This week I kept track of all the resources I used from the environment in an attempt to see just how much I rely on the environment to survive in my day to day life. What I found is that I could fill pages of a notebook listing the materials I use in just one day that involve the environment. I organized this giant list into eight categories, and out of those categories chose one item to research so I could find out exactly what goes into making it. The item I chose was yogurt.

Yogurt you find in stores can contain a number of ingredients, including pectin, sugar, fruit, but the only ingredients it has to have are milk and bacterium. The milk and bacterium are mixed, fermenting the milk and creating lactic acid. The lactic acid then mixes with the proteins inside of the milk to create yogurt. But all of this has to be done under very particular conditions. First the milk must be heated up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 10-30 minutes. Then it is cooled to 112 degrees and mixed with the bacteria necessary to turn it into yogurt. It is then placed in containers and kept at 100 degrees for four hours. After all of this, the yogurt is placed in a plastic can with an aluminum top and shipped off to stores.

This particular yogurt was Yoplait, which ships out over 17,600 cartons of the stuff to fifty different countries every day. The yogurt is often transported by boat and car, meaning that fuel and other resources have to be used to get it from the factories to our stores. That means 17,600 plastic cylinders and aluminum tops are created every day by this one company.  There are many other things one could consume that do not have packaging that is potentially harmful to the environment and that do not have to be shipped from far away. Eating locally or even eating food that is not pre-packaged would be an improvement. In this sense, yogurt is a want rather than a need because there are alternatives that would be better for the environment. Seeing as plastic and aluminum are non-renewable sources, every time one eats yogurt they are using up a difficult to replace resource, so thinking about local alternatives to yogurt and other pre-packaged foods that are shipped from across the country would be a good step in helping to preserve the environment.

From this exercise I have realized the effort it takes to make yogurt. I never realized how many steps and how much effort was behind getting this product to the consumer. People do not often think about where the food they are eating comes from or what goes into creating the other products they utilize for that matter. I know people have so many things going on that they do not have time to thoroughly examine every product they use, but if you get the chance it really puts things in perspective to do a project like this every once in a while. But even if you do not have time for things like this, there are still easy ways to help preserve the earth like reusing water bottles, scratch paper, or even text books. Even printing double-sided, buying foods locally, or not needlessly throwing food away can be a huge factor in reducing you ecological footprint.

Works Cited:

Source One (included for the nutritional information it provides): http://web.archive.org/web/20080529005611/http://www.ynhh.com/online/nutrition/advisor/yogurt.html

Source Two (included because it explains how yogurt is made): http://www.wisegeek.com/how-is-yogurt-made.htm

Source Three (included because it contains information about the specific yogurt factory my yogurt came from, so it allowed me to better understand how that factory, and probably other factories, handle their yogurt products): http://www.yoplait.fr/index.php/en/49_188.htm