Climate Change and the Environment

For my final civic issues post, I will be discussing getting involved in community initiatives.

 

An Introduction to Community Initiatives

Throughout the course of my blog, I’ve talked a lot about the different ways that we can aid with the changing climate, but how exactly can we implement those types of recycling techniques and environmental cleanup at the broader scale? Every community is going to have different tactics to aid with climate change, such as environmental cleanup groups or separate water conservation projects.

These community initiatives can be led either by individuals themselves or through local governing agencies. For example, the Pennsylvania Climate Action Plan provides technical and personal assistance to local governments want to aid in reducing their local area’s greenhouse gas emissions. Several other states have similar opportunities in place to help communities gather the resources they need to make an impact, as well as states becoming involved in more national-level climate change activism.

 

What Involvement in Community Initiatives Entails

Getting involved in community initiatives starts out with taking the first small step to research local organizations or groups dedicated to environmental conservation or sustainability efforts in your area. You can also attend community meetings, volunteer events, or workshops to connect with like-minded individuals and learn about

ongoing projects. There are also many people that you can contact, such as organizers or community leaders, if you’re looking for a specific opportunity. Whether it’s joining a neighborhood clean-up crew, signing up for a community garden project, or participating in advocacy campaigns, every contribution, no matter how small, makes a difference.

Here are some Penn State community initiatives.

Here are some examples of community initiatives happening throughout the world.

 

If you’re not from around here, you can always research community initiatives in your hometown area.

 

The Effectiveness of Involvement in Community Initiatives

The efficacy of community initiatives lies in their ability to foster a sense of accomplishment in different community residents as people begin to see the effects of different projects within their community. In addition, different community initiatives help bring the community closer together as individuals bond over strengthening their involvement in providing solutions to environmental challenges. Overall, becoming involved in different community initiatives fosters a sense of shared responsibility towards environmental conservation.

When it comes to specific community projects that people may be working on together, these projects have the opportunity to become projects for the nation at a larger level, if success is seen at the community level. Overall, I think that not only providing community initiatives for residents to become involved in, but also as an individual actually taking part in different projects, could provide numerous advances in combatting climate change. I have an analogy that stems from this: If I spilled a hundred thousand sequins on the floor, it would take me forever to pick them all up, but if I had ninety-nine other people to each pick up some sequins, it would speed up the process significantly. This represents the effectiveness of doing things at the community level because if each community is becoming more sustainable and environmentally friendly, it will tremendously impact the world’s position on climate change.

 

Thank you so much for following along with my civic issues blog! I hope you learned something about your impact on the environment through the techniques I’ve discussed.

For my fifth civic issues post, I will be discussing water conservation. Water conservation comes from action from multiple different parties, such as industrial plants, agricultural processes, and human use for daily tasks. While water could be conserved more properly in agricultural settings, in this blog, I will be specifically discussing water conservation from an individual person’s perspective and how each person could play a role in improving climate change. For more information about agricultural water conservation practices, see this Penn State site that details some water waste prevention techniques.

An Introduction to Water Waste

Water waste refers to all sorts of different water uses, beyond what one might usually expect. Every toilet flush, teeth brush, and coffee pot/Keurig preparation uses water, not to mention regular sink uses, dishwashers, and washing machines are water uses.  According to Greenly, a blog focused on ecology news in the U.S., the average America family wastes up to 9,400 gallons of water waste each year. The U.S. is one of the most plentiful countries in the world when it comes to fresh water, and it is believed that much of the water waste that occurs in the U.S. is due to the mindset of American’s that there will always be enough fresh water to go around. However, this is not the case, as there is water scarcity in numerous areas of the world, and with excessive water usage, the United States could have a scare water supply in future generations.

Negative Consequences of Excessive Water Usage

One of the most obvious consequences of wasting water is that it causes a depletion of freshwater resources, which could lead to some regions not having enough drinking water, agricultural water, and fresh water needed for other purposes. Since water is so highly used in agricultural settings, wasting water today in households could result in lack of agricultural resources such as food for future generations. In addition, more water means more energy used to pump and distribute it, which ultimately results in higher greenhouse gas emissions and higher energy consumption.

 

The Effectiveness of Water Conservation and What it Entails

Much of water waste comes from running water in a household unnecessarily, such as running the dishwasher when it is not entirely full or not turning off the water while brushing teeth or washing the dishes. Almost 300 gallons of water could be saved by only running the dishwasher when it is full, and almost 6,000 gallons of water could be saved by turning the faucet off during different actions. If many American households were to reduce their water consumption through simple daily tasks such as running the dishwasher and brushing their teeth, there could be a substantial reduction in energy usage and each person’s carbon footprint would be reduced.

While the bulk of water usage does come from agricultural processes, we still need those processes in order to survive, so we would have to take matters into our own hands to reduce our individual water usage to maximize the freshwater Earth has and do our part in helping the environment. If many different Americans were to take part in water conservation within their household, it could be an effective strategy to improve climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

For my fourth civic issues blog post, I will be discussing food waste, which I’m sure is something we’re all familiar with, since we have all probably gotten too much to eat at the dining hall buffet one time or another. However, there is more that contributes to food waste than you might think of initially.

An Introduction to Food Waste

To understand food waste, we first have to understand food loss, which occurs at farms and in the supply chain. The World Resources Institute identifies two main drivers of food loss: inadequate technology and suboptimal packaging. Inadequate technology includes poor infrastructure, lack of cold storage, and inefficient machinery. Suboptimal packaging includes excessive packaging, which attempts to reduce food spoiling but ultimately provides more waste.

The most common reasons for food waste include poor food management and consumer behaviors. At restaurants, sometimes insufficient cooking skills among the staff can lead to food waste when a dish is made incorrectly. In addition, supply and demand also plays a factor with food retailers, who may think they need a certain supply of a certain food but end up not using or selling all of it. And of course, consumer behaviors refer to how we as citizens waste food inside and outside of our home.

 

Climate Issues with Food Waste (and Some Potential Solutions)

Project Drawdown identifies reducing food loss and waste as one of the best strategies for fighting the climate crisis and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Approximately 10% of greenhouse gas emissions come from food loss and waste related machinery. More food waste means more food production where the food made did not go eaten, which means wasted greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, when food rots in landfills, methane gas is emitted into the atmosphere, which has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, one of the more familiar greenhouse gases. So, if we were to reduce food waste, we would be helping climate change significantly.

One of the ways to reduce food waste is to improve the current food systems to help feed more people since, though there’s much food being wasted, many are still underfed. To do this, however, there would be a need for agricultural expansion, which results in deforestation, ultimately releasing more carbon into the atmosphere. On the flip side, agricultural efficiency could free up land currently used to make food, which could lead to reforestation.

 

The Effectiveness of Wasting Less Food

We can all do our part to make sure we don’t buy excessive amounts of food at the store or waste unnecessary food at the dining hall. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that the national food waste reduction goal is to cut food waste by 50% by 2030. If we all do our individual part in the country to reduce food waste, this goal is possible to achieve and will positively impact climate change. Therefore, this a very effective option for the environment due to its many benefits (which can be seen quickly on the local level), and easiness to implement in individual households.

Learn more about how you can reduce food waste at home here.

For this third post I’ll be discussing how we can conserve energy by using efficient lighting and turning off the lights.

 

An Introduction and Background of Lighting

The lightbulb used throughout most of the 1900s was the incandescent light bulb, which had 90% of their energy released as heat and only 10% released as light. Then, compact fluorescent lamps came into popularity as the most energy-efficient choice of light by using 75% less energy and producing 75% less heat than the incandescent light

bulb.  Now, in recent years, LED lighting has developed rapidly, which use 90% less energy and last up to 25 times longer than incandescent light bulbs. LED light bulbs are the lead seller in bulbs currently and remain the best option for energy conservation practices.

 

What Saving Energy Through Less Lighting Entails

Often, we over-light our rooms, which wastes a lot of energy. To combat this, we can be more aware of how much light we actually need to light our homes or dorm rooms. Payless Power says that as a general rule, rooms need 20 lumens of light per square foot, though many offices and kitchens will have more.  These lumens can be determined based on the total light bulb wattage in the room. Since we’re in the dorm rooms and there really is only one light, this factor of lighting doesn’t apply to us as much. However, when we’re out in the real world, whether it be back home or in a place of our own, we can use the energy conservation methods of dimmers and timers for lights. These methods ensure that the lights are only on when we need them to be on, as well as making sure we are maximizing our lighting usage by dimming the lights if it is not necessary to use the light’s full capacity.

And lastly, one of the easiest ways to save energy is to turn off the lights when you leave a room, or to use natural daylight as your primary lighting when it is present. As we see in our dorm rooms and in many Penn State facilities, the light switches often say, “Turn Off the Lights!”, reminding us that we shouldn’t leave the lights on in our rooms when we go to class.

 

Negative Consequences of Inefficient and Excessive Light Usage

By using excessive energy for artificial lights, we burn numerous fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, further contributing heavily to global warming. As we know, fossil fuels are a limited resource, and we should do our best to preserve them. In addition, using excessive lighting contributes to light pollution, which leads to negative health effects for humans, such as insomnia and fatigue, not to mention its negative effects on the environment.

 

The Effectiveness of Efficient and Less Lighting

The United States Department of Energy estimates that households saved $675 million total in energy costs in 2015 from switching to more energy-efficient lighting, such as the now popular LED lights. If most Americans were to switch to energy-efficient lighting, the United States could save 550 terawatts of power every year (which equates to one hundred 1,000-megawatt power plants), which would cut national energy consumption by up to 8 percent. Needless to say, using efficient and less lighting would be a very powerful way to decrease our carbon footprint in society. While we cannot control the bulbs the university uses for our dorm rooms, we can control how often we have our light on and how long we leave it on.

One thing that shocked me upon my arrival to Penn State was how many different recycling bins there were around campus for different products. Another shocking discovery was that the Starbucks cups on campus were not the right type of plastic to recycle. In this way, I realized that many people are unaware of how to recycle properly and just what products they can recycle.

What is Recycling?

Reader’s Digest gives a simple 5 step process as to how recycling works.

1. You put recyclable materials, such as plastic, into your recycling bin.
2. A hauler collects the materials.
3. A recycling center sorts those materials.
4. The materials are processed at a facility.
5. The materials are sent to another manufacturer to melt, cut, or mold the materials and prepare them for the market.

 

What Recycling Properly Entails

Different neighborhoods, counties, and campuses have different rules for recycling. For example, at Penn State, we are able to recycle glass, metal, paper, and plastic. In my hometown, we are able to recycle the same things. However, anywhere you go, there will be different specifications about what is and what is not allowed to be recycled. If you look at the bottom of a plastic water bottle or that Starbucks cup, you’ll see the recycling symbol with a number inside it. The number represents the type of plastic that was used to make the bottle or cup. At Penn State, the guidelines are only to recycle plastic items made out of either type 1 or 2 plastic. In this way, it is important to research the recycling guidelines in your specific area to ensure that you are doing your part.

Negative Consequences of Improper Recycling 

Say you are misinformed and end up recycling the type 5 plastic Starbucks cup into one of Penn State’s recycling bins. When the products in the bins are sorted at a recycling plant, the whole bag has to be thrown out due to the one item (the Starbucks cup) being an unacceptable kind of plastic. This goes for other items as well, such as if an area does not recycle Styrofoam but ends up finding that someone did recycle it.

When the items are unable to be recycled, they end up in landfills and sometimes even the ocean, which can cause negative health effects later on. These include air pollution, water pollution, and increased greenhouse gas emissions; all of which are not helpful to the environment and climate change activism.

 

The Effectiveness of Recycling Properly

If everyone does their part to ensure they’re recycling properly, we can make a difference in terms of energy and fossil fuel conservation. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), recycling just one ton of office paper can save the energy equivalent of 322 gallons of gasoline. In addition, recycling 10 plastic bottles saves enough energy to power a laptop for more than 25 hours. In this way, everyone can do their part to make sure they are recycling properly for their area to ensure that our world can continue to flourish.

When we think of climate activism, most ideas can be categorized into one of the following: reduce, reuse, and recycle. This week I’ll be talking about using reusable water bottles. Reusing the same water bottle can help us to help the environment, even if it may be in a small way.

Benefits of Reusable Water Bottles

Using a reusable water bottle has many benefits, beginning with the fact that they would reduce the amount of plastic water bottles sold, consumed, and thrown out.

In addition, reusable water bottles pose a lesser cost to the consumer since they do not have to continually buy new water bottles and can merely run their reusable one through the dishwasher (or hand wash it) to use the next day. With fewer water bottle sales, there would be less plastic water bottles in landfills. There would also be less trucks on the road delivering the water bottles to grocery stores. Less carbon emissions would be produced from the trucks, which also contributes positively to climate change.

 

Negative Effects of Plastic Water Bottles

Many people are a big fan of plastic water bottles due to the convenience factor of them. However, if you are a plastic water bottle lover, there are also some health risks involved. The two different types of plastic (detailed in the article) used to make plastic water bottles melt anywhere between 140-150 degrees Fahrenheit. As these bottles are shipped on boats or cargo trains, they heat up to their melting points, causing pieces of plastic to absorb into the water. A study conducted by the chemistry department of the State University of New York of Fredonia showed that 93% of the plastic bottled waters tested contained harmful chemicals and microplastics.

After the plastic is thrown out, it often ends up in landfills. Sources say that this plastic takes 450 years to decompose into smaller pieces of plastics. Much of it is also burned in incinerators, but this technique adds to air pollution issues and can potentially result in difficulty breathing for humans in the future.

 

The Effectiveness of Using Reusable Water Bottles

If many people used reusable water bottles, the positive effects on climate change would be astounding. There would be a reduction in plastic waste, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. So far, 60% of U.S. adults own a reusable water bottle (which equals about 155 million people). This leaves 103 million U.S. adults that don’t have one – but could have one. Each person who uses a reusable water bottle saves 1.5kg (about 3.3 lbs) from being produced. If we all switched over, we could be very effective in reducing plastic waste that would create more air pollution and water pollution.

 

Interested in purchasing a reusable water bottle to help create an eco-friendly environment and help with climate change? Click here (and scroll down) to see a table of recommended features in reusable water bottles and here to see the best reusable water bottles.