Author Archives: Elena Montoya

Say “No” to Plastic Straws!

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In this video, I detail how my sustainability action, although simple, has allowed me to limit my consumption of single-use plastic. I swap out any plastic straw that I would use daily for a metal straw out of my collection or opt for a compostable alternative if available. Nearly 7.5 million plastic straws were found on U.S. shorelines, and pose a huge risk to the wildlife and ecosystems that surround the areas. In addition, plastic straws do not decompose and eventually turn into microplastics that also have adverse effects on the environment.

Solar Panel Use

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Solar panels are perceived to be about 18% effective, meaning that the energy they absorb is about 18%, and is also the energy they give out. Solar energy is clean energy that helps combat greenhouse gas emissions and reduces the necessity for dependence on fossil fuels. There are many other benefits that are associated with the use of solar panels, including the improvement of public health, the limiting of resources such as water, and the fact that solar energy doesn’t require an incredible amount of power to operate. Solar panels have been easily marketed on a consumer level, and also prove beneficial in an economic sense for homeowners and for those who have them installed. Solar panels save thousands of dollars in annual energy costs, as the reduction in residential electricity is a big means of saving. This use of natural energy sourcing is an incredible investment, as solar panels are built to withstand tough conditions and last for an incredibly long time. The use of large-scale solar panels to power larger buildings, commercial sites, and other operatives can be an incredibly powerful way to reduce the collective carbon footprint.

Single Use Plastic Waste

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According to a study conducted for Earth day, people in the United States use billions of disposable plastic waste items that end up polluting rivers, oceans, and lakes, and are harmful to lots of wildlife and ecosystems. As an estimate, over 584 billion plastic water bottles were used in 2021 alone, and the amount of single-use plastic used globally has tripled since the beginning of the pandemic. As a means of measurement, I asked a few of my friends about their single-use plastic waste habits and made 2 graphs. One graph shows the type of single-use plastic waste used per friend per week. Then in my second graph, I took the friend that used the highest amount of single-use plastic products per week, calculated what their total amount of single-use plastic products would be for a year, and compared them. Making these graphs stood out to me because I wanted to understand what a big impact the repeated use of single-use plastic makes in the long run. Although it doesn’t seem like using these pieces of plastic each day is a lot, however; it continues to add up and attribute to a very large total. This somewhat provides an interesting look at plastic consumption and waste and serves as a wake-up call to make a bit of a change in daily consumption habits.

Racial Disparities in Los Angeles County Jails

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Los Angeles County, in California, has the largest jail system in the countryand is home to some of the jails and prisons with the worst, and most inhumane facilities. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, over 17,000 people in Los Angeles County were incarcerated daily. In this, Black and Latinx identifying people were the most incarcerated, especially Black women. This is at an incredibly disproportionate rate to white counterparts, who have been imprisoned at far lower rates. Amidst the pandemic starting in 2020, a call to action was made to lawmakers, forcing an examination of living conditions in jails in Los Angeles County, in accordance with the safety, health, and wellbeing of those being incarcerated. After some back and forth, the County decided upon establishing a “care-first” initiative, that would work towards reassessing how jail facilities were used, who were being incarcerated, and who deserved compassionate release due to COVID-19 complications. In other efforts in jails across Los Angeles County, the population began to decrease as there were increased efforts in slowing the transmission of the virus. The graph below details the jail population at the beginning of the pandemic until April of 2022 and expresses an extreme decrease in jail population by 30% a few months into the pandemic. Although promising, this change did not last for long as a few months later the population threshold in county jails fell way over the capacity set for the jail systems in the county. Although there have been strong efforts in lowering jail populations in accordance with health standards set by the Jail boards, these capacities continue to be exceeded because many people who are incarcerated do not have the resources to be released on bail. Jails are one institution that continues to disproportionately affect and impact Black and Latinx people in Los Angeles County. Going to jail and staying there for adverse periods of time has strong effects on mental health, and creates extreme obstacles for obtaining jobs and having steady foundations upon one’s release. This treatment continues the cycle of high crime rates and social and economic deterioration in predominantly Black and Latinx communities in Los Angeles. People should contact their city representatives, and fight for changes to be made in the LA county jail system. This is not a problem that will go away soon, as it is a foundational component to maintaining the class and race divide within the country.

Sources:https://www.vera.org/care-first-la-tracking-jail-decarceration

Meatless Mondays

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Vegan lifestyles have dominated social media, and efforts to bring forth conversations about sustainable diets and healthy living attributed to veganism have recently become all the rage. According to the United Nations, almost 15% of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions come from farmed livestock: which includes the raising of cows, chickens, and other animals that are used for meat consumption. The combined production of both meat and dairy products is responsible for a majority of the American carbon footprint as well. So, what alternatives are there to regular diets that include meat, that can also help reduce our carbon footprint? Veganism is an option for a very health-forward lifestyle, that also helps in regard to more sustainable living. One does not need to move to be completely vegan in all aspects in order to reduce their carbon footprint. Across the United States, many programs, organizations, and campuses have introduced the idea of Meatless Mondays, in which during one day of the week, people limit their consumption of meat, dairy, and other animal by-products. As a result, carbon emissions are reduced, and so does water waste. The consumption of meat and its production also largely affects deforestation, and land use, and can contribute to the loss of biodiversity. Addressing food production in small steps like this can lead to big changes over time. If everyone went vegan, according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, food-related emissions would drop by 70%!

 

Sources:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/what-would-world-look-if-everyone-went-vegan

Growth and Decay in COVID-19 Viral Infections

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An interesting perspective is understanding this topic through the spread of viral infections. A virus can begin to spread when there is no known immunization or vaccine for it, and each infected person can infect anyone they come in contact with. Taking this into consideration in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 and is still ongoing, it is interesting to observe the fluctuations in the growth of the virus as a result of not having the vaccine, and the decay of the spread of the virus after people were beginning to get vaccinated. Exponential growth at the beginning of the pandemic caused the rates of people infected to grow very high. For example, if there were 150 cases reported in Los Angeles County on the first day of the pandemic, and had an increasing infection rate at around 7%, after a week we could assume that there were roughly 241 new cases. This was calculated by multiplying the initial number of cases, by the growth factor, 1.07 to the power of 7, which was the total time spanned. The percentage change can be calculated by subtracting the final number of cases for the week, 241, by the initial number of cases, 150, and dividing by the initial number of cases, which would result in a 60.7% percent change. This is just a small example of what might’ve happened in terms of the growth of the COVID-19 virus. Once the vaccine was introduced, cases began to exponentially decay. For example, the population of infected people in the City of Los Angeles as of now is about 1,500. Each week, the population’s infection rate will decrease by 4%. After 4 weeks or a month, the number of infected people will be 1,274. The decay factor is 0.96, and it is multiplied by the initial population. The growth factor is raised to the exponent of time. The percentage change in cases is calculated again by subtracting the final and an initial number of cases and dividing them by the initial number. The percentage change in cases is 17.7%.

Sources: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/opinion/covid-exponential-decay.html

Water Waste & Strawberries

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According to an article found on the University of Minnesota Extension’s website on farming and irrigation, successful strawberry production in the Upper Midwest can be attributed to the use of good irrigation systems. A good irrigation system is conservative in water use, avoiding over and under watering of the crops. For strawberry crops, they take about three months to produce their fruits, including harvesting time. Strawberry plants require 1-inch of water a week as they are first planted, and then about 1-2 inches of water a week during the time that they are in season. Being that there are about 4 weeks in a month, and strawberry season is about 3 months, the total amount of water a strawberry plant would need is about 18 inches of water. In a crop, there can be about 120 producing strawberry plants, which would mean that 2160 inches of water are necessary for a crop. To go even further, converting inches to liters, a crop of 120 strawberry plants would use 35.4 liters of water in a season. 

One of the biggest sources of water waste in the United States comes from taking incredibly long showers and using baths. On average, Americans take showers with a flow rate of 2.1 gallons per minute. If the regular person takes a 10-15 minute shower, twice a day, they waste about 63 gallons of water. If the average American cut down their shower use to 5 minutes per shower, they would be using only about 21 gallons a day for their shower. That saves about 41 gallons. Stepping even further, Americans can shorten their showers even further by shutting off the water when lathering their hair and body and only washing their hair every so often. 

Many people enjoy consuming bottled water over tap water because it is marketed to seem more desirable and a cleaner alternative. Some people also like the convenience of buying water to go, instead of having to carry around a reusable bottle to fill up. Asking some of my friends, their responses to plastic water-bottle use a week range from around 6-7 bottles. Being that there are about 2,040 students on Union’s campus and using this measurement, we could say that about 12,282 water bottles are used per week, and about 2.2 million bottles a year (180 school days a year). It takes a 1/4 of a liter of oil to produce one plastic water bottle. Multiplying this quantity by the number of water bottles consumed a year, it takes 550,000 liters to produce all of the water bottles used.

Resources:

https://extension.umn.edu/strawberry-farming/irrigating-strawberries

https://pacinst.org/publication/bottled-water-fact-sheet/

Measuring Atmospheric CO2

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For millions of years before the industrial revolution, CO2 levels in the atmosphere remained steady as a result of a balanced carbon cycle. The Carbon cycle is a process in which carbon is exchanged from the atmosphere to plants, plants to the soil, absorbed by the land and ocean, and cycled back once more into the atmosphere. The Carbon cycle is the Earth’s way to reuse and recycle carbon atoms; however, this process has been disrupted by the introduction of the burning of fossil fuels. According to data, natural CO2 output is about 750 gigatons. Human output via fossil fuels is about 29 gigatons, which may not seem like a lot, but adds up because the land, soil, atmosphere, and plants cannot afford to recycle and absorb the surplus of CO2 in the atmosphere. As a consequence, yearly, human emissions of fossil fuels continue to add up and are stagnantly collected in the atmosphere. Although CO2 gas seems weightless, tons are used to measure the atmospheric gas because the molecules that compose it have weight. Carbon and Oxygen atoms have molar mass, and although it seems that gasses are light and weightless, they are dense and do bear mass. CO2 is measured via the collection of air samples, which are shone under infrared light and their contents are examined. Another way that atmospheric CO2 presence has been quantified is using the measurement of parts per million, which measures the mass of a contaminant per million units of the total mass. According to the resources provided by climate.gov, the total ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is 412.5, which is a global record. Something interesting to note is that during the COVID-19 pandemic there was a lull in the atmospheric levels of CO2 because people weren’t using their cars as a result of leaving their houses. 

Sources: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide#:~:text=Based%20on%20preliminary%20analysis%2C%20the,to%20the%20COVID%2D19%20pandemic.

Introduction- Elena Montoya

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Hello,

My name is Elena Montoya and I am a senior from Los Angeles, California. I am a sociology major and an art history minor, and in my free time I love to go to concerts and museums, and I also love spending time outdoors. My understanding of sustainability comes from an intro to environmental studies class that I took in the spring of my junior year. Something that really stuck out to me in this class was how connected environmental sustainability and issues of race, social class, and accessibility really are; as people of color are most burdened by the effects of climate change, pollution, and other acts of environmental degradation. I am excited to expand my knowledge of sustainability beyond what I know, especially as we will be applying the concept mathematically. I haven’t taken a math course at Union yet, so I think this will be a great opportunity to explore a somewhat familiar topic in a new way!