stay curious

hiking and swimming my way around mother Earth. // most people call me laura

[enjoy-the-life-baby]

[rarebritney]

pls kill all men who yell at girls from cars

[flartey]

A lotta men you know would be dead. Surprise

[zorri]

I love surprises

[rapeculturerealities]

Women in India pay the price for cashew nut demand as vegan diets rise

Some 500,000 people - nearly all women - work in India's cashew nut industry for as little as £2 a day.

Women who shell cashew nuts for as little as £2 a day are regularly left with agonising acid burns while trying to meet British demands for the snack, a new report has found.

 As vegetarian and vegan diets increase in the UK – whether for health, environmental or animal rights reasons – shoppers are said to be hoovering up nuts, eating 17,000 tonnes in 2016, a huge 35 per cent increase compared to 2012. But according to the Daily Mail, there is a human cost to producing the millions of cashews needed, which are predominantly shelled by hand in India, Brazil, Mozambique and Vietnam.

Journalist Emily Clark visited a cashew nut processor in southern India where shellers reported painful injuries caused by cardol and anacardic acids that lie between the two layers of hard shell on a cashew nut. Some 500,000 people work in India’s cashew nut industry – nearly all women – who are paid as little as £2 a day for the arduous labour with no contracts, no guarantee of steady income and no pension or holiday pay.

 Many of the women were not given gloves and those that were chose not to wear them as it slowed their work down – they are paid by volume. One nut sheller, Pushpa Gandhi, 30, told the newspaper she is covered in scars from her work shelling cashews but makes just 200 rupees a day, or £2.15. ‘Today when we go home and wash, we will see the boils on our skin. It takes about a week for them to heal. But as the old ones heal, new ones keep coming,’ she said.

Read more

[rosalesbeausderholle]

This is not a veganism problem and framing it as that is pinning the blame on undeserving people, this is a problem caused by capitalism and misogyny, which views workers as expendable and basically as not even people. There are similar problems in many other industries, meat or vegetable or clothing, where people are forced to work for a basically non-existent pay, with no insurance or health care at all often in dangerous conditions. The problem is not the production of cashew nuts per se but the conditions of the workers, and it is not the fault of the people who eat cashew nuts either (or do only vegans & vegetarians eat cashew nuts?). Right now, a higher demand for cashew nuts is hurting these women a lot, while another time a higher demand for literally any other product where women are forced to work in similar conditions (picking coffee, sweatshops) would hurt the women working in that other industry more. Going “look at what the vegans are doing” is scapegoating and not talking about the real problem: capitalism. The way these women are helped is by going after whatever corporation forces them to work in such despicable conditions.

[terfkirby]

^^^people who are lactose intolerant also drink cashew and other alternative milks so like, it’s not veganism it’s literally capitalism

[pwussy-cult]

it’s easier to throw vegans under the bus than to critique the entire system tho :/

[stackcats]

People are desperate to go “oho look vegans are bad after all!” because that means they don’t have to bother addressing the poor ethics of their own diet, and forget that, like, you don’t have to eat cashews at all no matter who you are, but also that you have to eat something, and all you can do is be as ethical as practicable in your circumstances, because nobody living under capitalism can ever be perfect.

[5rsd]

mist and meadows and mt. rainier by manyfires on Flickr.

[purplebuddhaquotes]

Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and the awful its ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing; hold on through the awful; and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living heartbreaking, soul healing, amazing, ordinary, awful life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.

(via purplebuddhaquotes)

[acti-veg]

While I wholeheartedly support the movement to reduce plastic pollution, let’s not stop at straws. Fishing nets account for an estimated 46% of ocean plastic waste, so if you’re looking for a way to reduce your personal impact, boycotting commercial fishing and not eating seafood would be a great starting point.

[sheepdippedmax]

[kirkendauhl]

If you start to ban fishing all willynilly you’ll be stepping on the fishing rights of native Americans

You can see why that’d be a problem

[acti-veg]

I did specifically state “commercial fishing.” For that reason. Indigenous communities who are dependent on sustenance hunting are actually some of those being most threatened by the global appetite for fish and the emptying of our oceans.

[gahdamnpunk]

Beautiful.

[honey-harper-official-deactivat]

It’s almost as if it’s not damaging their self esteem, image to their classmates, and wow it’s like people want to be treated with kindness

[lesbianboboberens]

frankly? ban all plastics. require all public buildings to be solar powered. public community gardens in every neighborhood. ban all pesticides. ban fossil fuels. put wind turbines on every sky scraper. gardens on every rooftop. tax cars and fund public transportation. build bike lanes across every city. train/railroad infrastructure across the country (tear down highways). every state mandated to have a certain percentage of land be a wildlife preserve. local/organic farms get huge tax breaks. raise the minimum wage. aquaponics farms in every city. every family has chickens in their backyard. community composting. jeff bezos’s body for fertilizer. i have a clear idea of what i want the world to look like and i want it now. hire me

[best-life-wisdom]

I no longer force things. what flows flows, what crashes, crashes. I only have space and energy for things that are meant for me.

[faronmckenzie]

[baracknobama]

plans for 2014

care less about everything

get hot

sleep

[tea-with-mrs-mourning-dove]

[morriganwicce]

It’s such an injustice that women have been made to fear the night. Women have such a strong connection to the moon and the night is a time where feminine energy flows and the goddess is in the air. The night belongs to women and being out in the moonlight is good for the woman’s soul. It’s a crime that men have tried to take that away from us.

[sixpenceeeblog]

Life lessons I’m learning in my 20s: Communicate your feelings. If something feels wrong tell them. If something makes you feel off, tell them. Don’t bottle it up. You don’t deserve to feel that way and your feelings are valid. Those who matter will understand and adjust their behavior.

[brixton]

[tilldeathdousart]

[medicinematic]

― Legally Blonde (2001)