So yesterday I rented a car for the meeting and the car happened to be a hybrid, part gas and part electric.  I won't get into the make or model, but I'll say it drove fine, got decent mileage, and had terrible sight lines.  I drove it around the New York area while 6500 miles away, our friends in Japan wonder if their islands will sink into the sea, or if Godzilla will rise up and attack, again.  And all the while I'm thinking, if it weren't for the energy industry, Peeled Snacks wouldn't exist.  And that's just sad.

We here at Peeled Snacks make a great, clean, tasty product that's all organic, sustainably grown, and we dry our fruit using technologies that slightly tweak recipes used about 10,000 years ago.  We're using packaging that's free of dangerous agents, and all of our cardboard is recycled, and we work in a very energy efficient building in one of the most energy efficient cities in the world.  But eventually, when it comes down to it, we're shipping our products, first from the farm, then from the factory.  And that takes fuel.  Environmentally speaking, it's our Achilles heel.  A heel that we share with a LOT of other companies.

I note that several car companies are prepping fully electric (or mostly electric) cars for the market.  While that cleverly seems like a zero-exhaust system, electric cars really act as an exhaust aggregate of exhaust.  The electricity pulled from the grid to fuel the cars comes from power plants, and therefore mostly from fossil fuels.  Nice try, car companies, where's the REAL solution?

For the last five years or so, nuclear power has been talked about more flatteringly than it had in a generation, but I assume that conversation's over.  Perhaps the tragedy in Japan will force governments and engineers to create a safer nuclear power option (most of the technology is over 30 years old, at LEAST), but there's not too much getting around the problem that however long your nuclear-fueled car runs, the exhaust from a nuclear power plant sticks around for TENS of THOUSANDS of years.  Gulp.

So, as we're building up to Earth Day, I'm writing this somewhat as a confession- Peeled Snacks is helping farmers grow food more sustainably, and helping snackers eat better food.  But we're still stuck shipping our products like everyone else.  And that sucks.  When there's a better solution out there, we'll be on the bandwagon as soon as we can.  In the meantime, glug glug. 

Sigh,

Peeled Skinny, who'll take public transportation today, thanks