Tag Archives: consumption

Sustainable Fishing

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There are many issues attached to the fishing industry: overfishing, bycatch, pollution, fish farming, and economics. This is why it is so vital to protect the fish and other marine life populations in the ocean. If the IPCC can determine and enforce sustainable fishing quotas the ocean will be well protected. But since the ocean is a global commons and there is no full authority over it regulations are difficult to make. Additionally, since the ocean covers the majority of our planet there is no way to actually enforce these regulations and ensure people/fishing companies are following them. There is one company called Seashepard that acts like a vigilante group which boards boats that are engaging in suspicious activity. Since the ocean is so vast it is also difficult to determine quotas since it is hard to figure out exact population numbers. Scientists often are estimating the population sizes of species and even then fishing companies still push for higher quotas. Even with bycatch and fish farming quotas have to be set. Bycatch because it is the unnecessary catching and killing of marine life while fishing. Fish farming because often fish caught from the ocean are used as feed for the farm bred fish. Additonally, the usage of sustainable fishing methods in terms of techniques used like long lines, and trollers. So in terms of mathematics there is a lot of estimating involved with fishing to establish effective quota levels that protect populations and encourage sustainable economic activity. There is an interesting documentary on Netflix called Seaspiracy that explains all the dynamics of the fishing industry. When buying fish look to see if it was locally sourced or fished sustainably and consumption is the driving force for the fishing industry so it’s important to support environmentally conscious brands.

Metal+Glass Recycling in the USA

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Using a similar set of statistics as some of my peers, I thought about the topic of sustainability, and so a question I asked myself is: what’s in my environment that I can potentially reuse. Two types of material I come to find I use often include: glass especially when I think of my phone, what I use to drink, windows etc. The second one I often use is metal whether that be my phone, my car, my speaker etc. From 1960-2018, the epa estimates that the total change in glass recycling amounted to approximately: 2,960,000 tons. In that same time stretch, total change in the amount of metal recycled amounted to 8,670,000 tons. The growth factor for glass was about 30.6 and for metal it was about 174.4. The Percentage Change for glass is then: 3060% and for metals it was 17440%. When calculating the rate of change for glass: 2.96 x 10^6/58= 51034.48 tons more of glass was recycled per year and for metals it was: 8.76 x 10^6/58= 151034.48 tons more of metal recycled per year. 

Glass recycling on the surface may sound like a good idea, but I decided to dig a little deeper into the materials recycling controversy surrounding its overall utility. According to various websites disputing the overall eco-friendliness of the material, glass is “endlessly” recyclable yet bottles/jars etc. require more energy to manufacture and then recycle and process into sand or reprocess into reusable glass than it takes to reuse plastic. However, plastics’ lifetime utility decreases after a few years whereas glass according to some websites is repeatedly reusable. According to one source, for 10% of broken down glass getting recycled (per year) total energy costs to break it down reduces by 3%. This controversy makes me reevaluate the short-term and long term impacts, in other words, the opportunity cost not just on the good itself, but the lifetime impact of the consumption of the good and its future ramifications on an interconnected issue like carbon emissions.

Works cited: 

https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-facts-and-figures-materials#composting

https://earth.org/glass-bottles-environmental-impact/

https://www.britglass.org.uk/our-work/recycling

https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-recycling-US-broken/97/i6

https://earth911.com/business-policy/how-many-times-recycled/

Water Usage and Utilization

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Water is a necessity for us humans along with planet Earth. Humans can go much longer without food as they can without water. It is interesting to think that a lot of the food that we consume could not possibly be produced without water. For example, think of crops that need water into order to grow. Or, all of the water that livestock drinks that we eventually consume such as pigs. This idea alone shows how important water is in its comparison to food consumption.

Consider the following, “There is the same amount of water on Earth as there was when the Earth was formed” (epa.gov). Furthermore, “Nearly 97% of the world’s water is salty or otherwise undrinkable. Another 2% is locked in ice caps and glaciers. That leaves just 1% for all of humanity’s needs — all its agricultural, residential, manufacturing, community, and personal needs” (epa.gov). This idea is really hard for me to wrap my head around. I think about how much water I myself personally use on the daily. Then, I think about how many humans are on this Earth and how much water is used for humanity’s needs by the whole planet. This alone proves how much water is on this Earth. I find this fact so interesting seeing how human production as well as global warming has affected our water usage. In my opinion, bottled water is so popular because of the convenience of it. Consider, reusable water bottles have to be constantly washed and sometimes they are a bit pricey. Bottled water is convenient as once you finish the water, you can just throw away or recycle the bottle. If I had to estimate the bottle water consumption on Union College’s campus, I would estimate that around 50% of Union’s students drink bottled water opposed to water from the tap. Furthermore, I would average that of the 50% of bottled water drinkers, they drink at least 2 bottles of water a day. Based on Union College’s enrollment being around 2,300 students, 65% of that is 1150, multiplying that by 2, my estimate is that Union College consumes around 2,300 bottles of water per day.

 

Work Cited: https://www3.epa.gov/safewater/kids/waterfactsoflife.html

Goats, Sprinklers, Union College

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  • One example of livestock that uses water: Goats consume: 3 gallons/ 1 day x 365 days/1 year x .0038 tonnes/ 1 gallon= 4.161 tonnes/ year per goat
  • If a typical gardener uses a sprinkler gushing 12,240 gallons/ 1 monthly x .0038 tonnes/ 1 gallon x 1 year / 12 months= the Gardner will use 3.876 tonnes / year 
  • Water waste could be reduced by doing laundry more infrequently (each load requires about 12.5-19.6 gallons per load depending on the washer and according to prudentreviews.com), adding timers to sprinkler systems (where according to bigsprinkler.com it takes 27,000 gallons to irrigate 1 acre of land) and especially by eating less beef which according to denverwater.org requires 1,847 gallons of water to produce.
  • Bottled water is a matter of convenience and one of appealing marketing. Our susceptibility to innovative marketing techniques makes us prone to consuming water-on-the-go. To estimate the student consumption of bottled water, assuming no student is using the hydration stations and only acquiring water from bottled water the following “ideal” situation may arise:
  • There are 2050 students at Union, 47% women, 53% men
  • 3.7 L/day per man x 1 gallon/3.785 L x 365 days/year = 356.80317 gallons per year per man
  • 1086 men at Union
  • Approx. 387,488.243 gallons per year per Union men
  • 2.7 L/day per woman x 1 gallon/3.785 L x 365 days/year = 260.369881 gallons per year per woman
  • 964 women at Union
  • Approx. 250,996.565 gallons per year per Union women ideally
  • It takes one liter of oil to prod. one bottle of water, 

Take the Distance: 7,933 mi xWeight: 2916.247 tons x 161.8g of Co2/1 ton x 1 mi = 3743176249.57 g of Co2 it takes to ship in a 747 Boeing, with 2 passengers at roughly 197 lbs, with roughly 650,000 gallons of water to hydrate Union College.

Other works not already cited:

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92222327

Water we doing?

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Agriculture uses an incredible amount of water each year. Meat from cows alone uses a global average of 15 400 m 3 /tons of water (“Water footprint of crop and animal products: a comparison”). This number increases when considering the farming process. Agriculture isn’t the only culprit for water use and waste. The EPA states that an average U.S. “family can waste 180 gallons [of water] per week or 9400 gallons annually” (“Statistics and Facts | US EPA”).  It is common for American families to water their lawns which is an incredible waste of water. To put it in perspective, watering an average size lawn for 20 minutes daily uses the same about of water as 800 showers or a year worth of showers for an average family (“Statistics and Facts | US EPA”). If we stop watering lawns which is not a necessity and rather just for appearance, we could save a large amount of water. the average shower uses 17.2 gallons of water so every family who waters their lawn would be saving 13,760 gallons annually (“Shower In an average home”).

I think that bottled water is popular because it is convenient and people trust it more than they may trust the water from their faucet. Along with this, some people don’t like the taste of the water at Union, especially so they opt for bottled. I estimate that 1,000 students on campus drink about two, one-liter bottles of bottled water a day from the bookstore. If we are on campus for 210 days per year I estimate that the campus consumes 420,000 bottles of water each academic year. It takes 1/4 liter of oil to produce a liter bottle, therefore 1.1 x 10^5 of oil is used to produce the water bottles that Union consumes. The Most popular water at Union is essential which is from WA. It takes around 18,000 gallons of fuel to fly from WA to JFK and another 8.66 gallons to drive from JFK to Union if the vehicle is getting 20 miles to the gallon. Therefore it takes roughly 18008.66 gallons of fuel to transport water to our campus.