This week we looked at the problem of "how to feed our growing population" the resources this week were very interesting. We learned about what the population of the world looks like now and where we project it to go as well as what's keeping us from mass starvation. The answer is advanced agriculture which includes- improved plant breeding and the use of chemical fertilizers. This is a double-edged sword because as we leaned last week, the chemical fertilizers can have a great deal of damage on the ecosystem around because of the chemicals in it. This week we volunteer with Wasatch Community Gardens and helped them make new plotting beds for the planting season to come. Below are questions and answers prompted by my professor: 1) How does Green Team garden address the 3 pillars of sustainability? The three pillars are Social, Environmental and Economic Sustainability. For Social Sustainability: this pillar is all about the people to make a difference and make sure what we do will be able to be done for years. So for the community gardens, they do this with the fact that they are a community garden, people are able to get organic food for a lower price and sustainably and all it costs is the $30 rental fee and the time to care for the garden. They contribute to the environmental pillar with the fact that different people plant different seeds, this is good so one crop can't strip the soil. The plant diversity makes it so the lands will be able to be planted on for a long time. The economic pillar gets supported by the community giving back to one another, the recreation center that holds the plots of land get money to pay for the watering and management by the $30 plot fee. This makes it so the gardens can keep on functioning. 2) Feeding a growing population is going to require that we each become more mindful of our food choices. Look through your home and find one food item that you use. Discuss the "foodprint" of that food item and find a realistic alternative (i.e. something that YOU can actually do) for it that is less harmful to our resources. I have eggs and beans every morning for breakfast, I use eggs from my friends coop and pinto beans from Walmart. The only thing I could find about the pinto bean is that it requires more room to grow than pole beans like the green bean, but because it is used to warmer climates it can handle drought well so it does not require a lot of water. I don't think there is a good alternative to this because, if cooked right, it doesn't take as much green house emissions to transport and cook dried pinto beans as it does canned pinto beans. Canned beans cause more emissions because of the added weight of the expanded bean and the water it's in. When cooking dried beans, I soak them over night and then cook them for maybe an hour tops in the pressure cooker on my electric stove so I think I am making the best choice currently. 3) Reflect on the 5 ways we can possibly feed 9 billion people. Find an example of how we as a society are currently working on one of the 5 ways and discuss it using specifics.
4) Describe your photo and why you chose to take and post that particular photo and what is it's connection to the topic of the week. The photos from this week are from our team being at the community garden, I chose these photos 1. because the boys in them are showing that they are having a super time and 2. because it shows that we were getting out and getting dirty and really working. It was a lot of fun, and I think it was because we had so many people working together that made it more fun than it would have been had this all been left to one person to complete. 5) What was one thing that you found particularly interesting this week? I thought the waste documentary we watched was the most interesting, this is because it touched on more personal things than the statistic "1 in 8 people don't have enough to eat". Where yes this is a data point for the world, I am fortunate enough to have enough to eat. So in the waste video, they talked about the food in the grocery store, how 40% of food grown for stores isn't eaten, how food is the #1 product by weight in landfills today, how if food waste were a country, it would rank 3rd in greenhouse gas emissions. These are things I can relate to because I see food waste, I work in catering and I cannot tell you how much food we throw away at the end of the night. How much food we waste because the guests didn't want it but we made enough so we wouldn't run out. Something that we all need to be aware of is "the average American household spends approximately $2,000 a year on wasted food". This is a waste of money for a household consumer, but also this is a waste of space in our landfills for food that's going to rot and release methane gas. Below I have attached the video for reference.
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This week in class we learned about water, an interesting fact is that where 70% of the Earth's surface is covered in water only 1% is freshwater. This means it is extremely important that we use the water we have as many times as possible. At the Central Valley Water Reclamation Facility it is there job to clean water for a handful of cities, so yes they are technically the sewage filtration plant. It was really interesting to see the process that all waste water has to go through, a lot more goes into it than you might think. Below are questions prompted by my professor. 1) Look through your home and list all of the herbicides and pesticides that you use. Pick one of them and find an alternative for it that is less harmful to water resources. We own round up, miracle grow, and ortho max though I don't think we use these on a regular basis. I've decided to look up an alternative to miracle grow because I know that it's the most common brand to be found in the common household. The alternative I chose to compare it to is Pro-Gro-5-3-4, the things that make this a better products are 1) the amount of nitrogen, Miracle Grow has 11% with water insoluble nitrogen being 8.92%. Pro-Gro has 5% and 3.5% of it is insoluble. 2) Miracle Grow derives their ingredients from harsher sources, "Nitrate of Soda, Rock Phosphate, Potassium Chloride, and Copper Sulfate" just to name a few, you can look at all of the ingredients from their labels pdf here. Pro-Gro gets their ingredients from more sustainable sources, "Vegetable protein meals, animal protein meals, bone char, and pasteurized poultry litter" to name a few, the full ingredients list can be found here. I can see why the Pro-Gro-5-3-4 is better for our environment. 2) How much have you thought about your relationship with water in the past? How can you improve your relationship with water and make it more sustainable? The only time I really think about my relationship with water is when I take a shower and when I'm making dinner, the reason these two events provoke this thinking is because when I was in high school there was a scholarship opportunity that talked about how taking 5 minute showers can help conserve water. The scholarship gave me the task of making a shower playlist that is exactly 5 minutes long so when a specific song comes on you'll be able to track how long you've been taking. When I make dinner it drives me crazy to see people leave the tap on when they do dishes, or when they fill the entire sink instead of filling up the larges dish and making that your soapy water. It's just a huge waste of water. Even though I know that 5 minute showers are the best way to make showering sustainable, I have not been motivated to making that apart of my daily shower retinue. I know if I could make it to where my showers are only 5 min but I haven't been motivated to making the change. I can also change what I do with week old water, I often will just dump it because I don't think it's still good to drink (which isn't true) so I can either just drink it or use it on house plants or my yard. 3) Diagram the wastewater treatment plant and describe the process in your own words. I made a slide show that describes the water treatment process. 4) Describe your photo and why you chose to take and post that particular photo and what is it's connection to the topic of the week.
This week I chose to share the pictures of some of the chronological steps in purifying the water because I think it's important to bring awareness to people about how much work it takes to clean our water. One of the pictures that I think is important is of the screening machine, this shows that people can't just throw away whatever they want to; it slows down the process. This relates to the topic of water quality problems, without all of these many steps when the water got released back it would cause numerous problems. The biggest being waterborne illnesses, 88% of all diseases are caused by unsafe drinking water. Another big problem would be the result all of the nutrients would have on the water, increased nitrogen levels are detrimental to ecosystems they are the leading cause of dead zones and death of aquatic life. 5) What was one thing that you found particularly interesting this week? I was astonished to find out that poor drinking water is such a horrific problem, it's easy to forget about stuff like that when you live in America where we don't have to worry about clean water. The fact that half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a waterborne disease shocks me! I don't even feel like the United States can get away from this, in the video we had to watch they showed that old filtering plants don't have the technology to filter out new threats to human health. I am most interested to see what happens and if America's water can stay on the healthy side so we don't see a rise of waterborne illnesses here. This week we talked about sustainable fishing and the affect that fishing has on our environment. We also discussed what biodiversity means for the plants and animals around us and the different ways we quantify the ecosystem around us. We all do this in a number of ways namely Use Values like: Direct, Indirect and Option or Non-Use Values like: Existence, Altruistic and Bequest. Below are reflection prompts provided from my teacher. 1-3) Describe 3 animals from the aquarium that are threatened because a. we eat them Giant Barb- over fishing is their biggest threat, 200 tonnes of giant barbs were caught in 1964, in 1980 that number went down to 50 and in early 2000 only 10 could be caught due to population decline. b. we eat their food, leaving only a little for them Gentoo Penguins- they rely on krill, squid, flatfish, Southern blue whiting and black southern cod. c. we destroy their habitat Both the Giant Barb and the Gentoo Penguins fit into this category along with thousand of other animals. For the Giant Barb they suffer from habitat pollution and breeding routes lost because of dams obstructing the rivers once used for their migration. Gentoo suffer from the effects of climate change and all of their food is losing their habitats due to rising water temperatures making it hard for reproduction . 4) Describe your photo and why you chose to take and post that particular photo. In my post on Instagram the reason I decided to show the clouded leopard instead of the Giant Barb or the Penguins is because most people wouldn't stop to look at pictures of fish and everyone has seen pictures of penguins as they try to promote things like environmental change. With the clouded leopard they aren't an animal you typically see and the leaves provided more contrast making for a more interesting and eye catching photo. It also provided the opportunity to talk about the effect palm oil has on our environment and will hopefully bring awareness to the problem with understandably sourced palm oil. 5) What was another exhibit in the aquarium that you found interesting? I've been to the aquarium so often that it's interesting to me to see what's new, in the South America exhibit they have new sloths that live with their toucans and that was cool to see them because the zoo doesn't have sloths anymore. I also always like looking at the jellyfish because they're so weird. One really cool animal now that I think of it were these things called flash light fish that lived in the dark ocean area with the octopus and they were cool because they have bioluminescent bacteria under these flaps on their face so when they lift them they flash each other to communicate or for mating. Also one of the reason I've been at the aquarium so frequently is because my friends and I like to make silly iMovie trailers, so we spent three hours there making this video below. Enjoy! This week we learned about eh nutrient cycle and how Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus and Sulfur or (CHNOPS) are the essential elements of life and how the water cycle, carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle and phosphorus cycle are the cycles that drive life. We also had FFAC come talk to our class about what it means to eat sustainably. Below are questions and answers prompted by my teacher. 1) What was one thing you learned from the Factory Farm Awareness Coalition? How will what you learned change your behavior or perspective? I learned that chicken live in worse conditions than I had previously thought. I know that all factory farmed animals live the saddest life that you may not even wish onto your worst enemy but I had only see pictures of chicken crowned in one big space, I didn't know that so many of them get crammed into one long horizontal cage where they try to pluck and fight each other. And the only things that make a chicken 'free roam' is 'access' to the outdoors that they don't use, and because they can roam they have to get their beaks clipped so they don't fight each other. I have switched to a mostly plant based diet but I am still a flexitarian meaning I'm mostly plant but will have meat when convenient. I thought chicken was the least evil out of all of the meat options and I am still wrong. They all get treated like garbage and I have decided I'm going to stop buying eggs for my house and in the wild if I can get a vegan meal than I will if I can't then I may not go there anymore. 2) How might agendas and biases influence the way information is presented? What agendas/ biases do you think both FFAC and your professor have? Do biases inherently make the information false? How can you be confident that the information that you are receiving is accurate? Why does it matter to think critically about the information that you receive? How do you currently critically evaluate the information that you gain? How confident are you in the accuracy of the information that you are presented with on a regular basis? Be specific. The dairy industry has spent years and millions of dollars making sure we all know that 'milk is great for growing children' when in scientific evidence it's not everything they make it out to be. Based on FFAC's mission statement, "Empowering people to help save animals, the environment, and our health through our daily food choices" this tells you all of their biases. The first, "to save animals" they want to save all of the animals that are forced to live in these cruel conditions and make sure that the next generation of animal doesn't have to live the same way. The second, "the environment" they want to help our environment and they're approaching this by taking out a prime source of methane and carbon dioxide. Cows take a lot of resources and only give back three percent of the protein you need and give off a lot of methane from their burping and farting, then when you take their meat and distribute it you're producing carbon dioxide. Third, "our health through our daily choices" this is referring to two things, the first is how all of these farms are dealing with all the waste that comes from housing so many animals. They make huge cesspools for all the sewage and once they fill up some of them release the mixture in their sprinklers. This can be caught by the wind and drifts to the neighboring homes and makes them sick, think the plot to Erin Brockovich still with the polluted water but the neighbors know what's going on but they can't be caught by the law. Second eating meat at every meal has long term affects on ones health, such as high cholesterol and heart disease. I know my professor has a pro environmental point of view because of the classes she teaches, so she is anti factory farming. Information today is more abundant than it's ever been, anyone can post it or edit it. If you do not cross reference where your information is coming from than risk looking a fool or spreading information that is not correct. You know a source is reliable if it comes from a .org or .gov source that is well heard of, .coms can come from anywhere and are not very reliable when it comes to information. If you think about the data you find then you reduce the risk of getting faulty information, it's important when on the internet to never take things at face value. When I'm getting information I always look at where it's coming from and where the citations are coming from, then I also try to find as little biases when possible. An example is when I get my news, I use third party news sources like Google or Apple news that are not swayed one way or the other they just report what's going on. On a regular basis I'd say I could believe about 65% of what I read on the internet, and about 85% of what I'm taught in my classes. I bring up school because we live in a time where things change so fast it can be hard for school curriculum to keep up, thus making their data out of date and incorrect. 3) What were your recommendations for helping your soil pH, salinity, phosphorus, and potassium? pH: if you want to increase its pH add Lime or Wood Ash, to lower the pH add sulfur, Sphagnum Peat or Mulch/ Compost. Source Salinity: you need to manage the area that it occurs, Managing salinity involves striking a balance between the volume of water entering (recharge) and leaving (discharge) the groundwater system. Source Phosphorus: Plant phosphorus fixing vegetables, these are typically vegetables that are high in nitrogen, also can use phosphorus free fertilizer. Source Potassium: Drain and filter the soil or switch types of fertilizer. Source 4) Describe your photo and why you chose to take and post that particular photo. I chose to post this picture because I think it's important that we all regain awareness of the reality around us. I also wanted to be able to write about them bring awareness of them to the people that follow me on my Instagram, I hadn't heard of them until this assignment and I was sure this is true for other people as well. The reason I only took one this week was that I didn't feel comfortable taking pictures of how the animals are housed, those photos have an impact and I didn't want anyone who had not signed up for that to look at them.
5) What type of service project most interests you? Do you have an idea for a service project? What are your major limitations to doing a service project? I prefer the kind that has an environmental impact, this could be picking up trash by rivers and lakes or planting trees, or spending time to educate others on the environmental impact their actions have. My biggest limitation is the time, I have gotten in contact with SLiCE and I am going to help with their Earth Day events but I'm not on the council I would like to be on because it conflicts with my class schedule. |
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