China......yuck

Awhile back I decided to stop buying things from China. Little did I realize how hard it would be, especially when you're on a super tight budget. I eventually had to loosen my total ban, and now I just try to be conscious about where things come from.

Why ban things from China? Well, it started for me with the dog food scare of a year ago. That, of course, got my attention. I found out that standards for manufacturing all sorts of edible and non edible things are shockingly low. So I kept reading.

Here are a few of the things I learned.

- 16 of 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China.
- The government recently gave massive tax incentives to a chemical processing plant to build it one mile from a farm.
- There are villages in china where the cancer rate is 50 TIMES greater than average.
- Two new coal burning power plants open EVERY WEEK.
- China recently surpassed the US in production of Carbon dioxide pollution. This may not seem so shocking at first, but when you taken into account the fact that 10 years ago scientists calculated that if China continued at it's then current rate of growth it would take 50 years to surpass the US, it becomes much scarier.

There are small glimmers of hope. The State Environmental Protection Administration in China is still operating, although severely under funded. And there has been a large number of peasant protests in the last few years, so many so that the government has taken notice and began to consider the protests and riots when making decisions. And new laws are being passes to make fines more severe for not adhering to existing environmental standards.

The United States is definitely not setting a wonderful example. But I just think we all should be aware of these things, so we can make informed decisions.