Author Archives: Adriana Lawton

iPhones are not necessarily green

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For this project, my group members and I were studying ways in which iPhones may not be exactly the most environmentally friendly option when it comes to technology.  In fact, according to Apple itself about 79% of the carbon emissions from the iPhone are emitted during the production phase, which should not come to a surprise since the manufacturing of products in factories is already polluting the air whether or not its Apple.  Now a days, apple tries very often to persuade consumers to buy new phones, even when their current one is completely usable, refusing basic repair documentation for users. 45% of iPhone users have claimed that they would rather buy a new iPhone instead of fixing their current one, so the fact that over half of the consumers want to fix their current iPhones and are frequently denied the opportunity says a lot about the company prioritizing the environment. The recycling industry has even mentioned on numerous occasions the amount of times perfectly reusable phones have been recycled.  The graph above shows the amount of carbon emission is released when it comes to transportation, mining raw materials, as well other causes.

No more Sweltering with Solar Power!

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When it comes to being sustainable, it’s important to use renewable energy in terms of specific situations such as air pollution and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in fossil fuels.  For instance, I want to talk about instead of using electrical heaters, the usage of of solar thermal heating.  With solar thermal heating there is a 60% less energy used to heat water, and 35% less energy is used for spaced heating,  so already there is conservation of energy when it comes to renewable energy vs. fossil fuels.  Economically, there is a Lower purchase price when using solar thermal heating systems, and cost less when it comes to reparations and maintenance.  There are two options when it comes to solar collectors.  There are flat plate collectors and evacuated tube collectors, with the only major difference being flat plate collectors using insulation material such as rock wool or polyurethane.  Flat Panel collectors are quite a common purchase in southern climates, while evacuated tube collectors are more useful for winter temperatures where it drops at 40 degrees fahrenheit or lower, with the tubes retaining a high percentage of heat.  Solar heating in general is reliable and flexible, working well with a heat pump or pellet heating.  Overall, if you’re looking for a heating system option that has no CO2 operations when in use, consider replacing  your electrical heating system with solar thermal heating!

 

references:

https://www.vaillant.com/what-we-do/technologies-to-make-people-feel-good/how-different-technologies-work/solar-thermal-heating/

http://www.solarpanelsplus.com/all-about-solar/evacuated-tubes-or-flat-plates/

 

Water usage from highly populated Countries in 2017

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Water Usage by Country in 2017 per billions

 

When looking at water usage for highly dense countries, this pie graph shows the percentage use of water by each country.  However, I personally thought that water usage was mostly coming from showers, however with laundry, brushing your teeth, washing your hands and doing dishes contributes to how much water we use per day.  Surprisingly China had the highest amount using around 591.8 billion gallons in all of 2017.  I personally thought that the US would have used way more water usage, but when coming to terms with the population of China compared to the population of the United States, its no surprise that they are about 2 times larger when it comes to the US using 444.4 billion.  However, 2017 was about 5 years ago, and scientists have said that water usage has increased.  If there’s a continue increase of water usage in 5 years from now, who knows the results it will have for the irreversible effects of climate change.

resources:

https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress

 

Fixing the Gender Gap

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For the most part, you could say that in America, equality is equally divided amongst men and women.  However, with doing some more thorough research, there are at least 2.5 billion women living in countries with at least one discriminatory law on the books.  Those laws in specific countries restrict women to make decisions regarding marriage, divorce, and child custody, along with making choices about acquiring a job or starting a business. Not only that but when it comes to abuse, 1 in 5 women have experienced physical or sexual abuse globally.  One of the bigger issues that needs to be talked about is the wage women make compared to men.  For example, even though the gender gap has improved drastically, 25% of women aged 25-34 are more likely to be impoverished compared to men globally.  In comparison to business and the environment, 73% of men hold management positions and 70% are climate negotiators.  I know in my personal experience, the people who are very passionate about the environment and climate change have been women.  I realize that women have a say in this topic, but the possibilities are endless when solving environmental issues if we have even more female voices heard.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/decomposition-of-the-gender-wage-gap-1980

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/hourly-earnings-male-vs-female

resources: https://www.un.org/en/un75/women_girls_closing_gender_gap

 

LEDS to save Electricity!

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Something I have never really taken into consideration before was how often I personally don’t think about light usage.  My dorm room has almost all LED lights, but I personally bought them for convenience in college, I didn’t really think about it in environmentally friendly terms.  With doing some research I found that about 5% of LED light’s energy is converted into heat while 95% is converted into light.  They also use a LOT less power than a typical fluorescent light, using a 36 watt vs a fluorescent’s 84 watt light.  By replacing fluorescent lights in your house, that brings down the emission of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere as well as reduces the demand of power plants.  Since it is unlikely that everyone will transition to LED lights within the next 5 years, a smaller goal when it comes to energy consumption is to turn off the lights when exiting a room or not having them on at all when it is not needed, for instance in the broad daylight.  A lot of the time fluorescent lights will also have toxic substances within the light bulb such as mercury.  When it comes to LED lights, they contain no toxic substances, have fewer lights needed to achieve the same level of brightness as fluorescent and incandescent lights, and have a longer lifespan, which leads to less carbon emissions (and the less likely you’ll have to replace the lights, so you’ll spend less money.  As someone who likes to decorate, and have those twinkly lights in my dorm room that many other college students my age have, it’s a lot more cost efficient and better for the environment to have compared to other options when it comes to light.  Go out and buy yourself a strip of those color changing LED lights to “spice up” your room!

resources:

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/study-environmental-benefits-leds-greater-cfls

https://www.sepco-solarlighting.com/blog/the-advantages-of-led-lights-for-the-environment

 

Fast Fashion’s Effect on Environment

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Since the Pandemic, shopping online has increased tremendously.  With that being said, it’s not uncommon that many people try to find the cheapest “dupes” of high quality clothes.  The fashion industry itself consumes one tenth of the water used industrially to clean products and run factories.  Thinking about the total amount of water used to produce one cotton shirt that would be about 3,000 liters of water used.  Not only is the water usage a big problem but fast fashion is responsible for higher carbon emissions than both international flights and maritime shipping combined.  Within the next decade, an increase of 50% of carbon emissions is expected if we continue this trend.

A 2017 report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature had stated 35% of all micro plastics in the ocean come from synthetic clothing like polyester.  Since Fast Fashion is in high demand of products in a short period of time, the amount of waste emitted into the air is heavily weighed upon fashion, with 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon being emitted due to the fashion industry.  This is why it’s so important to stop shopping at stores such as Shein and forever 21 producing an exuberant amount of cotton and polyester, which not only puts the workers and farmers at harm when using toxic pesticides to grow the products, but many workers get injured due to the poor working conditions these fast fashion companies put their employees in.   Thrifting old garments is an excellent way of decreasing the amount of carbon emission as well as lowering the water usage for production.

resources:

https://psci.princeton.edu/tips/2020/7/20/the-impact-of-fast-fashion-on-the-environment

Fast Fashion: Its Detrimental Effect on the Environment

Fast Fashion’s Environmental Impact: The True Price Of Trendiness

Choosing the right Pathwave.

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When thinking of livestock, is water the first thing that pops into your head?  I know for me it isn’t.  I think of cows, chicken, and sheep providing milk, meat, and fleece to provide for a sustainable life.  However, when it comes to livestock, the amount of water consumptions cows intake may be harming the environment more than we think.  Now when looking at the water footprint when it comes to beef, producing a kilogram of beef uses around 15,415 liters around alone.  When looking at the statistics, 92% of the world’s global footprint goes towards agriculture.  Why does this matter you may ask? If agriculture uses about 70% of the world’s fresh water, which is 3 times as much as it was 50 years ago.  This is not including the amount of water we use on the daily for other activities such as showering, washing clothes, and doing the dishes.  With the life expectancy of a cow being used before slaughter, a cow would typically drink 24,000 liters of water within their life.  When comparing these numbers its very hard to think of a solution for usage of less water.  Another factor that harms water usage, is the way farmers fertilize their crops with pesticides, contaminating the ground water with nitrogen and phosphorus, that will eventually hurt plant and animal life within the sea.

When it comes to bottled water, students at Union College should definitely think about buying a reusable water bottle rather than buying bottled water at the bookstore everyday.  I specifically think the carbon footprint is extremely high when thinking about FIJI water.  The distance from Fiji to Schenectady New York is around 12,780 km, and yet it’s still a popular drink that many Union students continue to get.  Reusable water bottles also typically hold more water, with an average of 32 oz to a plastic water bottles 16 oz, so not only are you helping the environment, but you’re saving money as well.  This is very important since out of 50 billion plastic water bottles bought by Americans each year, only 23% are being recycled.  I think Union is doing a good job in already placing many filters around campus to encourage the usage of reusable water bottles, but I feel that Union should definitely stop marketing Fiji water in particular even if it “supposedly” tastes better.  If you haven’t already, this is your sign to buy a reusable water bottle!  It will save your pockets (and the environment) in the long run.

 

resources:

https://case.edu/sustainability/news/making-switch-reusable-bottles

https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/09/07/water-thirsty-animals-thirsty-crops

 

Rising Co2 levels impact on human health

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When researching rising levels of CO2, it’s easy to find topics such as climate change and how that may affect the environment as we know it.  However, what’s not talked about throughout the media often is the affect the rise of Carbon dioxide has on human health.  In fact,  CO2 levels of 1,000ppm have been found common in small confined spaces, such as classrooms, offices, bedrooms, and planes.  Now this may not seem that important, but carbon dioxide levels over 1,000ppm can cause inflammation as well as reduced cognitive function, and those levels are not that hard to pass within the confined spaces that I mentioned.  Chronic Exposure  levels from 2,000ppm to 3,oooppm can cause even worse damage such as kidney calcification and bone demineralization.  When thinking about the environment, and how climate change is impacting the world, that also causes quite the dilemma when it comes to human health as well.  Air pollution kills 9 million people every year, and as the temperature rises, the problem only gets worse.  In a 2008 study, rising levels of CO2 can cause the temperature to go up by 1 degree celsius, causing ozone damage which can kill 22,000 people due to asthma or some sort of respiratory illness.

I think human health is very important to note since there are still quite a lot of people who do not believe in climate change still to this day.  Possibly bringing up the fact that CO2 levels rising can directly affect one’s health may shine a light on the subject, since the affect on the environment may not be enough.  It’s very evident to see that within the media there’s been a rise in hurricanes and fires, and ticks have been increasingly apparent due to climate change.  Although these are little things at the moment, it’s only a matter of years before there’s irreversible damage to the planet as well as people’s lives.  Hopefully with more outlets supporting the negative impact climate change has on human health, more people can be aware and acknowledge the dangers.

 

work cited:

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-affects-health-2018-5

https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/climatechange/health_impacts/index.cfm

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.543322/full

 

Introduction

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Hi, my name is Adriana Lawton and I’m a sophomore from Niskayuna NY, and I’m a psychology major and Spanish and dance minor.  I’m a big movie fan and like to hang out with my friends.  I have a little understanding of sustainability since in high school they would once in a while try to broaden the students horizons of the topic, but other than that my information on it is limited.  I first became interested when a couple of my friends decided that they wanted to be really involved in U-sustain at Union and enlightened me more on the subject.  I always try my best to be environmentally friendly, so I want to take this course in order for me to learn ways to avoid depletion of natural resources as well as learn how to be more environmentally friendly, hopefully through mathematical concepts of this course!