Model, Musician, Writer, and Photographer

Jason is currently a student at UC Berkeley, where he works toward a degree in contemporary English literature. He is also an avid musician, writer, and photographer, and recently started modeling as hobby. However, he hopes to become more involved in the industry and pursue modeling in addition to his academic career.

What does Green mean to you?

To me, the term "Green" means a heightened awareness of the detrimental environmental impact of the products and materials we use. A case in point, plastic shopping bags are made from cheap plastic, which makes them hard to recycle and easily blown into trees and waterways. Once discarded, they creative litter, kill marine life, and contribute significant amounts of landfill waste.

Moreover, plastic bags are manufactured from petroleum, which means that the demand for them further depletes natural resources and exacerbates America's dependency for oil from the Middle East. Look at some of the statistics, compiled by the S.F. Department of the Environment; Worldwatch Institute in 2007.

Plastic bags by the numbers (1) 180 million- Roughly the number of plastic shopping bags distributed in San Francisco each year. 2 to 3 cents- Amount each bag costs markets, compared with anywhere from 5 to 10 cents for a biodegradable bag. 4 trillion to 5 trillion- Number of nondegradable plastic bags used worldwide annually. 430,000 gallons - Amount of oil needed to produce 100 million nondegradable plastic bags.

Cost to the environment

In my opinion, all this seems like a very excessive cost to the environment to use plastic grocery bags, the majority of which are probably discarded after 15 minutes. While the reusable polymer shopping bags oftentimes sold in grocery stores offer a slightly better alternative, the production of these bags also uses petroleum products and deplete natural resources, thus continuing the detrimental impact on the environment.

The majority of these bags also use toxic dyes and are not recyclable or biodegradable, which means that they are an environmental hazard when discarded. Paper bags are also a detrimental to the environment. Deforestation not only destroys ecosystems and wildlife habitats but also significantly reduces the amount of plants that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen through photosynthesis.