Month: February 2020

Essay 2 Sources

Source 1: Podcast

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/chris-ledford/behind-the-beauty/e/53601318?autoplay=true

This source is from a podcast called Behind the Beauty from …. In this podcast, Boody company manager Erin Orbach speaks about the reasons to shop at sustainable and ethical stores instead of fast fashion retailers and I chose this because I thought it was important to have a source that shows ways clothing can be made in a way that doesn’t harm any ecosystems or the environment. 

 

Source 2: Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsG64621Tuw

I chose the True Cost for this source because the director goes to different places in the world that have been affected by fast fashion and it’s a lot of pathos because the audience can see first hand what’s been done and it invokes a lot of emotion to get the audience to not shop at fast fashion. 

 

Source 3: Magazine

https://www.fastcompany.com/90423090/hms-ceo-is-worried-that-eco-conscious-consumers-could-be-bad-for-fast-fashion 

This source brings to light the view of the CEO of H&M, a fast-fashion retailer, and how he thinks eliminating fast fashion is just as bad for the economy as fast fashion is on the environment. This is a good source to use because it shows the other side of the argument.

 

Great Barrier Reef was most recently categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as threatened, the situation for both the Great Barrier and most reefs overall could be even worse than this.

Recent studies have shown that half the Great Barrier reef was killed off by bleaching events linked to climate change and ocean acidification in just the last few years. Experts think this and other coral reefs around the world could all be dead within decades without action to cut emissions.
A study by renowned scientist Professor Baird claims that the number of new corals plummeted by 89% on the reef thanks to recent bleaching events, which affected a 1,500km stretch. Coral bleaching is caused by rising temperatures and occurs when corals under stress drive out the algae – known as zooxanthellae – that give them color. If normal conditions return, the corals can recover. But it can take decades, and if the stress continues the corals can die. If normal conditions return, the corals can recover. But it can take decades, and if the stress continues the corals can die. The study also found that the mix of baby coral species had changed. It found a 93% drop in Acropora, a species which typically dominates a healthy reef and provides

habitats of other species. The researchers said that coral replenishment could recover over the next five to 10 years if there were no future bleaching events.
However, given current estimates, this likelihood was “almost inconceivable”, said Prof Baird.

https://www.prnasia.com/story/250233-1.shtml

HEYTEA came into being in a lane named Jiangbianli in 2012, formerly known as ROYALTEA. Due to the failure to register the trademark, it is upgraded and registered as HEYTEA .

HEYTEA is the first maker of cheese tea. Different from other traditional cream-covered tea with coarse making and cheap tea, HEYTEA provides high-quality tea from all over the world, which makes the Chinese tea culture vigorous again, and HEYTEA became the most popular tea maker in China.

To following the action of World Environment Day on June 5th, HEYTEA lunched environmental plan called “Heytea”. The plan includes a series of activities such as launching green environmental protection paper straws, encouraging customer bring their own cups, encouraging recycling, sorting trash.

The production of disposable plastic products consumes a lot of resources, and it takes hundreds of years to degrade, and it is easy to cause pollution to the atmosphere during the combustion process. Disposable plastic products are harmful to the planet. The first step of “Heytea” environmental protection activities is to start using reducing “plastic”.

HEYTEA launched an environmentally degradable-green inspired paper straw, Paper straws are made of imported food-grade kraft paper (certified by FSC), and it suitable for all types of beverages. At the same time, HEYTEA encourages using fewer straws. If there are no bubbles or fruit inside your drink, you can directly open the lid of the drinking cup and drink without a straw.

HEYTEA also encourge customer to bring their own cups. If customers bring their own cups, they have have the discount for their drink: Customers from mainland China will save 2 RMB, Customers in Singapore will save 0.5SGD.

Tekapo is located in the eastern foothills of the Southern Alps of the South Island of New Zealand and is a famous tourist attraction. Lake Tekapo, the town’s largest freshwater lake in Oceania, produces high-quality salmon and is a great place for fishing and water sports. Every year from autumn, numerous skiers in the world are attracted by the snow-capped foothills. 

Tekapo is best known for its starry night sky. At night, the sky is tranquil and bright, the Milky Way and the large group of constellations are clearly visible, as if in a fairy tale world. In fact, such a beautiful landscape was formed through the efforts of people in the town.

In addition to tourists, the town of Tekapo has only about 320 permanent residents. In order to maintain the beauty of the night sky there, Tekapo people have reduced their use of lights since 1981. They try to avoid the use of lights where there is no crowd, and accurately design the street lights so that the light beam accurately shines to the places that need to be illuminated without diffusing to the surrounding. There, the only light on the ground was fluorescent strips on both sides of the road. This series of measures enables people to see the beautiful starry night sky with the best view and to encourage the world to realize the importance of having a clear starry sky for human beings.

Since 2005, the town has submitted an application to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee to designate the sky as an “International Starry Nature Reserve”. The application was finally approved in 2012, and Tekapo Town became the world’s first “International Dark Sky Reserve”.

In recent years, more and more people have chosen to come here to experience this spectacular scene because people in cities have never seen such a night. Due to the city has a large number of factories and a large population, the pollution of light sources and air pollution prevents people in the city from having such a scene. It can be said that this is even a luxury for people living in cities. Even though we cannot ask people not to use any light source from now on, we can make people realize that light source pollution is also an existing problem.

 

Microplastic contamination originates from the discontinuity of bigger parts of plastic waste, little engineered filaments from garments and the microbeads utilized in beautifying agents and different items. The microbeads in cleans, shower gels and toothpastes are an avoidable piece of this plastic contamination issue. A solitary shower could bring about 100,000 plastic particles entering the sea ( Vidal, 2016).

In the UK, around 86 tons of microplastic are released into the environment each year  from facial exfoliants only ( Vidal, 2016).

In the United States, we release eight billion plastic microplastic into the environment each day (5 Gyres).

Despite the fact that the microplastics do not bring any dangerous synthetic concoctions, they can absorb a lot of tenacious lethal contaminations in the sea, for example, pesticides, fire retardants, and polychlorinated biphenyls. They assimilate poisons in water, are eaten by marine life, accumulated the poisons, and become our plates.

Swaantje Güntzel Microplastics II, 2016 by Henriette Pogoda

(Microplastics gathered from Kure Atoll highlight noticeably on the essences of conspicuous German residents in another battle that attracts attention to the ecological cost of some skincare items(Lyte,2019).)

“Beat the Microbead”(An international campign against plastic in cosmetic industry.) has gotten support from 79 NGOs in excess of 35 nations around the globe. The United Nations Environment Programme has distributed a scientific report called ‘Plastics in Cosmetics’. What’s more, required the eliminating and prohibiting of the utilization of microbeads in close to home consideration items and beautifying agents. There are over 15 countries have taken measures to ban microbead (5 Gyres).

Although no one knows the long-term effects of microplastics, this is a huge experiment. And in this experiment, there is no doubt that humans are experimental.  We cannot ignore the serious truth. If as human beings cannot be more environmentally friendly, but only to satisfy our own interests, then it must also be unsustainable and temporarily. This isn’t just an effect on marine life, yet additionally on numerous life frames on the planet, including birds，amphibians and manmmals (especially us).

Lyte, Brittany. “Microplastics From Kure Atoll Star In Flashy New Campaign.” Honolulu Civil Beat, 8 May 2019, www.civilbeat.org/beat/microplastics-from-kure-atoll-star-in-new-german-campaign/.

Vidal, John. “Microplastics Should Be Banned in Cosmetics to Save Oceans, MPs Say.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 23 Aug. 2016, www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/24/microplastics-ban-in-cosmetics-save-oceans-mps-say-microbeads.

5Gyres. “Plastic Microbeads.” 5Gyres.Org, www.5gyres.org/microbeads.

Lake Maracaibo is a water body located in the west of Venezuela, specifically between the states of Zulia, Merida and Trujillo.  With an area between 13,210 to 13,820 square meters, it is the biggest lake in South America and the 19th in the world. The Maracaibo Lake is one of the areas with the greatest oil wealth in the world with more than 15,000 wells drilled in its basin since 1914. In this area, the so-called Catatumbo lightning occurs, a phenomenon that generates 1,176,000 lightning bolts per year, generates up to about 10% of the planet’s atmospheric ozone.

The unplanned development of the West Region of Venezuela brought with it the massive exploitation of Lake Maracaibo irresponsibly to the point that today much of its extension is plagued by Lemna.

The Lemna or Duckweed, is an aquatic plant that grows in nitrogen-rich environments, an element that has been incorporated into Lake Maracaibo by the Served Water departments of the local hydrological company (Hidrolago) by pouring untreated sewage into the lake. An attempt has been made to link the appearance of Lemna to the waste of the industries located on the banks of the Lake, although the pollution caused by the excreta of more than 5 million people inhabiting its banks is the worst of their ills. Here’s a picture of how the Lake looks with the Lemna:

The innumerable spills in Lake Maracaibo due to mechanical damage caused by maintenance failures of the oil facilities have resulted in the lake not being used as a source of water supply, the decrease of its fauna and flora and the decrease of its potential as a source of recreation and recreation.

As a direct consequence of the deterioration, the Lemna has been present, which prevents the passage of sunlight and in turn the life cycle of the species that inhabit Lake Maracaibo, drastically modifying the ecosystem, ending the algae and plants located in the background, which are prevented from carrying out their process of photosynthesis due to lack of light. When Lemna dies, it results in toxic emissions that cause diseases of all kinds to the population that lives on the coast and travels nearby, especially to fishermen.

It has been determined that the problem is not the elimination of the Lemna but to eradicate the factors that cause it to appear, such as oil spills, mineral coal and all types of waste thrown into the lake by irresponsible people and companies.

 

Last semester, I took a complex problems class called “Maxing Out Planet Earth”. In this class we learned about ways to help the environment in order to support the growing population. One thing that stood out to me from this class was the topic of “Smart Cities”. Smart Cities are urban cities that use technology to improve life and the environment, which can include things such as free wi-fi in all public spaces, or robots to deliver food and packages. At the same time, smart cities also aim to be environmentally friendly through the use of this technology and by incorporating things that are good for the environment such as more biking paths or renewable energy sources. Even though we already have “smart” devices like Amazon Alexa and smart security devices, there are not many cities that are full of smart technology.

One example of a “smart city” is Songdo, South Korea. This city is made of 40% green space with many biking and walking paths, charging stations for electric vehicles are all throughout the city, there is a central waste disposal system which reduces the need for garbage trucks, and solar panels and LED lights can be found in most buildings throughout the city. The biking and walking paths can encourage people to not use cars as much which emit harmful gases, and the charging stations could encourage more people to get electric vehicles. The city is also built around a central park that is filled with local plants to maintain biodiversity. The main aim of smart cities is to use technology to promote environmentalism, and Songdo is one city that is doing that well.

This picture sums up smart cities. Picture source: https://internetofbusiness.com/global-smart-city-platform-market/

I think smart cities would be good for the environment because they could not only make things easier for us, but also help improve the environment. We could cut down on gas emissions and our electricity use, and overall save a lot of energy.

 

With more and more people being aware of climate change, the more prevalent issue is in pop culture. I see memes all over Instagram about climate change and now it’s appearing in music and television. Although it came out over 10 years ago, Wall-E is always the first movie that comes to my mind when talking about climate change. The message of this movie is much more significant today, yet a lot of people see Wall-E as just a cute Pixar movie. I remember watching it as a kid and not thinking anything about the environmental issues that were displayed in the movie, but I watched it again a couple of years ago in one of my classes that were focused on the environment and it was almost a different movie. When I watched it from a different perspective, I realized that our planet is dying because of human activity but nothing is being done to stop it, just like in the movie.

Another example of environmentalism in pop culture is a song by Lil Dicky called Earth, which brought together many of the biggest artists in pop to sing about how important our planet is and that we need to be keeping care of it because it’s our home. In my personal opinion, it’s not a very good song, but I like the message it’s sending. A majority of the people who listen to the artists featured in the song, like Justin Beiber or Ariana Grande, are young and might not have a lot of knowledge on climate change, so I thought it was a unique way to reach a younger audience and to educate them on these problems. I believe that incorporating the issues or solutions to climate change in pop culture can make a big difference because everyone should have some knowledge on the issue and younger generations don’t read the news as much as older generations do. I think, in today’s society, it’s hard to escape technology and social media, but it can still be used for good.