Raising Awareness: Enviornement

[Bassy]

I am loving my Environmental geography class. You won't believe how much I learn about the Earth's waste, consumption, etc. I decided to help raise your awareness to about those in USA, which consumes 33% of the Earth's resources, the highest of all other countries. Switzerland is the top country that is most EPI eco-friendly (yay switzerland!), according to yale. video also unavailable. ugh. We run on a linear cycle, natural resources, to factories, to stores, to our homes, to the waste, which releases deadly toxins (Dioxin). That's from burning the waste. Recycling is a good thing, but yet isn't enough. The Story of Stuff 2007
You may have watched this before, it's been watched nearly 5 million times. It's a good video to watch and you get to realize that what you're doing is either eco-friendly or not.

You know tree's, right? They're the lungs of the Earth. Deforestation is a problem. You probably never heard of Easter Island, aka, Rapa Nui. It is deserted, no trees higher than ten feet! Animals died off and humans were the last to go. Diseases, food, etc. You won't believe it. There are youtube videos about it but the video I watched is no longer on youtube (again) even though I watched it two days ago. But what happened there could happen here. The island of Tuvalu is dealing with sea lever rising. It's destroying clean water. Did you know? 414 U.S. cities will face resulting climate change and rising sea levels? I didn't even realize how bad the Earth is right now.


Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

[Lemon Cheesecake]

The unfortunate part of recycling is that the recycling places are closing down because of the costs - so we get charged the deposit fee on soda/water etc bottles but they do not make it easy to drop your bottles back to collect your money back. And even if you didn't care about getting your deposit back, the recycling plants that your blue can trash goes to are shutting down.

Why weren't there stronger regulations to make companies manufacture items that will last instead of allowing so many disposable items? And even big items like refrigerators and other appliances and electronics aren't built to last - and they can't be reused very well or recycled, the amount of trash from those items is insane.
And not only are we polluting the Earth but we are polluting space! URGH!! Makes me so frustrated!

[Bassy]

Also landfills, are going towards more poorer cities, like here in KY, the landfill area is in one of the most poorest counties. This county resides is Eastern KY which is the poorest areas in KY. I wish there was something better that we could do with trash.

In the Story of Stuff video, people will dispose the whole iem if something small has changed. Example used was a big bulky computer in the early 2000's. There is just a little chip that is the main part of the computer, if it changed, you through out the whole thing than changing that one piece because it's in a different form and size. Feels in a crisis without knowing.

[Gingerale]

The native american - first nations people/ eskimo's etc had it right , they used all parts of the animal - nothing went to waste

[Diana]

Computers are a little more complicated than that, but they're now one of the most repair-friendly electronics you can own! Unless they come from the evil overlords Apple.

iFixit is leading the repair revolution. We're dedicated to fighting to save the world by demanding that repair is legal and accessible. Repair is important for everything, but it is difficult. Your new use-and-toss AirPods may be practically impossible to put back together if you try to fix them, but you could try if you wanted to. Restrictions inhibit many people from making easy repairs on things like farming equipment, because they can't get the diagnostic tools or repair parts they need, or companies are fighting to make repair illegal. Many farmers opt for old, outdated, but computer free machines, just so they will be able to fix them themselves; even though new technology might boost their production. On the other hand, newer isn't always better. Many appliances are being built to fail within a few years. Samsung battery capacity drops significantly after the first year, seemingly on purpose (or they just blow up... looking at you note 7!) Something less thought about, washing machines, are also built to fail. If you think about your parents'/grandparents' washing machine, it probably lasted twenty, thirty years, maybe more. Now, people are replacing their washers as soon as the warranty is up; even 7 years is an "old" washer! This becomes a problem for people outside consumer america. In some places in Africa, many women spend all day washing clothes for their families (and/or neighbours). A washing machine would enable them to free up their day to become educated, join the work force, earn an income, and take care of their families. Talk about empowerment! However, sending a machine that is going to fail immediately is not a viable option. We can't just send more waste for them to deal with.

I wanted to share a joke that I was told a while ago, but couldn't fully remember it... When I was looking for what the Easter Islanders supposedly cut down the trees for (canoes? rolling logs?), I ran across this article that suggests that they might have survived the destruction of their environment and been killed off by STDs!
But the joke is along the lines of: What was going through the Easter Islander's mind as they cut down the very last tree?

[Bassy]

Technology has grown quite a lot. Who knows if they were able to fix it back in the day. NOw they just update the system, (ios updates, android updates, new windows, etc.)

Easter Island cut trees down for shelter, boats, and all that. But soon didn't have anymore. Only is the short documentary was still up, I would totally show it. My professor may have put it on there then deleted it. Though she still has the links on our lab paper.

[Gingerale]

what irritates me is the lack of foresight and the intentional oversight to leave it for another generation to deal with, which leaves us in the later generations wondering - what were you thinking!?!

[+] SPOILER

It took awhile before reforestation - planting new trees for the ones that have been cut - was put in place ( however it takes a few decades for the trees to grow to meet the requirements for lumber). And Christmas tree farms now grow trees to replace the ones that have been cut down or sell "living trees" in a pot so that you can plant it later on. So there are some steps to leave less of a negative impact.

Even though a photo doesn't give the full impact of reality it at least gets a person thinking of the insanity of how we treat our environment. And what we forget is that our water, our air, circulates around our Earth and even though pollution may be on the other side of the world it will eventually reach us. Chemicals break down but they don't disappear and sometimes when they break down they form in to something even more toxic.

Is it the incorrrect thinking or ignorance of people that everything is replaceable? Is it because we don't generally know where products come from or how they are made that we don't enforce better standards? I find people who live in the city often don't know how their food is grown or what it takes to produce the food or raise an animal for their milk or meat. There is often the "out of sight out of mind" concept that permeates those in Government making decisions.

[Lemon Cheesecake]

I was watching a documentary type show that was talking about how they found a "garbage dump" from a few thousand years ago...seems like we were stock piling our waste for thousands of years... and no one has come up with anything better in all that time!?!?

[Diana]

http://www.cheerios.com/bringbackthebees
Here's an interesting thing I stumbled across today! Cheerios is trying to help the bee population come back up!

[Kyndreth]

Hm... wow, today I learned.

[ShiroGEM]

Not sure if any of you watched Before the Flood, which is a documentary aired on National Geographic last year where Leonardo Dicaprio spoke to numerous people about the impacts of climate change. President Obama was so optimistic that he could do so much change and then someone who doesn't believe in global warming takes his place. They also discussed how forests are being burnt to the ground to harvest palm oil, which is the cheapest vegetable oil to obtain. It destroys countless habitats for monkeys and releases a huge amount of carbon in the process. It's pretty much in everything we own, especially makeup.

The giant garbage patch in the sea is called the Great Pacific Gyre, it's a result of illegal dumping in the oceans and is a huge problem to a lot of wildlife. Chris Jordan documents Albatrosses on Midway Island and he got this instead: http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway-film/#trailer

I'm also reducing the amount of meat I eat, especially beef so I restrict myself to one meal every month. At lunch i've been eating egg salad sandwiches since cows are the second leading source of carbon and methane emissions into our atmosphere.

Honestly the thing that irritates me the most is how people can be so ignorant and say "oh that's years later" but no, I don't want my generation and future generations to live in a world without trees and flowers. I don't blame the past generations for creating this mess, but I certainly blame the current generation for not doing anything about it even with the knowledge of it's existence for decades.

[Kyndreth]

Huuum... Ahhh, so that's where the beef thing comes in. I did wonder.

[ShiroGEM]

Kyndreth
Yup! People might not know this but cows are large so they eat the most vegetation per kilo of meet. Nowadays large farming cooperations feed them corn which can cause a lot of problems in their digestion because their stomachs were made to consume grass. It causes them to release more gas and have higher chances of getting E. Coli, and the beef will have more calories and fat content. Anyways, avoiding red meat has a lot of health benefits actually, I just substitute with chicken, fish and eggs. ^^

[Kyndreth]

Urgh, but beef tastes so darn good!

[galled]

Well in California, our government has it covered! They're now regulating cow farts! That's right, they're regulating how much methane California cows can release into the air by forcing ranchers to collect it.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-19/only-california-governor-jerry-brown-signs-bill-regulate-cow-flatulence

So you can keep on eating beef!