Who Says Electric Cars Cant be Cool?

Tons of people think that electric cars will not be able to hold a major appealing factor in a world of gas powered super cars. Well, to all those people who think electric cars cannot be cool, they should look into the "Inizio electric super car." After all of our class talk about recycling and helping out the environment, i was curious in finding an automobile that would actually catch the eye of any individual who were to see it out on the street. The result was this electric super car. If the world wants to start doing better in the automobile industry by reducing their emissions, they should look into the technology put into the Inizio. I found this really interesting because i have always been a big fan of cars (specifically muscle and super cars) since a very young age. This car could be a start to a type of "car taste" that could spark a new public interest in these types of cars. What would be better than an electric car that could beat the rest, not only on the quarter mile or race track, but beat all other cars in terms of helping the environment?  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R65PEIDA_4s

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

After thinking about how much stuff ends up in landfills and as litter on the sides of roads etc., I was curious about how much trash ends up in the ocean. Upon further reading, I learned about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is an area of litter found between Hawaii and California in middle of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.

Indiana's E-Waste Recycling Law

Our selected reading from The Story of Stuff over the possible risks of producing electronic items such as laptops and cell phones greatly sparked my interest.  Modern America has become immensely consumed by the use of cell phones, laptop computers, televisions, and other electronic products.  Annie Leonard highlights the issue at hand: the increase in demand for electronic products directly correlates with an increase in hazardous compounds released during production poisoning workers and surrounding communities in the process.  When I began doing more research on this topic online I discovered that while production of electronics presents significant environmental risks that have yet to be fully resolved, there is an even more serious issue at hand.

With new versions of electronic products being released more and more frequently, consumers have the enticing temptation of ditching their old product and upgrading to the newer version.  The question becomes, what happens to these electronic products that are no longer wanted? The answer is that these products become e-waste.  Controlling e-waste has become a key focus of state legislatures in recent years as electronics continue to become more widely used and discarded.  In May of 2009, Indiana became the nineteenth state to pass a law that creates a statewide e-waste recycling program.

There remains no national law in place to regulate e-waste; and until this changes, Indiana hopes to remain a leader in this movement of safe disposal of electronic waste. While Indiana's E-Waste Program is one of the better proposals among states that have enacted similar movements, e-waste will continue to present serious environmental and health hazards until more strict regulations are established at the national level.  Proper e-waste disposal and recycling is a very serious concern and should be treated this way.   Our government needs address this issue sooner rather than later before serious irreversible damage is done to our ecosystem by the hazardous toxins which could be released by these discarded electronic items.  

We Waste More Than We Should......

 Out of the many elements that gets thrown out on a daily basis, the one form of trash that should not be wasted, as much as it has been in recent years, is food waste. I have always been taught growing up to never waste any food during a meal, but apparently the same does not go for consumers in many societies around the world. In most cases, we don't even realize the major impact a half of a sandwich, our dinner leftovers, etc. can cause when an individual just throws it out. Especially here at DePauw, i have seen people throw food out and say things like, "oh its not big deal, I'm full but don't want to carry it back to my dorm." Other things people would say are, "I'm not going to worry about it, i have plenty of food back in my room if i get hungry later on." The fact is that many people, even here on DePauw's campus need to better their habits when it comes to food and reusing/ saving their food that they consume on a daily basis.   

Worlds Largest Landfill

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

As I was browsing the web about the World's Largest Landfills, I came upon numerous results stating that the largest landfill is located in the Pacific Ocean called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. With the world producing over 200 billion pounds of trash per year, 10 percent of that ends up in the ocean. This statistic really caught my eye, obviously affecting the marine life in the oceans. Some areas in the worlds oceans are taken up by a 6 to 1 ratio plastic to plankton life. Some parts of our ocean system contains 46 thousand pieces of floating plastic per square mile. Seventy percent of the plastic floats to the bottom of the ocean floor, which will affect the plant and marine life in the ocean. About eighty percent of the plastic in the oceans comes from land. So that means that humans are freely letting the plastic get into the ocean ecosystem. If the trash is not coming from land, most of the other sources would be from private or commercial ships, fishing equipment, oil platforms and spilled shipping containers.

These statistics make me cringe, knowing that every day trash is adding up more and more. I think the way to change this problem is to let the public know. I think the media sometimes tries to hide these scary statistics from the public. If the world knew, I think it would better improve our society as a whole. People would take into consideration where and how to dispose trash.

Why do some recycling facilities accept certain materials, while others don't?

Now that we have been to 4 different facilities that deal with waste, I started noticing how each place was a little different about their rules for what they do and do not accept.  While I do understand they vary because of market demand and fluctuating prices, I find it hard to keep track of who takes what and why.  I got curious, and looked up what Indiana's policy was on what they accept to be recycled, and I was pretty shocked.  Their list is fairly lengthy and contains some items that some of the facilities we visited would not have wanted.

Here is a link to the article: http://www.in.gov/idem/recycle/2345.htm

They accept basically every type of glass to be recycled, when the local plant owners tended to agree that breaking down glass to recycle creates a sand film that shut will shut down the machine.  They also accept saw dust, but when we visited our first facility that collected recyclables from the community said that they have no idea what to do with sawdust, and just end of land filling it.

Improving Your Home Efficiency

One of the easiest ways to reduce your impact on the environment is by improving the efficiency of your home.  This would decrease your carbon emissions, and even save you money on your electricity bill.  There is an endless amount of information available online, and endless amounts of home improvements as well.  When I googled it, hundreds of helpful websites popped up.  Here is a list of simple upgrades that can help you improve the efficiency of your home.

1.  Make sure your walls and attic are well insulated.
2.  Upgrade or replace windows.
3.  Plant shade trees and shrubs around your house.
4.  Replace an older furnace with a high efficiency system.
5.  Improve the efficiency of your hot water system.
6.  Replace incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescent lamps.
7.  If you buy a new refrigerator, don’t leave the old one plugged in.
8.  Take advantage of new tax incentives to improve your home.
9.  Schedule an energy audit for more expert advice on your home as a whole.

This list was taken from http://greenhomeguide.com/know-how/article/9-ways-to-make-your-home-more-energy-efficient and the website goes into further detail if your interested in learning more about how to improve the efficiency of your home.  Obviously this list is short, and there are many other things you can do to reduce your impact on the environment.

Cradle to Cradle, the real ideal model

One of the most important concepts with which we culminated the class the other day was the concept of waste equals food or in other words the cradle to cradle mentality. From my point  of view in order to finish or achieve a perfect cycle of matter instead of the linear one that stops at the landfills or incinerators, we need not only to recycle more, but also to design a new operating system that revolves around the natural world. We need to aim towards green engineering for the mere reason that any of the models that we have currently are considered a long-term waste disposal system: the incinerators (if we take into consideration that toxic emissions are unsustainable too in the long-run), and the landfills are represented as an infinite waste accumulation. Our current system is based from the fundamentals of the Industrial Revolution, and back then they didn’t really stop to think about the long-term consequences of production in the future, since the only thing that mattered then was producing in large quantities, creating new stuff and newer inventions without restrictions, in order to progress. Now however, to make real progress we should start designing and envision a system that doesn’t lead towards an entropic world, but  towards the sustainable cycle that we talked about at the beginning of the month.

Sustainablity: The Cradle-to-Cradle Perspective


The Cradle-to-Cradle Framework does not reach for sustainability as it is typically defined. Discussed at length in various papers, books and other venues, environmental sustainability in the industrial sector is popularly understood as a strategy of "doing more with less" or "reducing the human footprint" to minimize troubling symptoms of environmental decline. From an engineering perspective, conventional sustainability too often suggests retrofitting the machines of industry with cleaner, more efficient "engines" to secure ongoing economic growth. But this is not an adequate long-term goal. While being eco-efficient may indeed reduce resource consumption and pollution in the short-term, it does not address the deep design flaws of contemporary industry. Rather, it addresses problems without addressing their source, setting goals and employing practices that sustain a fundamentally flawed system.

The Cradle-to-Cradle Framework, on the other hand, posits a new way of designing human systems that ultimately can solve rather than alleviate the human-created conflicts between economic growth and environmental health that result from poor design and market structure. Within this principled framework, which is based on the manifested rules of nature and re-defines the problem at hand, eco-efficient strategies can serve a larger purpose.

http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm

http://www.mcdonough.com/writings/c2c_design.htm

"Roses are red, lipsticks have lead"

After doing my presentation in class on the production of waste, I was drawn to a quote Annie Leonard included in her book: "Roses are red, lipstick has lead". The idea that lipstick, a product most women use daily, contained any sort of harmful materials astounded me. So I researched into this issue more only to find a report made by the FDA that found of 20 lipsticked tested--in an experiment-- all 20 contained some form of lead. The report then goes on to say how the testing was expanded to 400 lipsticks sold in the Untied States, and the results concluded that the "lead concentration" was averaged at 1.11 ppm. But the FDA concludes that this level of lead in lipsticks, is not any sort of safety concern. The information and conclusion that this report gives leaves me uneasy, because although the FDA states that the current levels of lead in lipsticks are not harmful I worry for a future where they are.

http://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/productandingredientsafety/productinformation/ucm137224.htm#q5

Final Field Trip

Today we went on our last field trip to Republic's recycling plant. I thought this plant was very interesting. The tour that Mike gave us was awesome. We were able to go right up next to the assembly line and see the work at hand. I learned a lot of interesting stuff about the plant as well. With the economy being as down as it is, Republic was given 3 million dollars to build their recycling plant and to "do the best they could with what they had". With the amount of money that they were given the plant has exceeded all expectations. With the plants success, Republic has gone back to the drawing board to hopefully put more money into the plant in the near future.

How other countries deal with household garbage?

After two weeks of class, most of us have got an image of how we deal with our trash and where our trash goes. Though America has already got a good system dealing with trash, we can still look at how other countries deal with trash and learn from them.

Blog 2: UpCycling a Term Coined in 1994 is...

Upcycling is a hip term for taking waste materials and turning them into new, useful, quality items. Items that most of us would have never considered as worthwhile to keep around can actually be turned to new products. Websites like pinterest have been inspiring Internet users since 2009. Before you throw away that fruit punch carton, that old map or your T.V. get in touch with your crafty side and come up with a way to reuse that item or if you need help there is always the world wide web at your fingertips loaded with inspiration. Websites like Esty is filled with users that upcycle items and even make a profit because people, green at heart or not, find these items inventive and sentimental. Upcycled items are keeping trash from the municipal waste stream, so less waste means less energy used for waste pick up and less waste going to incinerators and landfills where overall less toxins are emitted into the environment.

Walmart Plans to Buy More American-Made Goods - NYTimes.com

Apropos of our discussions regarding the global economic system, local economies, Walmart, and the complex supply chain of consumer goods, I just saw this in today's New York Times:

Walmart Plans to Buy More American-Made Goods - NYTimes.com

In the last decade or so, American manufacturers have moved operations to China, Bangladesh, Vietnam and other lower-cost countries as they try to meet retailers’ strict cost requirements. However, recent consumer interest in American-made goods, rising labor and energy costs overseas, and pressure to get merchandise from the design phase into stores within weeks rather than months have renewed interest in manufacturing in this country. 

The just-in-time system of lean retailing plays a role in Walmart's shift (a minor one, of course), according to the article. 

Discussion on Walmart?  Are they moving in the right direction, or is there in principle no way for Walmart to operate its supply chain ethically while still being Walmart?

Bioremediation: Answer to Reduce Leachate in Landfills?

One element in class that drew my attention was learning about landfills and the major concern of environmental hazards they produce due to leachate. Because of this, i was curious in finding an answer to the leachate problem that would help this contaminant be a thing of the past. "Leachate" is any liquid that drains from land or stockpiled material and contains high concentrations of undesirable elements developed from the material that it has passed through. this problem is what allows people to question landfills especially in highly populated areas. These populated areas could be subject to water supply contamination, thus being harmful for the people who drink the water.  

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After surfing the Internet for a while, i came up on a process called Bioremediation. This process involves the use of micro-organism metabolism to remove pollutants. Bioremediation involves treating the contaminated material at the site, thus reducing/ eliminating the chemical impact that the contaminant may pose on any location in question. After reading the articles i posted below, i could not help but to wonder why this process is not heavily used in all landfills around the globe. The use of the micro-organisms is a method that not only holds a natural effect on the environment that has been contaminated, but, it is a cleaner, cheaper, and safer way to rid these toxic contaminants within landfills. Therefore, i believe bioremediation allows the process of waste management (in landfills) to be a better and more environmentally friendly method of getting rid of trash in populated areas. ultimately, providing an answer to solve the problem of leachate in landfill designated areas. 

http://www.bionewsonline.com/w/what_is_bioremediation.htm

http://water.usgs.gov/wid/html/bioremed.html

Nike Recycled Jerseys

When you think of Nike jerseys, you wouldn't expect that they are made of 96% recycled material.  This video shows the process of transforming recycled plastic into professional teams' uniforms.  This is the first time I've heard that Nike uses recycled material in their products, and I'm surprised they don't advertise this heavier.  Nike's reputation was tarnished when they employed children in overseas factories, so advertising the eco-friendly products could help turn this reputation around.

The Story of Stuff and George Carlin

Reading ch 4 from The Story of Stuff reminded me of this comedy skit by George Carlin and his view on stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLoge6QzcGY