Tag Archives: environmentally friendly

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.

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

 

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 and Its Environmental Impact

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