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Frito-Lay and Feed the Children partner to help provide food to thousands of students during COVID-19
09.10.20
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Frito-Lay
Did you know one in five families are unable to provide everyday essentials and food for their children? This summer was also the hungriest on record with one in four children not knowing where their next meal will come from – an increase from one in seven children prior to the pandemic. The effects of COVID-19 continue to be felt around the country and many people struggle to secure basic needs. Unemployment is at an all-time high and an alarming number of families face food insecurity, not only from the increased financial burdens but also because many students and families rely on schools for school meal programs and other daily essentials.
This school year is unlike any other. Frito-Lay knew the critical need to ensure children have enough food and resources to succeed. The company quickly pivoted to expand its partnership with Feed the Children, a leading nonprofit focused on alleviating childhood hunger, to create the "Building the Future Together" program to provide shelf-stable food to supplement more than a quarter-million meals and distribute 500,000 pantry staples, school supplies, snacks, books, hand sanitizer, and personal care items to schools in underserved communities.
<p>Each school participating in the inaugural "Building the Future Together" program across Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Orlando and Phoenix will receive donations of approximately 5,000 items per month consisting of food and everyday essentials for the entirety of the school year. Overall, it's estimated students in these markets will engage with the program and receive needed items over 100,000 times throughout the 2020-2021 school year.</p><p>"As a food company, we have an opportunity to serve a greater good and work to support children having access to the food and resources they need," said Steven Williams, CEO, PepsiCo Foods North America.</p><p>Because programs like "Building the Future Together" can pivot their giving, regardless of whether students are in school or at home learning online, they will still receive the resources they need on a consistent basis.</p><p>"With the 'Building the Future Together' program, we've pivoted our longstanding community giving efforts to provide a level of food security for thousands of disadvantaged students," Williams added. "While a lot of uncertainty remains, we will do our part to support students and families in underserved communities no matter how schools operate this year."</p><p>Nearly eight in 10 students attending schools participating in the "Building the Future Together" program qualify for free meals, according to Public School Review. </p><p>"We believe that no child should go to bed hungry, especially during this unsettling time around COVID-19," said Travis Arnold, president and CEO of Feed the Children. "We understand that many are facing unexpected challenges and we are working diligently with our partners such as Frito-Lay and the 'Building the Future Together' program to ensure that as needs rise, students continue to receive the food and supplies they need."</p><p>Since the onset of COVID-19, PepsiCo, including Frito-Lay and other PepsiCo business units, have committed more than $60 million to COVID-19 relief, which has provided 57 million meals to help feed communities in need, medical and economic aid, jobs creation and more. In addition, Frito-Lay has donated more than $16 million in product to more than 90 organizations in nearly 90 cities across the U.S. </p><p><strong>For more information, visit: <a href="http://FeedtheChildren.org" target="_blank">FeedtheChildren.org</a> or <a href="http://FritoLay.com" target="_blank">FritoLay.com</a><a href="http://FritoLay.com" target="_blank"></a>.</strong> </p>
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Dog owner gets an assist from Florida shelter after she couldn't pay the fee to get her pet back
09.30.20
via Jessica Jade / Facebook
Losing a beloved pet is one of the most painful experiences a person can have. Suffering the loss of their companionship is only compounded by the feeling of helplessness and worry over whether their friend is safe and happy.
If the animal is found and taken to shelter, it's obviously a relief, but it can cost a lot of money in redemption fees to get the animal back.
Some shelter charges can run as much as $300 if the owner refuses to have the animal spayed or neutered or if the dog has been picked up by the shelter multiple times. While others charge as little as $15 if the animal is picked up promptly.
<p>It's understandable that the shelters charge a fee to temporarily take care of the animal, but the fees also lead to an increase in the number of animals in shelters.<br></p><p>This creates a real dilemma in a system that's designed to reunite people with their lost family members.</p><p>A shelter in Florida is receiving a lot of love on social media for waiving the fees for a woman to retrieve her dog.</p><div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f7b8a4875d4623616ffefc801bea88b0"><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10223072373014594&set=a.1492649393063&type=3"></div></div><p>Jessica Jade, the manager of operations at Santa Rosa County Animal Services, shared a post on Facebook about how an owner came crying into the shelter with the vet papers for Glock, a sweet dog that's deaf.<br></p><p>″She says, through her sobs, 'Can I please have my dog? I don't have any money to get him out.' When I ask who her dog is, she continues to cry and beg, telling me she can't afford to get him out. I tell her, 'it's okay, we got you. You're getting your dog back,'" Jade wrote on Facebook. </p><p>"We bring Glock back to her. He was jumping and prancing he was so happy to see her, and she was crying and hugging him. Their love and bond are deep," Jade recalled. "We provided her with some dog food and a neuter voucher, which she was grateful for."</p><p>The shelter also learned the woman had kittens at home that needed to be spayed and neutered, so they gave her some vouchers for that service as well.</p><div class="rm-embed embed-media"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="giphy-embed" frameborder="0" height="480" src="https://giphy.com/embed/h5oLDSKX90J3is595q" width="480"></iframe><p><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/SignatureEntertainmentUK-cute-doggo-pick-of-the-litter-h5oLDSKX90J3is595q"></a></p></div><p>Jade used the situation to call attention to the problem of shelters charging redemption fees for lost pets.<br></p><p>″Glock wasn't a dog who needed rescue; he was a dog who needed to go back to the loving home he already had. Inflexible redemption fees and policies prevent animals from returning to their homes and unnecessarily add to shelter populations," Jade wrote.</p><p>"Innovative shelters remain flexible to ensure as many positive outcomes as possible, ensuring animals go back to the families they belong to where they are already loved," she continued.</p><p>The problem with redemption fees is tied to a deeper economic problem in America. </p><p>The Federal Reserve's <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/fed-survey-40-percent-of-adults-cant-cover-400-emergency-expense.html" target="_blank">2017 Report </a>on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households found that when faced with an unexpected $400 expense, about 40% of adults said they'd either either not be able to pay it or would do so by borrowing money.</p><p>The best way to make sure you don't lose a loved one is to make sure they either don't get out of your home or that, if they do, they are able to be brought home safely.</p><p>Here are five ways to make sure your pet doesn't go missing: </p><p>1. Your pet should wear a collar and ID tags at all times.</p><p>2. Have your pet microchipped</p><p>3. Spay/neuter your pet</p><p>4. Leash your animal while outside</p><p>5. Buy a GPS trackers to help you locate missing pet for as little as $30</p><p><em>You can help Santa Rosa County Animal Services by <a href="https://www.santarosa.fl.gov/399/Donate-to-the-Shelter?" target="_blank">making a donation</a> or purchasing something off </em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2ZD0WE2317C7W?ref_=wl_share&fbclid=IwAR1Smp0bbw7oEsqmNeoN0LxBDWmJFFd8ZB96-BFx_4U-pZMpjd0_ASipimA" target="_blank"><em>their Amazon Wish List. </em></a></p>
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Divest/Invest
Global mayors are declaring their commitment to divest from fossil fuels and invest in a sustainable future
09.22.20
True
$200 billion of COVID-19 recovery funding is being used to bail out fossil fuel companies. These mayors are combatting this and instead investing in green jobs and a just recovery.
Learn more on how cities are taking action: c40.org/divest-invest
With 16 years of sobriety under his belt, Dax Shepard has served as a beacon of hope for people in recovery. With a reset of his sobriety clock last week after confessing to a slip with prescription painkillers, he still is.
The actor has been open about his addiction to alcohol and cocaine, and that transparency and honesty has undoubtedly helped many people through their own recovery journeys. But recovery from addiction is not always a one-way, detour-free road. Even people who have been sober for years must be diligent and self-aware or risk relapsing in ways that are easy to justify.
That's the scenario Shepard described in his recent podcast, in which he announced that he's now seven days sober. For people who struggle with addiction, it's a cautionary tale. He didn't take a drink, and he didn't touch cocaine. His slide into addiction relapse happened with prescription painkillers—Vicodin and Percocet. He started taking prescription pain pills after a motorcycle accident in 2012, moved to taking pills with his dad who was dying of cancer, and then came a gradual spiral of justifications, lying, gas lighting, and other addictive behaviors that enabled him to abuse those pills without acknowledging he was doing so.
<p>Shepard laid it all out to his podcast partner, Monica Padman, last week. The way he was careful at first to only take the pills his wife, Kristen Bell, administered. Then how he'd save his two nighttime pills, because they made it hard to sleep, only to take them the next day with his morning pills to get the high he wanted. How he'd ask himself if this was a slip, start feeling like he was maybe in trouble, then convince himself he had it under control.</p>
<div id="e24df" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5fa414c937c8d8549e3a7799690184c4"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-version="4" style=" background:#FFF; border:0;
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<p><br></p><p>He talked about how easy it was to convince himself it wasn't really a problem because the pill use felt "manageable." He knew if he started drinking or doing cocaine, he'd be out of control—he understood those to be unmanageable addictions. But the pain pills didn't keep him from doing his work or his dad duties or his normal daily life, so it was easy to keep using them.</p><p>Then he explained how, after more injuries this year, his painkiller use got "shadier and shadier." He started buying pills instead of just using the ones he was prescribed. When he started lying to his loved ones and was high at his 16-year sobriety celebration earlier this month—which he called "the worst hour of my life"—he knew he was in trouble.</p><p>So in recent weeks, Shepard came clean to Bell and Padman privately and gave them all of his remaining pills. He spoke to a friend he looks up to, who frankly told him that his biggest character flaw was arrogance, that he basically thought he was smart enough to outsmart addiction. He realized the only antidote to that was extreme humility.</p><p>Shepard attended an AA meeting and shared the whole story with them as well. He said it was one of the most powerful experiences he's had ever had. </p><p><em>"So Tuesday really was day one. Yeah. And then, so I went to this meeting and I…man, I've known the men in this meeting for seventeen and a half years because I had many attempts before I got going. And I told my whole story and I told it honestly. And I went first and I was crying and it turned into the most incredible, like, 90 minutes I've ever experienced, where there was just so much love and there was so much understanding and kindness in unconditional love.</em></p><p><em>And it's the only—there's probably been many others—but it's the only experience I can remember having that was just grace, the definition of grace, and it was very emotional and it was a really, really surreal kind of experience.</em></p><p><em>And when it was over, I actually mentally, for the first time in a very long time, felt optimistic because for the last while, a long time, I've known intellectually that things are going to get worse, that each encounter with it has gotten more shady and more dangerous, and I recognize that the next go around would be, oh, I can't get pills, let's snort heroin. And, you know, and I've had a lot of friends that I've watched go through this whole cycle.</em></p><p><em>And I finally have the humility to say I will not be any different, I won't be special, I won't be smarter. I will be exactly like everyone else."</em></p><p>Then he decided to come clean publicly, despite a great deal of fear and embarrassment in doing so. He said he worried about how it affect opportunities for Kristen, how it might impact him financially due to companies that might not want to work with him now, how the bombardment of judgments about what he should have done or could have done might feel, how people who looked up to him for his sobriety might feel betrayed or misled.</p><p>He ultimately decided that total and complete honesty was the only way to go. And of course, that authenticity is what his fellow recovering addicts really need to see. </p>
<div id="3201f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fa88aed86ee360d179d9878b226b4d1d"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1309576972771655680" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Dear @daxshepard - Thank you. Our recovery journeys are long and difficult AND the most incredible part of our live… https://t.co/ezBPIeoQhR</div> — Brené Brown (@Brené Brown)<a href="https://twitter.com/BreneBrown/statuses/1309576972771655680">1601062455.0</a></blockquote></div>
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<div id="56626" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8d0c25cd5a60a784046807a8de4245f5"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1309695440611409921" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Day 7. Can’t stop getting real emotional about how sad and beautiful, how scary and empowering this is to listen to… https://t.co/EwTCtyQyb3</div> — Andrew Zimmern (@Andrew Zimmern)<a href="https://twitter.com/andrewzimmern/statuses/1309695440611409921">1601090700.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>"So if you got more than seven days, you got more than me. So you're my elder and I look up to you," said Shepard. "And, you know, onward and upward for all the people who have been along on this whole journey for the last few years. I feel—and this is not to sound cheesy, but I feel the same responsibility to the people who love the show and are with us, because I think it's such an emotional connection we all have."<br></p><p>Congratulations on your sobriety and thank you for your honesty, Dax. Onward and upward. </p><p><em>You can listen to Shepard's Armchair Expert "Day 7" podcast episode <a href="https://armchairexpertpod.com/pods/day-7" target="_blank">here.</a> </em></p>
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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
Last year, we shared the sad impact that plastic pollution has had on some of our planet's most beautiful places. With recycling not turning out to be the savior it was made out to be, solutions to our growing plastic problem can seem distant and complex.
We have seen some glimmers of hope from both human innovation and nature itself, however. In 2016, a bacteria that evolved with the ability to break down plastic was discovered in a Japanese waste site. Two years later, scientists managed to engineer the mutant plastic-eating enzyme they called PETase—named for polyethylene terephthalate, the most common plastic found in bottles and food packaging—in a lab.
Here's an explainer of how those enzymes work:
Ending Plastic Pollution with Designer Bacteria youtu.be
Now researchers have revealed another game-changer in the plastic-eater—a super-enzyme that can break down plastic six times faster than PETase alone.
<p>The super-enzyme is a bit of a frankenzyme, created by linking different enzymes together. "When we linked the enzymes, rather unexpectedly, we got a dramatic increase in activity," Prof John McGeehan, at the University of Portsmouth, UK, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/28/new-super-enzyme-eats-plastic-bottles-six-times-faster" target="_blank">told The Guardian.</a> "This is a trajectory towards trying to make faster enzymes that are more industrially relevant. But it's also one of those stories about learning from nature, and then bringing it into the lab."<br></p><p>This new research has been published in the journal <a href="https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2006753117" target="_blank">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a>.</p><p>Combining enzymes could be the key to making various kinds of plastics and combined materials fully recyclable. "There's huge potential," said McGeehan. "We've got several hundred in the lab that we're currently sticking together."</p><p>For example, combining the plastic-eating enzymes with existing enzymes that break down natural fibers could allow fabrics made of mixed materials to be recycled, McGeehan told The Guardian. "Mixed fabrics [of polyester and cotton] are really tricky to recycle. We've been speaking to some of the big fashion companies that produce these textiles, because they're really struggling at the moment."</p><p>This newest research isn't the first to improve upon the plastic-eating bacteria discovery. In April, a French chemistry company called Carbios <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/08/scientists-create-mutant-enzyme-that-recycles-plastic-bottles-in-hours" target="_blank">shared their own mutant enzyme</a> that can degrade 90% of plastic bottles within 10 hours. However, that enzyme, which originally discovered in a pile of composting leaves, requires heating above 70 degrees Celsius (nearly 160 degrees Fahrenheit), whereas this new super-enzyme works at room temperature. </p><p>Not that it's a cutthroat competition. We are talking about helping out the entire planet and saving life as we know it, after all. McGeehan suggested that the researchers work together with the private sector to get the enzymes working out in the real world. "If we can make better, faster enzymes by linking them together and provide them to companies like Carbios, and work in partnership, we could start doing this within the next year or two," McGeehan told The Guardian.</p><p>McGeehan did emphasize<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/29/world/plastic-eating-super-enzyme-scli-intl-scn/index.html" target="_blank"> to CNN</a> that the super-enzyme is "still way too slow" to be commercially viable at this point, but it is a huge step in the process. "We were actually quite surprised it worked so well," he told CNN.</p><p>Here's to science coming up with solutions to the problems human scientific advances have created, and here's to learning to live in better balance with nature in the process.</p>
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