College Sustainability

As a student at Bellevue College, I’m probably most qualified to talk about their efforts in terms of going green. Though Bellevue College isn’t doing anything specific to keep things green (at least not that I can tell) they do have the standard no littering and only smoking in designated areas policies. As a mostly community college with limited funds it is probably hard for them to do anything more unless they raised tuition, but things such as using florescent light bulbs could be a good foundation for a greener school. Student involvement would also be helpful in keeping things greener. Even small things like starting a community garden or reusing textbooks and printing double-sided would probably make a significant difference.

Other schools with more funds or just a different focus are doing more to help the environment. Evergreen, another Washington state college, has taken some pretty huge steps in becoming more green. There’s actually a committee called Leadership Circle of the Presidents Climate Commitment, whose goal is to neutralize climate change. Evergreen is a part of this committee and as such has created a college environment where on average students have less than half the average carbon emissions than the average college student. They have 1,033 acres of woodlands to work with, which probably helps the effort immensely. They also have a dorm specifically designated for sustainability purposes even using solar panels as a partial energy source. They have an organic farm, and community garden, which are maintained through student volunteering and are used to teach students about buying locally and producing their own foods. They also have over 380 people involved in a group promoting sustainability inside and outside the campus, as well as a strong emphasis on environmental issues in their curriculum. Not to mention they actually have as many recycling bins as garbage bins around campus, which seems to be a rarity these days.

Another college working on becoming more sustainable is Western University. There’s a program there called the 10x12 program that’s goal is to reduce water and electricity use throughout campus to both conserve money and environmental resources. They do this by making sure the buildings at Western are built to sustain heat and by educating students on the importance of sustainability. They are also a part of the same climate committee that Evergreen is and are working to reduce their carbon footprint. They are currently powered entirely by alternative power sources and purchase many of their foods locally. They also have a program to promote reusing cups and plates.

Overall Washington is a pretty progressive state in terms of becoming more green. There are certainly some areas that do need to work on sustainability, but it looks to me like over here we’re heading in the right direction, so I’m not particularly concerned with trying to motivate local colleges to become more green. It’s just interesting to see what they’re doing. A lot of these things like adding more recycling bins or reusing cups and plates aren’t that hard to implement and even some of the more extreme things like reducing utility use or promoting environmental education could work for a lot of colleges. But I will say that these colleges spend tens of millions of dollars on sustainability, and so it’s understandable that not every institution would want to devote that much of their limited resources to the effort.

Pollution in Our Schools

A problem with many schools in America is that they have an abnormally high density of toxic chemicals that can be harmful for children. These chemicals can cause cancer, asthma, nausea, and mental problems, among other things with prolonged exposure. Schools have been found to have up to a dozen different toxic chemicals at a time, and at times have up to fifty times the state-allowed amount of chemicals. Some of the worse off schools have industrial buildings such as plastic plants across the street. Even those that do not have pollutants pouring in from big businesses, often still suffer from poor ventilation, mold, pesticides, and lead from paint contaminating the air. Studies have shown that there are frequently five to one hundred times as many dangerous chemicals in doors as there are outside. This is especially relevant for schools, because most schools do not have the funds for proper ventilation or upkeep. Over half of America’s schools have been around for forty or more years, making them prime targets for mold, dust, and other harmful pollutants.

Children are especially susceptible to these chemicals due to their small size and developing bodies. The passages where air flows into their lungs are smaller than the passages adults have, and so even if their airways are slightly narrowed due to agitation, it can be harmful. Children also have higher metabolisms, meaning they need more oxygen to survive, so they breathe faster, taking in more pollutants. The effects of breathing in these chemicals are not always immediately obvious. There have been instances of people developing chemical-related illnesses, such as cancer, years after they graduated from schools with an unsafe amount of chemicals. To protect our youth we have to work to help alleviate this problem that affects half of America’s schools.

Works Cited:

http://usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/school-air1.htm (Last Visited: 1/22/2011, found by first going to http://content.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/smokestack/index)

http://www.generationgreen.org/school air quality overview.htm (Last Visited: 1/22/2011)

http://www.generationgreen.org/school air quality exposure.htm (Last Visited: 1/22/2011)

5-Minute Reflection

Chapter three of my Environmental Science textbook covers how genetics and biomes come into play and interact with organisms. Organisms can inherit certain genetic trains from one another, and natural selection basically means that members of a species with more adaptive traits will be more likely to reproduce and create other similar organisms. This allows for biological evolution in that it causes the earth’s organism’s to slowly change and adapt over time. Things like random changes in the DNA molecules of a cell called mutations can affect how certain species adapt. Eventually something called speciation can happen, where one species splits into two different species based on traits that a portion of the species has acquired that make it unable to reproduce with the rest of said species. This is often of how new species come into existence. Different species live in different biomes. A biome is an area that has certain climate factors and soil in it, creating a distinct environment fit for particular types of plants and animals. Some examples of biomes would be dry and rain-free deserts, dry but moist grasslands, high-altitude mountains that have steep slopes, tree-dominated forests, and wetlands that are covered in water. Overall this chapter teaches about the types of environments there are and how species can adapt to them.

             

A few questions came to mind while reading this chapter. I was thinking about how each biome supported specific types organisms, some of which may be necessary to sustain parts of the environment. If a biome like wetlands became extremely scares and the species in it died out, would other species adapt to fill the roles of those now extinct species? Also how many of the species that once lived in that biome would survive and adapt to a new biome? I was also thinking about if a species splits into two separate species, will one of those species often die out given that there is a similar species that requires the same resources and fills the same general roll? If humans end up killing off an important species is it likely or even probable that other species will adapt and fill the role of the extinct species? 

This chapter was relevant to me in that I think it does a good job of outlining how delicate the earth is. By that I mean that species require very specific conditions to thrive, and even small changes in the environment can cause a species to have to adapt or change. This means that everything in the world is constantly changing around us, which is partly why the earth is so different now from what it was millions of years ago.

           

The most interesting thing about this chapter is how the environment naturally designates certain areas to sustain particular species. There are also natural checks and balances in place to ensure that a population does not exceed the number of species that the biome it is living in can support. 

Source: Miller, Tyler G. and Spoolman, Scott E. "Sustaining The Earth." Belmont: 2009, Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning

This week I kept track of all the resources I used from the environment in an attempt to see just how much I rely on the environment to survive in my day to day life. What I found is that I could fill pages of a notebook listing the materials I use in just one day that involve the environment. I organized this giant list into eight categories, and out of those categories chose one item to research so I could find out exactly what goes into making it. The item I chose was yogurt.

Yogurt you find in stores can contain a number of ingredients, including pectin, sugar, fruit, but the only ingredients it has to have are milk and bacterium. The milk and bacterium are mixed, fermenting the milk and creating lactic acid. The lactic acid then mixes with the proteins inside of the milk to create yogurt. But all of this has to be done under very particular conditions. First the milk must be heated up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 10-30 minutes. Then it is cooled to 112 degrees and mixed with the bacteria necessary to turn it into yogurt. It is then placed in containers and kept at 100 degrees for four hours. After all of this, the yogurt is placed in a plastic can with an aluminum top and shipped off to stores.

This particular yogurt was Yoplait, which ships out over 17,600 cartons of the stuff to fifty different countries every day. The yogurt is often transported by boat and car, meaning that fuel and other resources have to be used to get it from the factories to our stores. That means 17,600 plastic cylinders and aluminum tops are created every day by this one company.  There are many other things one could consume that do not have packaging that is potentially harmful to the environment and that do not have to be shipped from far away. Eating locally or even eating food that is not pre-packaged would be an improvement. In this sense, yogurt is a want rather than a need because there are alternatives that would be better for the environment. Seeing as plastic and aluminum are non-renewable sources, every time one eats yogurt they are using up a difficult to replace resource, so thinking about local alternatives to yogurt and other pre-packaged foods that are shipped from across the country would be a good step in helping to preserve the environment.

From this exercise I have realized the effort it takes to make yogurt. I never realized how many steps and how much effort was behind getting this product to the consumer. People do not often think about where the food they are eating comes from or what goes into creating the other products they utilize for that matter. I know people have so many things going on that they do not have time to thoroughly examine every product they use, but if you get the chance it really puts things in perspective to do a project like this every once in a while. But even if you do not have time for things like this, there are still easy ways to help preserve the earth like reusing water bottles, scratch paper, or even text books. Even printing double-sided, buying foods locally, or not needlessly throwing food away can be a huge factor in reducing you ecological footprint.

Works Cited:

Source One (included for the nutritional information it provides): http://web.archive.org/web/20080529005611/http://www.ynhh.com/online/nutrition/advisor/yogurt.html

Source Two (included because it explains how yogurt is made): http://www.wisegeek.com/how-is-yogurt-made.htm

Source Three (included because it contains information about the specific yogurt factory my yogurt came from, so it allowed me to better understand how that factory, and probably other factories, handle their yogurt products): http://www.yoplait.fr/index.php/en/49_188.htm

Questioning Our World

For Environmental Science class this week I was asked to go to a place in nature and form twenty questions about the surrounding environment. I chose to go to in the woods across the street from my house to get a clearer view or just how much the environment even a few feet away from my can affect my life. From those twenty questions I was asked to choose one of these questions and form hypotheses that could answer it. The question I chose was, “what determines how fast a stream flows?”. From that question I formed several hypotheses. These included that rain would make a stream flow faster, that rocks would make a river flow slower, and that a river’s speed depends on how shallow it is. As it turns out, the latter one is partly correct. Part of what influences a stream’s speed is how much water there is per square unit, however there are other environmental factors such as things obstructing the stream’s flow, whether or not it is going downhill, and wind speed that can affect a stream’s speed. After creating these hypotheses I had to form ideas based on them. So for instance, because rivers flow slower if they have to cover a larger area, they might not flow as fast in deep rocky crevices as in flat grasslands. The exercise was essentially a way to force me to question the world around me and try to learn about how it works just via quietly reflecting on it. As a whole this class has been an interesting experience and has caused me to question many things about how humans interact with their environment. It is good to know that at the very least there are steps people can take to help correct the environmental disturbances in the world, and I think exercises like this are a good first step to attempting to understand just how important certain elements of our environment can be.