CO2 Emissions Per Capita Per State

The graph I created is one that shows the annual CO2 emissions per capita per U.S. State with data up until 2017.

(I couldn’t get the chart to upload with better quality for some reason, so please use this link instead to view it as a PDF)

In metric tonnes, this data helps to show the amount of CO2 emissions produced per state per person. When looking at this graph, it is very easy to see where the high amounts of CO2 emissions per capita are found: states like Wyoming, North Dakota, and Alaska stand out as the worst offenders for CO2 emissions per capita. This is in contrast to states like New York, California, Oregon, and Maryland who comparatively have very small CO2 emissions per capita.

This could lead people to believe that states like Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska, etc. are more responsible for the large CO2 emissions put out annually by the U.S. as opposed to states like New York, California, etc., but that would be incorrect. What this chart tells us instead is that states on this chart that appear to be putting out gargantuan amounts of CO2 are instead putting out large amounts of CO2 in comparison to their population. A state like Wyoming that has a relatively small population but large amounts of farming/agriculture could appear to produce extreme amounts of CO2 compared to a state like New York, when in reality New York could be putting out much more CO2, but due to its large population it doesn’t appear to be as extreme of a CO2 emitter as Wyoming.

 

WORKS CITED

https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/

2 Charts That Relate to Sustainability

For this Blog assignment, I made 2 charts. The first chart is a scatter plot chart. The second chart is a line chart. I inserted the links to my charts at the bottom because I can’t figure out how to insert the charts on this blog post.

For the first chart, I found that the average family wastes 180 gallons of water per week. I got this from the link below. I took that number and multiplied it by 4 to find out how much they waste in a month. I multiplied the number of gallons wasted in a month and multiplied it by 2 then 3 then 4 all the way up to twelve to see how much water is wasted for each month in a year. My first chart shows how many gallons of water the average family wastes in a year.

https://www.epa.gov/watersense/statistics-and-facts#:~:text=Water%20Stats,gallons%20of%20water%20annually%20nationwide.

For my second chart, I found out how many pounds of food are wasted by the average American in one month. I got this number from the first link below. I multiplied 20 by 1, 2, 3, all the way up to 12 to find the amount of food wasted for each month.

How Much Food Are You Wasting?

 

Chart 1: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-jinw_hxVzHjQrjhTdICHVJsv8g13ahH0ajJmawfEXU/edit?usp=sharing

Chart 2: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qin9nFouNjJ76o2g7SPIu-Onwz_c8ffmmFuWSRN7rSc/edit?usp=sharing

Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture

As the population of the world continues to grow, this increases the demand for food. For every person that is born, it’s another mouth to feed and eventually another family to feed. Also, it’s important that the food being served to the public is safe to eat and good for health.

The main goals of food security and sustainable agriculture are to improve the global supply chain, decrease food losses and waste, and ensure that all who are suffering from hunger and malnutrition have access to nutritious food.

In 2012 world leaders met at the Conference on Sustainable Development and agreed that everyone has the right to have access to safe nutritious food, adequate food, and to be free from hunger. At the conference, the UN Secretary-General created and launched a Zero Hunger Challenge which called on governments, civil society, faith communities, the private sector, and research institutions to work together to end hunger and eliminate the worst forms of malnutrition.

The goals of the Zero Hunger Challenge are: to make sure there are zero stunted children under the age of two, 100% of people have access to adequate food all year round, make sure that all food systems are sustainable, there is a 100% increase in smallholder productivity and income, and that there is zero loss or waste of food.

These are big goals that can be accomplished over time. Some important math that is important for accomplishing these goals is the use of the rate of change. This is important to calculate how fast the population of the world is increasing or decreasing. To calculate the rate of change two important pieces of information is needed. The first is the amount of change that occurred and how long in terms of the time it took for that change to happen. The formula is the average amount of change divided by the amount of time required for the change to happen. This is a good way to calculate how much the population of the earth changed in one day, week, month, or year. Once these numbers are determined they will give a good idea of how much food needs to be produced and distributed.

https://sdgs.un.org/topics/food-security-and-nutrition-and-sustainable-agriculture

Wasting Food and Its Impact

Composting is a practice employed by gardeners and farmers in which they replenish and enrich the soil with leftover yard/food waste. In addition to enrich the soil and helping plants grow, composting reduces the emissions of methane. This is due to the fact when left in landfills, organic waste generates methane. By separating out organic waste into compost, a significant amount of methane emissions are reduced. Composting also promotes soil’s water retention, which in turn means there is less water waste.

In 2018, an estimated 2.6 million tons of food was composted, which is the equivalent of one person composting .42 pounds of food per day. However, since composting isn’t part of peoples’ daily routine (everyone has a garbage can, but how many people have a composting bin?), we waste about 1.4 billion tons of food. Americans waste the most food annually at a whopping 80 billion pounds. Our food waste could be significantly reduced if we began implementing a steady routine of composting. Normalizing and standardizing composting would reduce the size of landfills as well as improve the agricultural climate.

Before the COVID pandemic, 35 million Americans had food insecurity. Today,  50 million Americans have food insecurity. With over 80% of food waste coming from households and restaurants, there is such a real difference we could be making to reallocate food waste either to those in need and with food insecurity, or to compost facilities to add to long term improvement.

 

https://www.rts.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/RTS_Food_Waste_Guide_2021.pdf

https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/reducing-impact-wasted-food-feeding-soil-and-composting

Water Waste in Agriculture

The agriculture industry utilizes the largest portion of the water supply within that supply water is lost between poor irrigation, contamination, and poor management. Farmers and large agricultural plants have to establish water efficiency levels in order to reduce waste. Reduce, but not eliminate. Farms make up about 70% of all the water consumed globally and within that 70%, 30% is actually used and the other 40% is lost in waste. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the agriculutre industry (surplus) the usage of fertilizers, pesticides, and other pest replent techniques that are used on crops water becomes highly contaminated. This water can’t be reused without treatment and that is costly. The untreated waste water is then transported elsewhere but can still impose a threat to said environment. On the brighter side of things there are many ways in which farmers in the agriculture industry can reduce waste water. Such as efficient irrigation, capturing and storing water, crop rotations, and composting mulch.