A video and an article a day keeps what away?

Hey there, it's the start of my recess week (holidays!!) but it also means that my research essays are due soon and my mid terms are going to haunt me once the holidays are over.

This week, i would be sharing with you a video that i chanced upon while doing project work for one of my modules. 

This is a video that was particularly interesting to me as it allowed me to catch snippets of nature that were so high definition it made me feel like i was at the scene itself. It also briefly summarised what the current impacts of human on our environment are, and how we can seek to reduce such impacts. In it, you can see images of humans polluting water bodies with plastic, deforestation, plants releasing industrial emissions etcetera. In particular, the scene where the elephant was trumpeting and where the polar bear was jumping into the sea was especially mesmerising and impactful. Overall, i felt that this was a very interesting video that should be shared to my fellow readers!

This week, i also chanced upon an article titled ' The Volkswagen emissions explained'. This issue was only raised this week, and this article by The Guardian is basically a breakdown of how Volkswagen cheated their emissions test by making its cars appear as if it is releasing far less emissions than what it really will be when it is on the roads.

 The US Environmental Protection Agency discovered that 482,000 VW diesel cars on American roads were emitting up to 40 times more toxic fumes than permitted - and VW has since admitted the cheat affects 11m cars worldwide.

The impact of this cheat is no doubt a significant one, with levels of harmful emissions into our air much more higher as what we thought it to be. This also highlights the prevalence of companies prioritising profit goals over environmental goals, and raises ethical issues as to how companies, even influential ones like Volkswagen, are cheating their way out of environmental regulations. This is despite that fact that harmful emissions like this that can cause climate change and is one of the major causes of damage to Earth's ecosystems. Even with that, companies stay regardless and irresponsible for their own technology, even manipulating facts so as to get their products on the market, as shown by Volkswagen.

Read the article by clicking on the URL below!
 http://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/sep/23/volkswagen-emissions-scandal-explained-diesel-cars

Till then,
Mu Rong

What is our carbon footprint?

This week, i chanced upon a book that proved to be an interesting read - 'How bad are bananas' by Mike Berners-Lee in 2010.

(Retrieved from Google images)

Basically, the book gives readers a sense of the carbon impact of everything we do and think about, or rather a carbon instinct. He mentioned that the average UK person currently has an annual carbon footprint of around 15 tonnes (which is equivalent to 15 thousand kilograms worth of carbon). I thought that this book was rather insightful and hence for this post, i'd cover some of the more interesting activities that he has mentioned :)

• Drying your hands

Zero CO2 letting them drip
3g CO2 using an Airblade
10g CO2 using a paper towel
20g CO2 using a standard electric drier

Ever wondered how you should dry your hands after visiting the public toilet? A hand dryer or a paper towel ? As you can see, a hand dryer that produces heat emits double the carbon emissions as compared to a paper towel. The reason why a standard drier produces comparatively more carbon emissions is because it always take up a lot of energy to heat things. Personally, i'd just wipe it on my clothes :p

• A plastic carrier bag

3g CO2 with very lightweight variety

10g CO2 with standard disposable supermarket bag

50g CO2 with heavyweight, reusable variety

That would actually be 2.5kg per year if you use five standard bags per week: about the same as one large cheeseburger. 

Better alternatives that can function as a plastic bag are rucksacks, wheelie baskets, or reusable bags (that has to be efficiently used and not be disposed of easily)

• A paper carrier bag

I always had the impression that paper bags produce lower carbon as compared to plastic (ever since Mcdonalds started using paper carrier bags instead of plastic ones), but it turns out that i was wrong. The paper industry is actually highly energy intensive. In fact, if we were given a choice between plastic and paper, the plastic one is a better alternative.

12g CO2 if recycled and lightweight

80g CO2 if it is an elaborate bag from mainly virgin paper as supplied by many clothing retailers

The author also mentioned that unless we recycle our paper bag, it is likely to end up in the landfill, where it will rot and emit more CO2 and even worse, methane. Typically, there will be around 500g of greenhouse gas emissions per kilo of paper buried.

• A shower

90g CO2 ( 3 minutes, efficient gas boiler, aerated shower head)

500g CO2 ( 6 minutes in a typical electric shower)

1.7kg of CO2 (15 minutes in an 11-kilowatt electric power shower)

If you have high-carbon shower habits, there could be half a tonne per year to be saved here - equivalent to a return flight from London to Madrid. Apparently, an aerated shower head helps to make less water feel like more. In theory, it would help to save water and carbon without you having to forgo any comfort.

• Burger

A burger actually produces much more carbon emissions than what you think - think twice before you eat one!!

1kg CO2 for a veggieburger

2.5kg CO2 for a 4-ounce cheese burger

Animal produce tends to be more carbon intensive than vegetables and grains because animals consume a lot of energy just to keep themselves warm and move around. Beef and dairy farming also poses a problem as cows, like sheep, are ruminants. These animals give out methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than CO2. 

Demand for meat also provides an incentive for deforestation because it raises the demand for grazing lands.

(Retrieved from http://sustainontario.com/wp2011/wp-content//uploads/2011/01/Hughes-Steven-Food-.jpg ) 
(Unfortunately there is a discrepancy of the numerical quantity between the picture and the book, but i hope the picture gives you a clearer picture of how much carbon emissions the production of a burger gives off)

That said, maybe we should all turn vegetarian ??? haha just kidding, i can't turn away from meat just yet...but i guess i'd cut down on my beef intake from now onwards .. 

• Leaving the lights on

90kg CO2 on a low-energy bulb for 1 year

500kg CO2 on a 100 watt incandescent bulb for 1 year

Having an average of one bulb turned on unnecessarily at any one time is almost certainly quite common - some people even sleep with their lights on because they are scared of the dark! As for public places such as toilets, i suggest that we invest in better technology such as the automatic light sensor to reduce such wasted carbon emissions.

And exactly how bad are bananas? You'll have to read the book yourself to find out! 

Till next time, 

Mu Rong

References: 

Mike Berners-Lee (2010) How bad are bananas? Great Britain. Profile Broks LTD.

Death-forestation

When we talk about air pollution in Singapore, we often think about the massive haze we experienced around June 2013. Many of us were decked in masks and there was a rapid increase of demand for air purifiers. The incident was impactful to me as the Ministry Of Education had announced that if the Pollution Standard Index continue to be at hazardous levels, school would be cancelled. (Which also meant that our exams in July would be cancelled) Everyone around me - students of course- was thus hoping that Indonesia will continue burning forests and the haze would continue.

These are some of the viral pictures i saved into my photo album during that period of time : 

However, we were probably part of a minority that treated the series of air pollution as a 'joke'. As i have already briefly mentioned, the 2013 Southeast Asian haze was caused by large scale burning of land in Indonesia and Burneo. The practice is also called 'slash-and burn', an agriculture practice which involves burning down forest and woodlands to make space for land. This leads to my topic for today; deforestation. Below is the set of definition i acquired from World Wild Life organisation. 

Deforestation is the conversion of forest to another land us or the long-term reduction of the tree canopy cover. This includes conversion of natural forest to tree plantations, agriculture, pasture, water reservoirs and urban areas. 

Stop and think. How do forest impact our daily lives? Most of our newspapers, tissues, wooden tables, medicine and cosmetics etcetera come from the forest. Yet, over the past 50 years, about half the world's original forest has been lost. Consumerism and human's desire is exactly the reason why we are losing our forests at such a rapid rate. In order to satisfy our needs for fuel, for wood products, and for land, we chop down forests and disregard the impacts to the eco system and to the environment. Another reason why deforestation occurs is due to agriculture. Similar to the 2013 Haze, farmers practice 'slash and burn' in order to provide land for their crops or grazing livestock. 'The world's rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation.' 

Have you ever thought about how deforestation would impact climate change? 

Forests act as natural carbon sinks; they are a massive source of carbon-dioxide capturers since photosynthesis would allow them to take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is extremely important as we are all aware of how carbon dioxide is one of the main green house gases that is causing climate change and global warming.Yet, we make the situation worse by burning down forests, which itself releases large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. With fewer forests to act as our carbon sink, climate change will only occur faster and deadlier. 

What could we do, however, to stop deforestation as individuals? Perhaps we could tackle the idea of consumerism, to cut down usage of wood products (as well as plastics as mentioned in my previous post). But another idea is that we could ensure forest environments still remain intact even after we cut them down. By planting trees in place of those trees we cut down, it reduces the carbon footprint and promises sustainable living for our future generations. I see it as a viable option and i think the idea of planting trees, not only in once-forested areas, but in new land areas, is a good way to address the problem of deforestation! What do you think?

Ending my post here, bye!!  :)

References: 

Bradford, Alina. 'Deforestation: Facts, Causes & Effects'. LiveScience.com. 4th Mar 2015. Web.
http://www.livescience.com/27692-deforestation.html

National Geographic,. 'Deforestation Facts, Deforestation Information, Effects Of Deforestation - National Geographic'. 2015. Web.
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation-overview/

Naware, Rucha. 'Forests, Climate Change And The Role Green Giants Play | Stories | WWF'. World Wildlife Fund. 07 july 2015. Web. 
http://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/forests-climate-change-and-the-role-green-giants-play

'Deforestation' | Our Earth | Forests |WWF. World wildlife Fund Global, 2015. Web.
http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/deforestation/