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CBS News
2 days ago
- CBS News
Chicago woman is fit to be tied with rotting berries falling from neighbors' tree
A woman from Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood said a giant tree's sweet berries are causing a sour situation. The woman, Jane, said she was looking for someone finally to listen to her concerns. "That's why I chose to contact Channel 2 News," she said. "I need someone to listen to me." Jane never fancied herself a farmer. But for the last 28 summers, she has gotten quite the haul of rotten berries landing in her backyard. CBS News Chicago met Jane as she was clad in blue jeans and a T-shirt honoring the old Neo nightclub in Lincoln Park, scooping rotten berries out of nets hanging between garages on her property and collecting them in plastic bags. The daily harvests add up. "Since I've been gathering them and weighing them, since June 14, I'm over 215 pounds of berries," Jane said, "just this year." There are more rotten berries beyond the nets. Even more are piled up on the ground and nearby garages — and they're not suitable for people to eat. "You can't use these for cooking. You can't use these for donating to anybody," Jane said. Instead, the berries make a delicious meal for all sorts of members of the animal kingdom — pigeons, bees, fruit flies — and most frustratingly, rats. Jane snapped photos of her hungry, hairy visitors of the order Rodentia. One momma rat was spotted carrying her baby as she stopped for a snack earlier this month. "There is rat feces everywhere," Jane said. It has made for an unsanitary, slippery, smelly situation. "It's something like old beer, fermented wine," said Jane. The berries fall for about six weeks straight, and end up rolling around in the nets and on the ground. Jane can't control the decaying fruit, because it is not coming from her yard. It is coming from a gigantic mulberry tree on her neighbor's property. The tree in question is so big that some of its branches are held up with metal. "If we get a sudden downburst, that chain's not going to hold anything," Jane said. Jane shared concerns with Ald. Matt Martin (47th), but was told the city can't do much because the tree is on privately owned land. "It is your right to take down the branches that encroach on your property line, but I know you mentioned the problem is with the entire tree," Martin's staff wrote. "Our office does not have the capability to compel your neighbors to take down the tree." The take-matters-into-your-own hands advice when it comes to tree branches crossing property lines doesn't always work out. CBS News Chicago covered a similar overbearing tree story in 2021. In that instance, Roula Savakis of Chicago's Peterson Park community was so frustrated with a wall of trees blocking her windows that she hacked them back. In response, her neighbors took her to court, alleging at least $100,000 of damage. Asher and Cynthia Kohn accused Savakis of violating the Illinois Wrongful Tree Cutting Act. They claimed she damaged 38 of their trees intentionally and illegally. Four years later, CBS News Chicago has learned that the Savakis family ended up selling their home to the tree-owning neighbors and relocating. Back in Lincoln Square — as Jane's dog, Brutus, went hunting for mulberry-loving rats — CBS News Chicago went looking for the tree owners. Jane and two plant experts suspect the tree is a white mulberry. "Interestingly, white mulberry was introduced to the U.S. back in colonial times because it is the preferred food of the silkworm caterpillar, which is where we get natural silk from," said Jamie Viebach, horticulture educator at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Viebach said while white mulberry is not officially listed as an invasive species in Illinois, it is non-native and very weedy. "It can basically be considered invasive (though, without the legal ramifications of the official designation)," Viebach wrote. The tree is treated as invasive by some land managers. "It is not regulated or banned in any statewide way in Illinois, though it is often managed and removed by land managers when it is found growing in natural areas," said Chris Evans, an extension forestry and research specialist at the Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences at the U of I Urbana-Champaign. Viebach also noted that the white mulberry is a species the Morton Arboretum lists as a "problem plant." Such a description sounds fitting to Jane. "This is a health issue right now," Jane said. "This is a safety issue." Berry season will be wrapped up in a few days. Will farmer Jane be back at it next year with another season of falling berries? CBS News Chicago knocked on the neighbors' door, but never got an answer. The city can issue citations to homeowners whose vegetation creates a "public nuisance." CBS News Chicago was told that while Savakis' situation with her neighbors' trees in 2021 met the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation criteria for a public nuisance, Jane's berry situation does not meet those criteria and does not warrant any fines. The city said the following constitutes a nuisance per ordinance 10-32-140 Trees, shrubs or other plant materials – Public nuisance:
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Asian Headlines at 4:08 a.m. GMT
568 people survived after an Indonesian passenger ferry caught fire at sea, killing 3 Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Yahoo
Worrying impact of common ingredient in $2 snack loved by Aussies
Instant noodles are a popular snack food in Australia and around the world, with approximately 100 billion serves consumed each year. But experts are warning about one key ingredient that is not only bad for your body, its production is having a disturbing impact on the planet. A staggering 10 to 20 per cent of the volume of most instant noodles brands is palm oil, which is used in the process of flash-frying. To satisfy our hunger for this single ingredient, over the last 60 years, old-growth forests across South East Asia and the Pacific have been bulldozed and burned at an unprecedented rate to make way for plantations to grow the crop. The product, which is often disguised on ingredients lists as vegetable oil or palm kernel, has also been linked to human rights and worker abuses, as well as air pollution. Around 50 per cent of packaged foods and 70 per cent of cosmetics and soaps are estimated to contain it, but instant noodles contain more palm oil by weight than any other product on the market. In Australia, they're particularly popular with students and anyone else struggling with the cost of living, and brands like NongShim are so cheap, you can buy a pack for less than $2 at Coles or Woolworths. Sustainability experts aren't trying to stop people buying them, they're just trying to change the way they're produced. And they think consumer pressure is important. Related: 🥫 Popular grocery items linked to image of orangutan cruelty Are forests still being destroyed for palm oil? Greenpeace's team in Indonesia argues that instant noodles 'have their place' but the palm oil production industry 'needs to do much better.' 'Clearing for oil palm plantations has been the largest single cause of deforestation in Indonesia since the turn of the century,' its global head of Indonesia's forest campaign, Kiki Taufik, told Yahoo News from Jakarta. Greenpeace analysis shows how problematic its production is, with illegal oil palm plantations in Indonesia occupying 183,687 hectares of land previously mapped as orangutan habitat, and 148,839 hectares of Sumatran tiger habitat. Over 30 per cent of Borneo's forest was destroyed between the early 1970s and the mid-2010s, with palm oil production a major driver. Deforestation for palm oil production is believed to have peaked in the late 2000s. And while that's good news, a major front of concern is rapidly emerging. 'A worrying new deforestation hotspot is West Papua — the island of New Guinea has the greatest plant diversity in the world and plays a major role in protecting the global climate. Companies are grabbing Indigenous Peoples' forest land there, not only for palm oil, but also for sugar plantations,' Taufik said. What consumers don't realise is that if they take a flight from say, Singapore to Kuala Lumpur or Jakarta, they will see a green cover before you're landing, and that's not forest, it's monoculture crops. If you replace tropical forest with monoculture, the biggest ones who suffer is the Seth, WWF Are all instant noodle brands the same? The world's top five manufacturers of instant noodles are Nissin from Japan, Indofood from Indonesia, Master Kong from Taiwan, Nestle from Switzerland, and Otoki and NongShim from South Korea. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is concerned that only two of these brands, Nissin and Nestle, are 'transparently reporting' what percentage of palm oil in their instant noodles is certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a group it helped set up to reduce the environmental harm caused by farming of the product, and help consumers avoid products linked to recent deforestation. WWF Singapore's Kamal Seth, the organisation's global palm oil lead, argues that using RSPO-certified oil would cost shoppers very little. 'As an example, let's say a cup noodle costs one dollar, the price would become one dollar and one cent at the consumer level,' he told Yahoo. 'The issue is that consumers are not even aware that their instant noodles contain palm oil. If they were made aware, they would be willing to pay one cent extra, provided the company is telling them they're buying sustainably.' While the RSPO certification scheme has been plagued by multiple controversies about its effectiveness, both Greenpeace and WWF argue it's the 'best option' right now, and consumers should look for it on packaging. 'Besides RSPO, there is no other global independent mechanism that is more credible… We continue to back it because we want RSPO to become even more effective than what it is right now,' Seth said. Other names for palm oil Here are just five ingredients that are often derived from palm oil, although there are dozens more. Glyceryl Sodium laureth sulphate Stearic acid Palm fruit oil Palmate Who eats the most instant noodles? Seth doesn't think demand for instant noodles will decrease because they are affordable, and important to the food security of millions of people. Seth's focus is on reforming the sustainability of production in the world's largest instant noodle markets which are in China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and India. And increasingly, he doesn't think the middle-class populations of these countries would mind paying slightly more for an assurance that their noodles aren't destroying the habitat of tigers, elephants, orangutans and rhinos. Noodle companies respond to palm oil concerns Responding to questions from Yahoo, Nestle said in 2024, 100 per cent of its palm oil was RSPO-certified, or from 'equivalent' sources. 'For more than 10 years, we have been using a combination of tools, including supply chain mapping, certification, satellite monitoring and on-the-ground assessments, to assess and address deforestation risks in our supply chains and improve our understanding of human rights and land rights risks,' it said. Incredible phone footage leads to rediscovery of lost species Australia called out for 'failing' two rare species Travellers warned of hidden health risk on popular holiday island Indofood, which makes the popular Indomie brand, said it takes its 'environmental responsibilities very seriously' and that its palm oil is accredited by Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO), a mandatory accreditation scheme introduced by the government. It was keen to note changes in its production, claiming that 89 per cent of its oil palm estates were certified as sustainable under the ISPO scheme. It said it was committed to no degradation of forest deemed to have High Conservation Value — home to threatened species, Indigenous populations, or riparian zones — and it was not destroying primary forests, also known as old-growth forests. To prevent this from occurring, it places warning signs and boundary pits around them and conducts patrols. Nissin, Master Kong, Otoki and NongShim did not immediately respond to questions from Yahoo. Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? 🐊🦘😳 Get our new newsletter showcasing the week's best stories.
