it there is because that’s where our shell pile is located. This is a massive shell pile. It stays in that pile for a little over a year so that the sun can, kind of, bleach it clean. The rain can wash it clean, and then it’s put through a cleaning process so that it’s a hundred percent ready to be treated. And when we say treated, that’s treated with oyster larvae. We introduce oyster larvae to it in large setting tanks, and oyster larvae will actually stick to it and grow off of that. Every half shell can support about 10 baby oysters, also called spat, and from there we will put it on a large ship.
((Stephanie Alexander, Hatchery Manager))
Oysters are really important to any ecosystem. They are considered the keystone species. So, they are the cornerstone of the bay environment. They create habitat for many, many critters. They are kind of the coral reefs of the bay. You put a hard structure out there, and it’s going to be colonized by a lot of the animals. So, the more oysters we get overboard, the better off. We’re going to have better water quality. We’re going to have more oysters going to the market, and everybody’s going to be happy.
((PKG)) CONSIGNMENT SHOP
((Banner: New Life for Old Clothes))
((Reporter/Camera: Bronwyn Benito))
((Map: United States / Deale, Maryland))
((NATS))
((Diane Karkosh, Owner, Turn Around Consignments))
I feel like there’s a season in everyone’s life for consignment.
Yay, our first customers! Yay! It’s the last hurrah for winter right now. All of the items that didn’t sell over the winter are now fair game.
They pay one registration fee price, no sales tax, and are able to choose anything off the racks that they can fit on their bodies. That’s called the all-you-can-wear buffet.
((NATS))
New consigners come about for a number of reasons, and it’s usually because of a change in their life. Either maybe their size changed and their clothes don’t fit anymore, or they’ve had a change in their career or lifestyle and they need other kinds of clothes, and what they have they don’t need anymore. So it’s a good way to turn around that money into spare cash.
((Diane Karkosh, Owner, Turn Around Consignments))
Here’s a coupon good for another thirty days.
((Customer))
Awesome, thank you.
((Diane Karkosh, Owner, Turn Around Consignments))
It just means that you enter into an agreement to sell your things and share the profit of what they sell for with the person who’s selling them. We have a whole cross-section of America here. All ethnicities, socio-economic status, genders. We have everyone.
((Diane Karkosh, Owner, Turn Around Consignments))
Thank you so much. You need some help in what to do?
We don’t want this stuff ending up in the landfill.
At some point, there will be other uses for this fabric, especially the nicer fabrics, the cottons, and the linens, and the silks which you don’t find as much in retail these days. I think they will always have some value. People these days don’t like to mend things. They don’t like to sew buttons on. So, they consign it because they don’t want to fix it, don’t have the time or don’t know how. So, every now and then, I take something home and sew a button on, or stitch up a seam on my sewing machine. And that’s all it takes to make it look nice as new.
((Diane Karkosh, Owner, Turn Around Consignments))
Alright, I got to go try these on.
When they no longer have a life here, is anyone going to find it useful? I mean, if nobody wants to buy it, is somebody going to want to wear it? We donate it to a lot of local clothing ministries, and hopefully they’re getting use out of those things. From there, they get sold for pennies on the pound. Where they go from there, I’m not sure.
((Diane Karkosh, Owner, Turn Around Consignments))
All set?
When we have beautiful fabrics, it’s hard for me to discard them. I want to do something novel with them. And I really see a need for local industry, for people to come together for a good cause and cut these fabrics into strips and weave them into something new.
If it can be created into something useful, people will buy it. It’s something they need and with that money, you know, you could fund a halfway house or something useful.
It’s the community working together, taking items that maybe have lost their purpose in life just like many drug addicts, and having them recreated into something new. It’s almost like breathing new life into something that needed some hope.
((NATS))
TEASE ((VO/NAT))
Coming up….
((Banner))
Waste Not
((SOT))
We live in an era of abundance and with that comes waste. So, I think we have to change our mindsets.
BREAK ONE
BUMP IN ((ANIM))
BLOCK B
((Banner: Conserve))
((PKG)) PHELPS SAVES WATER
((Banner: Turn Off the Tap))
((Reporter/Camera: Tina Trinh))
((Adapted by: Philip Alexiou))
((Map: United States / New York, New York City))
((Banner: 800 million people do not have access to clean and safe water))
((NATS))
((Michael Phelps, Olympic swimmer))
For me it was something that was so perfect just because of the love that I have for water.
((Banner: Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time. 28 total medals, 23 gold medals))
((Commercial Video with captions))
Saving Water with Michael Phelps
We waste four gallons every time we brush while the water’s running.
((Michael Phelps, Olympic swimmer))
Water has been such a big part of my life, an important part of my life, and for me it’s an honor and a pleasure to be able to spread the word that we need to conserve as much as we can.
((Commercial Video with captions))
((Courtesy: Colgate-Palmolive))
Colgate-Palmolive
Michael Phelps
Did you know that leaving the faucet on while brushing your teeth can waste up to four gallons of water?
((Michael Phelps, Olympic swimmer))
Four gallons of water. It’s like 64 glasses of water. So, I mean that right there should be enough where, you know, you can make that change and cut back on your showers or make sure you’re turning off the water.
((NATS))
It’s so easy that everybody can do it. I mean, that’s a big easy step that we can all take. Every single one of us. Even for me, like in the morning, when I do take a shower, I’m brushing my teeth in the shower.
((Courtesy: Colgate-Palmolive))
So, it’s kind of cool being able to have these little stickers that you can throw on the bottom of the sink and it tells you when the water’s been running for too long.
((Michael Phelps, Olympic swimmer))
I mean, for me it’s important because it’s such a big thing that we can all do so much to improve on. You know, we can do it as a community, as a world. And it’s all little, small things, you know, so for me this is exactly what I want to do. You know, I have the privilege to stand up and talk about things that are passionate to me that can make a difference.
((Banner: In developing countries, some 80 percent of illnesses are linked to poor water and sanitation conditions))
((Michael Phelps, Olympic swimmer))
I always have dream, plan, reach. That’s my motto. Have a dream, figure out a plan how to get there and reach for it. If you fall short, go back to the drawing board, figure out a different plan and try to get there. Anything is possible and I believe that. I think there were so many people that doubted the things that I was doing, but I believed that I could do it and I wasn’t going to stop until I got it done.
((PKG)) FOOD WASTE
((Banner: Eat That Food))
((Reporter: Veronica Balderas Iglesias))
((Additional Camera: Kane Farabaugh))
((Adapted by: Bronwyn Benito))
((Map: United States / Washington, D.C.))
((Courtesy throughout: NRDC/Ad Council))
((NATS))
About 40 percent of the US food supply goes uneaten every year.
((Chris Cochran, Executive Director, ReFED))
It’s as if you went to the grocery store and bought four bags of groceries and then left one in the parking lot on your way out to your car. The price of food has been decreasing over the last several decades. So, actually we pay less for food today as a portion of our income than we ever have in the past and so I think as a result, we don’t place as much value on that food.
((JoAnne Berkenkamp, Senior Advocate, Natural Resources Defense Council))
When you look at our whole food supply chain and you look at where our food gets lost, where it’s wasted, the biggest single location is consumers at home.
((Chris Cochran, Executive Director, ReFED))
When I purchase something I may think that oh, I can afford to purchase that and then may or may not eat it. I just want to have the option of eating it. So, I think we live in an era of abundance and with that comes waste. So, I think we have to change our mindsets to be able to address this problem.
((JoAnne Berkenkamp, Senior Advocate, Natural Resources Defense Council))
Our savethefood.com website is intended to be a resource for consumers and it’s full of helpful tips that are just very accessible, easy to apply to your life at home. We try to make it fun and easy for folks so that when they spend money on food, they’re actually getting that value out of their food dollar by purchasing what they need and enjoying it and making use of it.
((NATS/Banner: Planning the right amount of food is hard. The Guest-imater makes it easy. Just tell it who’s coming and what’s for dinner. Then it tells you how much to make.))
((Chris Cochran, Executive Director, ReFED))
Consumers can start by looking at their own trash bins and understanding that each of us is part of the problem, but also part of the solution.
((JoAnne Berkenkamp, Senior Advocate, Natural Resources Defense Council))
As people become more aware of the fact that food waste is a problem and that most of us waste more than we realize, people are starting to change their behaviors.
((Siri: To last as long as possible, asparagus is best stored in a vase with water in the fridge like flowers))
((JoAnne Berkenkamp, Senior Advocate, Natural Resources Defense Council))
So, there are a lot of fruits and vegetables that nature produces that are not what we would consider to be perfect. Those products that are not consistent with those industry standards typically never make it past the farm gate. They get plowed under, they get composted and consumers never see that. If people want to help address some of those losses, providing a market for some of those imperfect produce items is a great way to start. When we waste food, it’s not just the food itself that goes to waste. It’s everything that was used in producing that food and getting it all the way to our homes.
((Chris Cochran, Executive Director, ReFED))
The cost of food is about 20 percent of our natural resources that go into producing food. That’s land and water and fertilizer, then shipping it across the country and sometimes across a continent and then ending up in landfill.
((JoAnne Berkenkamp, Senior Advocate, Natural Resources Defense Council))
When you look at food waste globally, if you added it all up, if it was a country, just food that gets wasted would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions after China and the United States. And that’s not all of agriculture, that’s just the food that we waste. So, if you’re a person who’s really thinking about how to support a healthier environment, how to reduce your environmental footprint, reducing the amount of food that you go to waste is a fantastic place to start.
TEASE ((VO/NAT))
Coming up….
((Banner))
Smart Eating
((SOT))
It’s still actually meat, but it’s meat that is raised a little cleaner and a little more humanely and reduces your carbon environment impact all at the same time.
BREAK TWO
BUMP IN ((ANIM))
BLOCK C
((Banner: Use Less))
((PKG)) PLANET FRIENDLY BURGER
((Banner: Less Meat))
((Reporter/Camera: Steve Baragona))
((Adapted by: Philip Alexiou))
((Map: United States / Gaithersburg, Maryland))
((NATS))
((Rob Morasco, Senior Director for Culinary Development, Sodexo))
Normally when you cook a burger on a griddle, you'll see a whole lot of juice come out of it and flow around it. But this one, as you can see, not a lot of that happening because the juice is staying in because the mushrooms are pulling all that juice back in from the meat. Rob Morasco, I am Senior Director of Culinary Development for Sodexo here in North America.
((Richard Waite, Associate, World Resources Institute))
This is potentially a dish that could have broad mainstream appeal and also a pretty big environmental benefits. So, it’s interesting to see food service companies and restaurants starting to pick this up.
Since Americans eat about 10 billion burgers per year, if 30 percent of the beef in those burgers were subbed out and replaced with mushroom, it would save as many greenhouse gas emissions as taking 2.3 million cars off the road. And it would reduce agricultural land demand by an area larger than the state of Maryland.
((Rob Morasco, Senior Director for Culinary Development, Sodexo))
So, it’s very interesting. We did a lot of work with our consumers around when you come to the topic of beef and proteins and beef in particular, what we learned from consumer surveys was cleaner label products free from artificial ingredients and preservatives, right.
((Consumers))
It doesn’t taste a lot like mushrooms.
I’m not a big fan of mushrooms, but on the burger it makes the taste perfect.
It really feels like a genuine home style burger.
((Rob Morasco, Senior Director for Culinary Development, Sodexo))
When we did the mushrooms and people cared about what was in their meat, but then when you look at vegetables compared to beef from a carbon impact standpoint and all those percentages, how vastly different it is for a pound of vegetables versus a pound of beef.
((Richard Waite, Associate, World Resources Institute))
Producing a pound of beef emits about 20 times or more greenhouse gas emissions as producing a pound of mushroom.
((Rob Morasco, Senior Director for Culinary Development, Sodexo))
But button mushrooms, the best part, not just the neutrality of flavor, the best part is the moisture absorption and retention. You can tell it’s fat because it kind of mushes under my finger where that’s a mushroom. It’s pretty solid and it’s not going anywhere. But what the beauty of the mushroom is, like I said, it will absorb whatever moisture the ground beef gives off, so it’s pretty awesome. 25 percent mushrooms, but you won’t taste any.
((Richard Waite, Associate, World Resources Institute))
So, it potentially caters to a much wider audience.
((Rob Morasco, Senior Director for Culinary Development, Sodexo))
You know, if you still like to eat a hamburger and you crave that indulgent flavor and the thick grilled char on it and all that stuff, you can still have that. It’s still actually meat, but it’s meat that is raised a little cleaner and a little more humanely and it’s got a little, slightly better health benefits for you and reduces your carbon environment impact all at the same time. I hope you like the burger.
((PKG)) POWER GENERATOR
((Banner: Less Loss))
((Reporter: George Putic))
((Camera: Adam Greenbaum))
((Adapted by: Zdenko Novacki))
((Map: United States / Morgantown, West Virginia))
((Parviz Famouri, Professor, West Virginia University))
We are building electric generation system, about one kilowatt, that run on natural gas. The advantage of our system is it only has one moving part. So, the objective is to run 10 years continuously and the other objective is to run on 40 percent efficiency from natural gas to electricity. And the third is, it should be lower than 3,000 dollars.
And I believe our system will meet all those criteria.
((Courtesy: WVU))
The idea came when we were working on a hybrid electric vehicle and we were trying to put the engine generator under the hood and it wouldn’t fit. Since the piston has a linear motion, and my background is on linear electric machine, so we said why not just have the linear motion? So, by doing that, you don’t have the crank case.
((Courtesy: WVU))
((Parviz Famouri, Professor, West Virginia University))
The application could be from portable power generator or to home, basically with combined heat and power. You can put this in your HVAC system, your heating and air-conditioning system, and the heat would provide for the heater and then the electricity would provide for the home. The overall system, the volume is lower, is one. The other thing is, in rotary engines, the piston has a skirt that has higher friction, whereas this one is all aligned with lower friction.
TEASE ((VO/NAT))
Coming up….
((Banner))
Water Wheel
((SOT))
This machine was in operation more than a month or so before we had a million hits on YouTube and we are getting calls from all over the world.
BREAK THREE
BUMP IN ((ANIM))
BLOCK D
((PKG)) HARBOR CLEANUP
((Banner: Collecting the Trash))
((Reporter/Camera: Martin Secrest, Philip Alexiou))
((Map: United States / Baltimore, Maryland))
((Banner: In 2014, the Inner Harbor Water Wheel, the first of its kind, began operation at Baltimore, Maryland. It has already collected 680,000 kg. of trash))
((John Kellett, Inventor, Trash Wheel))
“So, I worked on Baltimore Harbor for 20 years, and Baltimore Harbor is a beautiful harbor. But one of the big things that people would notice, one of the first impressions they would have, would be the amount of trash that’s in the water. And most of that trash comes from the trash that’s on the land.
((Courtesy: Conway Bristow))
When it rains, all that trash gets washed off the city streets and off anywhere that it is, and gets washed down into the storm drains, or into the small creeks, and then into the river. And it comes out primarily here from the Jones Falls River.
((NATS))
((John Kellett, Inventor, Trash Wheel))
The water wheel provides the mechanical power to power the conveyer and the rakes that we have out here. The rakes push the trash up onto the conveyer, then the conveyer lifts it from the water, dumps it into a dumpster, and then we can keep cycling dumpsters through. We’ve taken out as many as 12 dumpsters in one day after a hard rain, and that added up to about 40 tons of trash.”
((NATS))
((John Kellett, Inventor, Trash Wheel))
So the water wheel powers the machine. When we have a hard rain, we get a lot of flow, and the flow pushes and turns the wheel around. A lot of the time though we don’t have a lot of flow, so what we found is that we needed to supplement that water current. And so what we did is we put solar panels, and the solar panels charge batteries, and the batteries power pumps and all the pumps do is pump water out of the river and dump it into the buckets of the wheel. And so it’s still working as a water wheel, and it’s still providing all the power for the machine, but it’s being augmented by solar energy. So, we use hydro and solar to turn that water wheel.
((Adam Lindquist, Director, Healthy Harbor Initiative))
I mean, Mr. Trash Wheel, the technology is incredible. But incredibly, it’s also only half the story. The other half is the Mr. Trash Wheel marketing campaign. Mr. Trash Wheel has really become a mascot for the restoration of the Baltimore Harbor. And as this technology expands to new places, we really see it becoming a mascot for keeping plastics out of our oceans. Before we installed the trash wheel, after a big rain storm, trash would just cover the Inner Harbor. You would look out on the harbor and you could walk across the trash, and get from one side to the other, right? That never happens anymore, and that’s because of Mr. Trash Wheel.
((NATS))
((John Kellett, Inventor, Trash Wheel))
You know, we started this project to clean up the harbor, but we also found that this wheel has become a real inspiration to people and an educational opportunity. You know, it’s not every day where you have a piece of infrastructure, particularly dealing with trash, that people take pictures of, and they watch, and you know, has a million hits on YouTube, and things like that. But this trash wheel has been a real opportunity to inspire people to become part of the solution.
NEXT WEEK / GOOD BYE ((VO/NAT))
((Banner))
Modern Jobs
((SOT))
Hi, my name is Susan Bennett and I am a voice actor and the original voice of Siri. The first two iterations of Siri, she really had a little bit of an attitude. I know that the first time I talked to Siri, I said, “Well, Hi Siri, how are you? What are you doing?” And she goes, “I’m talking to you.”
((SOT))
When I train or help someone before they go overseas and make the mistake. So we kind of culture advise, like don’t do that, be aware of this, something he is not introduced to as a soldier and it could just help him.
((SOT))
I think it’s super cool. It’s so innovative. I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s really fun to, like, watch your coffee getting made by a robot. It’s amazing.
CLOSING ((ANIM))
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