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Blog 9 - Waste
I could go all day about how much of a waste I am, but that would defeat the purpo-
The newest part is about wastes and how we deal with it (recycling, landfills, etc). We will discuss the ways we should be dealing with waste, and the videos/readings involved with such a thing.
“Physical treatment immobilizes waste so that theoretically it cannot pollute uncontaminated soil, air, or water; sealing waste within a capped landfill or encapsulating it within concrete are physical treatments.”
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
So basically this means that landfills are considered effective enough to waste management organizations. From the videos I’ve seen and places I’ve been, I have come to the conclusion that this is only a temporary case by case situation. Waste is something that is now becoming a worldwide problem what with humans throwing away more as the decades pass. Landfills are only a temporary fix to something that has needed something permanent for years, but no one wants to step up and use the more ethical fixes we have at our hands.
Next, I had to reflect on the Story of Solutions video by the Story of Stuff. This video was quite interesting in many ways since it really brings to light things I kind of took for granted. I felt like I knew all this information, but if people think it’s necessary that people are informed of this, it must not be that common of knowledge.
https://storyofstuff.org/movies/the-story-of-solutions/
I think the goal system at around 6 minutes was quite interesting because it helps people organize what certain societies and organizations they should follow. With information given by these guys, people are able to optimally choose people who are effectively helping with the waste issue worldwide instead of helping those who are trying to maintain the status quo.
I really liked the part at seven minutes as well where they discuss the city in Italy (Capannori) that was trying to find cheap and sustainable ways of maintaining their waste issues. These being things like the usual “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” rules but a little more up to the eleven. This can really help society if it goes worldwide, and can start a chain reaction that can help with other problems -like pollution or overuse of electricity in countries. This could help save money, so why do we keep it around? It can’t just be because of big business, it has to be in part because we’re relatively lazy. This can’t be fixed overnight, but we can take steps to be part of what small towns are doing worldwide!
My next blog post will likely be my last, as late as it is. Hopefully this quest comes to a positive end soon with
aw crap, it’s Climate. I hate this discussion.
Welp, time to be opinionated!
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Blog 8 - Food
Following up with most posts comes with great thought- in this post we need to talk about what might be one of my favorite things- food. The difference with this post is instead of doing what tumblr does best and romanticizes food and sleep- we are likely going to make food look more like a villain than a hero to us.
“For early humans, a preference for sweetness may have conferred an evolutionary advantage by leading people to seek out ripe fruit, which is nutritious. Modern dependence on sugar taps into this powerful human preference for sweet taste.”
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Obviously I thought for my one book quote I would hail back to our original discussion of sugar. Sugar in the previous food chapter was quite the evildoer considering the prospects. In this case there is a more simpler explanation of WHY human beings are like this, and love sugar so much to the point of it being considered by some akin to crack.
Sugar isn’t by itself a problem, but the fact it was made purely for people to consume it in such a way is almost obscene. It’s nearly impossible to find sugars in foods that are consumed by the average person each day, and it has only become a problem people truly address in the last few years.
Onto my next subject. We were next told to watch a video called “food inc”. Upon further inspection I found this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oq24hITFTY
I watched it for a little while before figuring I need to see the movie myself. Apparently it’s on Hulu! That’s a plus.
Early on in the movie, one of the chicken farmers while burying chickens needed to discuss the use of antibiotics in foods. Antibiotics are put in meats- as well as other drugs - to make the foods grow faster. People tend to theorize that people putting antibiotic infused meats can make bacterias that infect us more immune to antibiotics that could cure us of diseases. This is even more shocking when you realize that PEOPLE are being put in circumstances where they could become immune to these things as well.
The woman notes that she is now allergic to most antibiotics, and cannot take them. This means they are likely to succumb to a bacteria since they cannot fight it using medication. It’s even more dangerous when you realize that these people are likely not making enough money to deal with problems such as this, or for those problems to be worth the job.
There are no really big moments besides that to really WOW me, but we noticed that in the later hour of the movie there were things that were worth noting that people for the second half of the movie had varying opinions on GMOs in their foods. The third thirty minutes of the film began with a convention of NATURAL FOODS - it was a little impressive someone had organized such a convention that could very well improve the quality of foods everywhere. It was a little sad to hear people living in their booths since they couldn’t afford the hotel just to bring their product to others. Maybe things will improve someday for those who are trying to save us with better quality food.
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Blog 7 - Pollution
I think in the long run, there’s a lot people on this website and many others have to say about pollution of our environment. There are many levels of what people call pollution, and not just toxic spills or wastes. This will be a post going along with some of the pollutants that are in our environment.
Anywho,
“Carbon monoxide (CO) is the major pollutant in urban air, most of it released by incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. CO concentrations are highest along heavily traveled roads.”
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
CO is a very common thing discussed when the pollution debate comes to light. We have been trying to find alternative fuel sources for vehicles for years, but car companies and gas companies need to stay and business and put up roadblocks for fundamental change of automobiles for the sake of keeping the status quo- which is not only going to ruin the environment- but eventually run out. The heart damage caused by CO is quite prominent, and this basically implies that all pregnant women in cities shouldn’t drive at risk of congestive heart failure just to continue their day. So car companies don’t mind you dying, and gas companies will take that loss for the sake of making that 3 dollars a gallon.
Go figure another company throwing us to the pavement after the tap water controversy.
Today I will also talk about Atrazine- one of the choices of chemicals I was supposed to research.
Atrazine is a name for herbicide that is used to kill weeds. In a CDC article on the effects of it, I found that is is used on crops for sugarcane, corn, and other sweet tree farms. It also is used to keep weeds off highways and railroads. It dissolves in water, and can be washed away from soil by rainfall.
Atrazine can affect human beings in many ways- namely it affects the reproductive system and cause pre-term delivery. It can also change blood hormone levels in animals that affect the ability to reproduce. Along with those internal changes is liver, kidney, and heart damage. There are also currently studies to see if this synthetic substance can cause cancer in humans, but it is considered quite likely that it would cause mammary tumors in humans since it had to female rats.
The federal government is currently investigating how to deal with Atrazine, and has improved substance control on it since the early 2000s.
After this post, I should be able to start taking control of these posts and getting them in on time. This Sunday night coming up I will be starting this post early- as well as getting all my reports in a row to start posting on this blog. Happy trails.
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Blog 6 - Water
So I logged onto tumblr to start making up for missing the last few blog posts, and dissociated in the middle of the night until I wondered “I’m supposed to do homework, why am I on tumblr?”
It took twenty minutes to realize I should have been on tumblr.
I’m an idiot.
Anyways,
“In the developing world, 90 percent of human waste is discarded, untreated, into rivers (Black and King 2009, 14). In many parts of the world, lack of access to clean water is the largest cause of disease transmission and, as a result, poverty.”
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
I feel like I’ve brought up Flint Michigan before during this blog, but the problem is only partially solved, and this quote definitely made it come to mind quite quickly. This is a governmental structure problem that has been plaguing us since before Obama came into office. Instead of us going and fixing the problem with our water, we tend to just divert the problem to something else and let everyone else suffer in the process.
In 2019, we should have been making strides towards bettering our environment and sustaining what we already have, but instead we’ve let several species die on our watch- as well as the amount of fresh water in The United States has dropped significantly. Thankfully we have been getting as much fresh water and ways to make fresh water out to other countries that are in need of it as we can, but bare human necessities are being withheld from people day by day for the sake of making some cheap coin. This is something I do not condone.
I feel that every citizen should be able to get free fresh water at any time. There are several countries that do this, but even THOSE COUNTRIES are selling water in their stores. At that point is it just personal preference to drink from bottles? I have no idea why.
“Is bottled water healthier? According to government and industry estimates, about 25 percent of bottled water is actually just tap water, often with no further treatment (Gleick 2004, 29). And in many jurisdictions, water quality and testing standards for bottled water are surprisingly less stringent than those for tap water"
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
THIS honestly infuriates me. We are supposed to trust companies with the well being of its consumers, but I might as well listen to Supersize Me when it comes to facts about health. If bottled water is able to be supplied to us as glorified tap water where we pay for the cost of production of the plastic trap for it- I might as well just maintain my Brita. I feel like many companies that produce things consumed by human beings are just trying to pull the line on how far they can go while insulting the intelligence of the people purchasing their product. As a retail employee, I see certain companies taking advantage of their clout every single day to make an extra few bucks over the competition. Nothing is more insulting than the product we should be consuming day by day being just tap water when it could actually be GOOD for us.
There’s my rant about water for the day. With that in mind I have the picture of my water footprint also posted to the end of this post- please take a look at how I actually did not supply the end of the world this time!
Anywho, take care!
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Blog 5 - Food and Biodiversity
You know, now these blogs are starting to speak my language!
It’s time for us to talk about the chapter on food! I noticed I have only quoted the readings, but I should likely make a plug for this book since it’s mostly just used in sustainability.
“Sustainability Principles and Practices” is quite the read. Written by Margaret Robinson, this conceptualizes and explains many different environmental issues. This time we’re talking about one of humanities favorite objects!
“ The food sovereignty movement is a global grassroots response to corporate control of food.”
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
After reading this quote, I discovered that I was taking something for granted. There have been several people suffering from world hunger, and I really don’t have a response that could amend such a thing. These people are doing something in response to that in this movement by making it possible for us to safety acquire food not only for us, but for the environment as well.
The way that food and other goods that are farmed are produced is quite dangerous. You don’t really think about it in normal life unless you actively work towards a movement like this, so it’s quite jarring that these problems haven’t been solved in the several hundred thousands of years. It is quite weird that this isn’t referenced more than the one paragraph that it is posted in since this is a sustainability course. I know we care about the environment, but we should really focus on us in regards to solving world hunger. One problem at a time, I suppose.
“Researchers do not yet know whether sugar can lead to true physical addiction or whether it is simply a feature of preference. What is known, however, is that there is a link between increased sugar intake and increased blood levels of triglycerides and lowered levels of HDL, the so-called good cholesterol.”
Since the beginning of mankind, we have been producing new ways to feed ourselves effectively and efficiently. We know that we are looking for new ways to enjoy food, but we have gone on a path towards self destruction with sugar. Sugar is in almost everything people regularly eat on a day to day basis. There are some foods we have found in our travels that create natural sugars, but overindulgence has led to putting sugar into things that are completely man-made.
I believe sugar is addicting. It can ruin peoples quality of life after giving them moderate enjoyment- just like any other drug I have had. I have been addicted before, and sugar is definitely something I’ve had a painful time trying to kick.
“Food security worldwide is threatened by a confluence of trends: rising population, rising water consumption, peak oil, collapse of fisheries, and declining stock of agricultural land”
Food is a very high volume item for many of us, but college students can attest sometimes that financial issues arise. This makes it scary for people who think they are going to starve. It is fundamental we keep our food safety, and that is normally incentive for people to turn their lives around. It’s just unfortunate that sometimes this doesn’t work out that way, and you have to try and find another way to survive.
I feel like that covers this post pretty effectively. I feel like I should treasure being a person in America that was born into a finance-seeking family instead of living homeless or poor(er than I am). This is a privilege I have, and reading these things kind of helps me conceptualize that. It doesn’t, however, fully help me with kicking sugar. Damn it. >_>
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Blog 4 - Biophilia and Nature Deficit Disorder
Let’s start this one with me originally thinking that this was part of the original text. I eventually found the book on google, and began reading. I feel like I wasted a few hours I could have been studying the wonderful text and using it on my other assignments. Other than that, I just have to post the quotes (which I BELIEVE I needed 2?) and responses with nice wordy pictures!
Anywho.
I probably come from the final generation where this is both true and false. I sit here the second of six children (only my older sister being full blooded relative), and vividly remembering staring at the landscape that passed me by as I traveled from New York to Florida to start my families new life. Unfortunately for that, I also remember the days where sight seeing was dull at best for an eight year old. I would regularly find myself playing on my brand new Gameboy Color (how that statement has aged), and enjoying the landscape of the realm of Pokemon!
Alternatively, I have seen many a child these days never even take a moment more to look outside than demanded by their parents. See, the last couple generations find spectacle in things like trips and exciting locations- not knowing the kids these days are likely just waiting the clock to play their next game in Minecraft.
As always, there are many different divergences from this truth. My little brother is a huge Fortnite fan, but my OTHER little brother of the same age group loves dinosaurs more than anything. This means my family would regularly take him on Zoo and wildlife trips, so he could see anything scaly. What a sight to behold.
At least they understand what I mean. In this passage, we see the alternative to my previous game-loving brother. Nature still can represent beauty, but that beauty needs to be tagged with something of substance. In this world, we have been taught that beauty can only be seen through the eyes of modern technology and nature can only be deemed beautiful through the sights that are tourist attraction.
I, personally, am a fan of American gothic. The Aesthetic of a willow tree blowing in the wind as half a mile down the road through its branches I see a fading McDonalds sign at 9PM at night through my camera lens is captivating to say the least amount of words possible about it.
I lived a long life, and I understand my own limitations as I currently gain weight at breakneck speeds after quitting marching band in high school. My footprint last week left much to be desired as well, so maybe I find beauty in destruction. The world is filled with it, so maybe this world is fitting for me. Hopefully I get to keep a piece of that world when we eventually save it from the sapping lifestyles we all live.
( https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/5464297841 )
I love me some dark humor. I do feel like using the text as photos and quotes was an adequate format for this text since normally citations automatically come with the ebook. Let me know if I should revise any of this.
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Blog 3 - Human Sphere and Biosphere
So apparently I had to do this Ecological Footprint setup and see how many planets it would destroy to have me in existence.
Apparently as much as I understand sustainability and how it works, I would destroy the world in two months and it would take FOUR EARTHS TO SAVE US.
Damn, that’s a lot of Tylers. Alternatively, if we could make reusable ANYTHING more available to people everywhere then people like me might choose to be more energy efficient. Unfortunately that’s not the case because I’m a lower class college student, so no one is going to supply that. Go figure.
Now let’s get on with the quotes from each chapter of the reading!
Chapter 3
“A form of cooperation called symbiosis occurs when two different organisms live with and interact with each other, benefiting both of them. Symbiosis led to the development of the cells that now make up all plants and animals.”
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
The text goes on to explain plenty of different kinds of symbiosis, but we demonstrate a natural symbiotic relationship with the planet that is gradually going wrong. Any health or environmental nut in the world would tell you that time and time again we are sapping our planet of its sources for the sake of destroying it and gaining something for ourselves. We once had a very symbiotic relationship when everyone wasn’t trying to innovate so far as to disregard their surroundings.
Now I don’t feel like we are destroying our environment to that level, but if we were our relationship would be considered parasitic to the Earth. At least to the point of making it unusable for we as human beings. The planet is going to continue with or without us, and will likely force us to go extinct if we were the ones destroying it WAY before we burn IT to the ground. That’s likely why the term used for this course is “sustainability”. We need to keep things symbiotic.
This also reminds me of sharecropping for some reason. I feel like this is an example of farmers being symbiotic with the planet for the sake of fair gain. They change the crops up as to not stale the soil, and this is cause for us to gain a lot more product!
Chapter 4
https://weather.com/farming (Picture link)
“Agriculture meant that people could store extra food during good years that could help get them through lean years. Settlements and storage of food led to more complex societies, with specialization of labor, social hierarchies, and trade with other groups (Ponting 2007, 37). People began living longer, birth rates rose, and death rates fell. The world’s population grew steadily. At the beginning of the agri-cultural revolution around 10,000 years ago the human population was probably 4 million people. By 5,000 years later it had grown to 5 million. From then on the world’s population nearly doubled every 1,000 years until it reached 50 million by 1000 BCE, then 100 million by 500 BCE, and 200 million (ibid.) by 200 CE.”
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Speaking of agriculture, here is a quite long example of how things have expanded over the years and we began settling down as such. Now, I’m not one to confuse environmental destruction with the urbanization of humanity, but we were born - as Homosapians - to hunt and gather. This change in societal norms with agriculture was what started the genesis of technology and higher thinking we live in today, and has not stopped at just putting plants in dirt in the ground. Now things had a progressive upswing and only in the last couple hundred years could you see that upswing take full effect, but now thousands of years later we need to pay mind to this swing of expansion in our society to be able to keep track of how much LONGER the environment is going to remain sustainable in- or even after our personal lifetimes.
Now that I’m done there, it’s time to finish all my assignments. Maybe I’ll post all of my projects and whatnot here as well after I finish just so there’s a progress report overall of what I accomplished in this course. Maybe it can help someone else working on this class in the future. Eh.
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Blog 2 - Livable Cities
Here we go again during the Superbowl as I’m surrounded by people talking about football and Kingdom Hearts 3, I have no choice but to be inspirational about the life of the city. In Fort Myers that’s kind of hard to do, but I really have no choice. At least the readings are actually intriguing for me as they adequately describe and enjoy telling tales.
Quote 1: Distances between destinations are too great for walking and large, high-speed roads are not safe or comfortable for pedestrians or bicycles, forcing the use of cars to fulfill basic daily needs and cutting people off from the outdoors and each other.
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
(https://www.wolfchasetoyota.com/detail-2018-toyota-corolla-se_cvt-used-certified-16816858.html)
When I read this, I start to remember a story about my car - pictured above. My friends started to wonder how I drove all the time when none of them really wanted to even leave the house for more than thirty minutes. In one day on average, I would drive from Cape Coral<to Fort Myers<to Lehigh Acres<to Fort Myers<To Naples<back to Estero to finally sleep. This is over the course of sometimes a twenty hour day.
This right here is my regular day or two of the week. Only recently have I taken a free day where I didn’t leave the house. Hell today I have to go to downtown Fort Myers and take photos for this class after driving to Cape Coral and I have to go to Naples and back to Bonita for the night. Point being, the distance I drive correlates positively with the necessity of using my vehicle instead of walking to certain places. This being necessary to support my lifestyle as a fulltime worker/boyfriend/analyst/and college student.
I feel like transportation is an important item to all of us, something that could be improved upon in the future and become more of an asset to us and less of a hindrance to the environment around us if we were to pay attention to other energy sources we’re currently looking into.
Problem is the oil business has a strangle on us. Hopefully that changes.
Quote 2:
Consensus does not mean that people are in 100 percent agreement; it means that the members of the group have generated a decision together that all of them can live with.
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
(https://abc13.com/politics/heres-what-the-trump-border-wall-might-look-like/1953404/)
I don’t want to correlate positive experiences with negative ones, but consensus is currently a problem our country is facing now. For some reason, our country has been unable to find a reasonable consensus on how to deal with border control and a government shutdown was indefinitely in effect since.
Effects of this shutdown have ruined our infrastructure on many levels that - while some regular citizens have yet to notice - some governmental functions have had a rough try at getting back in shape, and we don’t know if the shutdown could start again just because some people cannot find a reasonable consensus with the POTUS. While I’m currently indifferent, this was a threat to my families tax returns for a time. This definitely affected my family, which I don’t like.
In the future, hopefully our government can learn from this shutdown- something that has never lasted as long as this. If we learn from this, we can find reasonable compromise in some of the worst of situations. We need to be patient with the people who run our country since we probably would crack under the pressure of running such a variable nation such as this as well.
I feel this properly ascertains some of what I learned from this blogging this week. I feel i’ll be better prepared for the content this coming week, and the blog will be much better categorized. Enjoy your evenings, folks.
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“What is Sustainability?”- The Talking Trees
So for my first blog, I was tasked with writing an insightful essay on three quotes I found meaningful in my research. Please only do a word count of the writing I do within that as this is just meaningless rambling.
1) “Quotes: Everybody who lives in Southwest Florida has an influence on the environment.”
McCulloch, E. (2013, January 11). ColloquiumVideo. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3HD1X_Y25w
I feel like this statement means very little to people in the grand scheme of things, here in modern America. I have been living quite the careless life in my youth, always going and causing trouble. This has finally started to come to a head with my body beating down on itself for all the things I’ve done. Human beings have a level of autonomy no other organism has on the planet, and we use our dominance in the current ecosystem in a way that has theoretically destroyed much of it. When you’re younger, you have a sense of preservation that is very low- all you think you need to do is clean yourself and eat. Once you become aware of your surroundings do you find that there is much more to all of that - and you start to notice that what you’ve been doing could negatively influence all the things around you.
(link: https://www.123rf.com/photo_54610646_fort-myers-usa-dec-11-2015-gas-station-and-traffic-lights-at-intersection-us-41-tamiami-trail-and-ed.html )
“Resilience science originated in the field of ecology and is based on the understanding that life is not static, that change is inevitable.” (Pg. 4)
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
They’re right when they say change is inevitable. Resilience is also something that comes from a being or ecosystem trying to accommodate for a problem while still maintaining who or what it is structurally, and that capacity to hold itself together can fall apart at the seams. Needless to say, I’m not as resilient as I once was and I have seen our environment blow up as compared to other ecosystems we very well did not need to disturb or destroy.
Now a question for any readers- Do you feel that the chaotic nature of people are what cause us to grow and change things as we do? Perhaps alternatively to that, you might feel like our capacity to grow comes from the idea we were destined to corrupt these environments for the “betterment” of us? You can always leave an ask in the ask box if you wanna debate this or just call me an environmental nut job. Either way, it’s not my race to win/lose.
“The concept of the food web and food pyramid,outlined by zoologist Charles Elton in 1927, helped to put the human position in the natural world into a different perspective.”
Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Now why did we need the food web to be able to figure out where we were in the world? Human beings in the early ages of humanity had already concluded that they ruled the universe. Was higher mind just a result of several thousands of years- because we didn’t see this pyramid until the 1900s. I feel like once we understood on paper what we had control of and what we immediately didn’t, we were able to take action on those things we didn’t have immediate control of. Medical technology has advanced so much because of our ability to understand things such as poisonous goods and venomous animals.
I feel the good pyramid helped us find where we were in the world because it helped us realize what control we really had- and how we thought we were all that mattered in the world where really we can be removed from the food chain and it would remain the same.
With that I conclude that blog entry. I hope that it was an enjoyable read with some insight on how I feel about each of these little subjects. Please give me your thoughts on how I can start improving at your nearest convenience.
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Introduction - The Talking Trees
Hello, today I begin writing for the Blog created for my College “Environmental Sustainability” course. My school, Florida Gulf Coast University, calls this course “University Colloquium”. This is a mandatory class in our institution, and has since been one that only our school mandates since we are known as quite the green environment.
Today, I note that these ramblings will be that of a report. They will be trying to keep things earnest, simple, and make them easier for everyone to understand going forward. That said, I don’t really know how to tag these posts - tumblr a common community for me but I’ve never done anything with it besides discuss fandom and other things of the fandoms I love and appreciate.
I guess we just role with it, and introduce myself.
My name is Tyler, and I am a Senior in Legal Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University. I will be using my candid and quite scattered opinions on my findings on my various trips and listenings/ readings of the chapters/video journals we have been given for your viewing pleasure!
Perhaps after this blog is finished I will keep it up for archival purposes. Maybe I’ll explain where that bird in my profile picture came from. Who knows?
So let’s get on with it.
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