Monthly Archives: April 2019

Kayaking Trip

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This weekend, my roommates and I went kayaking in an estuary by James Island.  It was my first time kayaking, and I was continuously awestruck throughout the entire two-hour trip by the peacefulness and beauty of the ecosystem.  The waters were calm even as the marsh grass blew in the breeze, and you could taste the salt in the air. The estuary was near a road connecting neighborhoods on the island, so the occasional car was heard, and there were power lines running over some of the trees.  However, at times there was no other sound than our paddles hitting the water, and I wish I could have stayed out on the water all day.

I normally try my best to stay off of my phone as much as possible throughout the day, but I promised my dad some pictures as the trip was a present, so that was the only reason I was on my phone.  It was a beautiful experience to just paddle through the waters with my best friends while scanning the cloudy sky as the sun set. We even saw a couple dolphins swim through the estuary less than ten feet from our kayaks!  

As I live on campus downtown, I do not have the opportunity to experience nature in this capacity on a regular basis.  I also do not have my car with me during the semester, so unless I pay for an Uber or Lyft, I tend to find myself pretty confined to the peninsula.  Even the “nature” downtown is cultivated and kept tidy by groundskeepers for residents and tourists. The parks we have were designed to be beautiful green spaces, but they were designed by humans, which kind of takes away from their natural aspect.

Kayaking, however, allowed me to experience nature without the sounds of cars starting, ambulances blaring past, or cell phones ringing.  Sadly, I feel like my connection to nature has decreased over time as I grew older and became busier, but spending a couple hours on the water this past Saturday reminded me of how much I love the sun and trees and salt water.  I am originally from northeast Ohio, and feeling the sun warm my skin reminded me of how excited I was to move to Charleston, where the sun is always warm and bright and not constantly hidden by clouds. I feel like I have lost the connection from my youth, when the best days were the ones spent with bare feet running on the bright green grass.  This weekend reminded me of the importance of that connection and the need to restore it.

I believe that most of the people living on the Earth today have lost their connection with nature through sitting behind cubicles and under fluorescent lights, always hiding behind bright computer monitors and phone screens.  Many of the issues plaguing the world would cease to exist if people would look up and recognize the nature we destroy every second of every day through our consumeristic habits and materialist lives. If we continue fueling our linear economy, creating mass amounts of waste, throwing away overproduced food, and expanding animal agriculture, soon there will no longer be any nature for us to appreciate, and that is such a terrible thought.

Sustainability Week Waste Audit

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Sustainability Week occurred a couple weeks ago, and among the many events throughout the week was a waste audit.  During the waste audit, trash was collected from various locations across campus, such as behind the library. After the collected trash was delivered, interns from the Office of Sustainability and member of Alliance for Planet Earth opened the bags and sorted the trash into different categories.  Among these were compost, recycling, trash, and specialty items used for art pieces commissioned for Sustainability Week. The recycling was further divided into Terracycle and number ones, twos, and fives because the Office has specialty recycling that the general campus does not. Terracycle, for example, recycles items like pens, empty shampoo bottles, cleaned out toothpaste containers, and more.  While plastic items with a number one or two on the bottom of the item can be recycled on campus, number fives can only be recycled through the Office, and these are items like plastic Starbucks cups. Straws, paper Starbucks cups, and plastic bottles were kept separate for different counting purposes and for art pieces.

The intent of the waste audit was to raise awareness on the habits of the College of Charleston community while diverting items from the landfill.  Volunteers sorted trash all day, but I only had the opportunity to sort for an hour before class. Even during that hour, however, I helped dig through multiple bags of trash, and I saw how much waste was simply thrown in the trash can.  Much of the trash consisted of food waste, single-use plastic items, and products that can be composted but were placed in the trash bin instead.

Sorting through the trash was very frustrating because it is difficult to imagine how students do not care about where they throw their trash when items could be composted or recycled.  Whether it is an issue of students not caring, not being educated, or a combination of the two, the resources are available to students and faculty to compost food scraps or recycle plastic water bottles.  Our campus even has reusable water bottle filling stations located around campus to combat the use of single-use water bottles.

People are interested in convenience, and students at the College of Charleston are no exception.  This isn’t our fault–it is the fault of the society that raised us. American society is interested in profit, and this profit is what fuels our country’s corporations today.  As discussed in the “Story of Stuff” video, corporations operate with the goal of creating the most money, which is achieved through our linear economy and the corporate control of the government.  How it is more profitable to create excess amounts of waste baffles me, but the concept of waste was really reinforced during the waste audit.

I hope that students passing by the audit noticed the amount of waste created by the College in just a few hours, and that the audit will help raise awareness so students can change their habits.  I also hope that officials of the College noted the event to perhaps draw connections of how infrastructure can be better adapted. Installing more compost bins around campus would be a great start, as there are only a few outside of dining halls, and more signage informing students of the proper way to dispose of their waste would also be helpful.

News Report

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.This is from an article from NBC that was published in November of last year

.It’s about findings that were published Nov. 23 in the journal Environmental Research Letters by a pair of researchers from Harvard and Yale universities.

.project of atmospheric cooling ( solar engineering ) would not only be doable but also cheap at a Only cost only 3.5 billion

.Only cost 3.5 billion(Most of those funds would go into building planes able to carry big tanks of aerosol spray into the stratosphere, about double the cruising altitude of a Boeing 747.)

.Texas will have spent nearly a billion dollars replacing a single bridge in Corpus Christi. New York City subway-repair budgets routinely run into the tens of billions of dollars.

.That cooling wouldn’t reverse climate change. The greenhouse gases would still be there. And the earth will still be warming. Could cut the greenhouse contribution in half.

 

.What it does?

.Dump sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, reflect light back into space. SO2 is cheap, and there’s lots of it

.We would need to get it up into the stratosphere. it stays aloft for a year or 18 months.

.The recent studies shows the approach really could cool down the planet. But it would not reverse climate change

.It wouldn’t be able to create more glaciers

.Alternative idea is to suck co2 out of atmosphere

.solar geoengineering has the potential to be one of the only options left.

.That’s worrying for a number of reasons,almost certainly be side effects that the sprayers couldn’t anticipate. as soon as it’s stopped its effects would go away within 18 months.

.No politicians, he said, would want to take the blame for a bad weather event that occurred the year after they voted to spray SO2.

.Hurricane Sandy happened on the year after we started putting this material up

 

Questions about it

.how sulfur would interact with other chemicals in the atmosphere?

.How would a big new batch of SO2 in the atmosphere affect the ozone layer?

. How would individual regions, agriculture or local water systems react to the sudden change in sunlight?

. How would the public react?

Source

 www.nbc-2.com/story/39562206/scientists-say-controversial-plan-to-cool-the-planet-is-doable.

Office of Sustainability Litter Sweeps

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As I briefly discussed in another blog post, I had the opportunity to organize weekly litter sweeps for a month during my internship with the Office of Sustainability.  While working with the 71% Project, which researches and combats plastic pollution in the oceans, I facilitated four hour-long litter sweeps on the corner of Calhoun and Coming Streets by the library.  The 71% Project focuses on this area because this intersection was adopted by the Office of Sustainability, and its proximity to campus equates to most of the trash in the area being discarded by students.  

Volunteers during these litter sweeps included students from various organizations across campus, ranging from interns from the Office of Sustainability, members of Alliance for Planet Earth, and students from this class.  Thank you to anyone reading this who helped during these litter sweeps–they could not have occurred without you!

We began each litter sweep by meeting at the Office of Sustainability before walking to the intersection to begin picking up the litter.  As we collected trash, at least one person recorded the type of trash and quantity on their phone through the SC Aquarium Citizen Science app.  Using this app is not only helpful to the aquarium and their research, but it is also useful for the 71% Project to record its progress in litter sweeps throughout the semester.  

As the area where we collected trash was off campus, it was not surprising that the items collected in the most abundance were cigarette butts.  In addition, we always found many aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic cups, and pieces of paper lying on the sidewalk and in the bushes. Although there was a trash can located on the street corner, it was obvious that, while some of the trash might have blown out of it, most of the litter was thrown out of cars or disposed of after sitting on the concrete wall behind the bushes.  

It was very disheartening to see hundreds of pieces of trash collected from the same area week after week, especially as much of the litter was located next to storm drains which lead directly to the harbor.  However, a little less litter was found and collected each week, which displayed that the litter sweeps were effective, and many people stopped to ask us what we were doing during every litter sweep. Hopefully, seeing students collecting litter will inspire people to not litter themselves, use less single-use items, or pick up a piece of trash in the street.  

Organizing and participating in these litter sweeps every week really exposed me to the environmental aspect of sustainability that I am interested in: plastic pollution.  After taking this class, I no longer focus only on the usage and littering of the single-use plastic items, but the process of extracting resources, creating the plastic, shipping it, filling it with a product, and selling it.  As we have discussed, waste is a product of our linear economy because waste does not exist in nature, and this has really expanded my thinking about plastic pollution. While I believe that individual action and change is important and can have an impact, the only way we will be able to significantly reduce single-use plastic is by demanding better from corporations and policies within the government.

My Internship with the Office of Sustainability

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This past semester, I was a rotational intern at the Office of Sustainability.  As a rotational intern, I worked on three different initiatives within the Office, including the Cougar Food Pantry, the 71% Project, and Sustainability Week.  I worked with each initiative for a month in order to have exposure to each project and complete different tasks.

For the first month, I volunteered at the Cougar Food Pantry, which is a resource for students that battles food insecurity on campus.  Many students do not have access to three meals a day, so the food pantry allows students to come shop for different items like pasta, cans of vegetables, cereal, and more.  These items are donated by different organizations and students on campus through food drives and competitions. Along with volunteering during the pantry’s open hours, I helped stock these donations and organize the pantry.

Next, I worked with the 71% Project, which focuses on plastic pollution in the oceans.  Charleston’s location on the water emphasizes the importance of minimizing usage of plastics and cleaning up litter on the streets, so my main task during this rotation was to organize weekly litter sweeps.  Volunteers from the Office of Sustainability, Alliance for Planet Earth, and this class were instrumental in these litter sweeps. We also used the SC Citizen Science app to record the data on how much trash we collected before sorting through the litter.

Lastly, I helped with Sustainability Week, which is an annual collection of events intended to promote the different pillars of sustainability to students and the community.  I helped organize events during the week, along with setting up, attending, and tearing down events. My main task was assisting in organizing a Land & Labor Acknowledgement, which acknowledged the indigenous groups that owned this land and their labor that built the College.  The event included speakers and performances from members of indigenous groups, such as the Gullah Geechee community, and their words and actions were very enlightening.

I also had the opportunity to volunteer with other organizations on campus through interning with the Office.  One of these organizations is the Stone Soup Collective Student Chapter at the College, and I was able to help distribute the soup to students one Wednesday evening.  It was very interesting to hear the founder of Stone Soup speak in class last week on her inspiration for the organization and the way it operates outside of campus.

Working as a rotational intern with the Office was a very rewarding experience, as I was exposed to the pillars of sustainability outside of learning about them in this class.  Not only did I work within the economic and social pillars with the Cougar Food Pantry and Sustainability Week, but I also experienced the environmental pillar through the 71% Project.  At the end of the internship program, we participated in a synthesis module exercise, which tied together these three pillars by defining them and providing examples of issues within the pillars, such as greenwashing.  We also discussed topics we covered in class, like the Anthropocene, points of intervention, types of capital, externalities, and more.

My experience as an intern with the Office of Sustainability was a very positive one, and it exposed me to aspects of sustainability outside of just learning about them.  I was able to apply much of the knowledge from this class to take-aways from events and conversations with other interns. I highly recommend applying for an internship with the Office in the future because they are a great resource on campus and an amazing way to become more involved and expand your consciousness.  

News Report Follow Up

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  1. State Hires Contractor team to build Mid-Brenton Sediment Diversion
  2.  Schleifstein, M. (2019, April 08). State hires contractor team to build Mid-Breton Sediment Diversion. Retrieved from https://www.nola.com/environment/2019/04/state-hires-contractor-team-to-build-mid-breton-sediment-diversion.html
  • Who: State of Louisiana
  • What: sediment diversion
  • When: October 2023-June 2028
  • Where: Mississippi River Levees
  • Why: to solve the Louisiana’s costal crisis
  • Relevance: to protect the Mississippi river and surrounding areas from rising waters. The sediment buildings up in the middle of the river and causes the water to overspill onto the land where people’s homes are due to the Levees that were built. The sediment diversion will help to keep sediment from building up and keeping people’s homes and land safe, in addition to helping the boats that go down the Mississippi do so safely.

The Devil We Know – Documentary Review

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Happy Earth Day! Today I watched “The Devil we Know”. The documentary covers the toxic chemical cover up done by DuPont and 3M. In 1945 the DuPont plant in West Virginia began the production of the C-8 synthetic chemical that is extremely harmful. C-8 has been found in the blood of 99% of the world. It causes birth defects, cancer, harms animals, etc. The land was purchased from a WV Farmer where DuPont claimed they would dispose of non-toxic chemicals.  After the plant started the farmer who sold the land noticed that fish were dying in the river and his cattle where dying from drinking from the river. 

The documentary covers the story of how a household brand like Teflon has impacted so many people and their lives. One man in the documentary was born with birth defects due to the chemical exposure his mother had while working for Teflon making the non-stick pans. The synthetic chemicals used in Teflon products created many birth defects. One man was born blind on one eye and only had on nostril. They did not think he would make it through his first night. He ended up making it through and went on to have 30 surgeries before he turned 5. This had a great impact on his life and it was caused due to the C-8 chemicals produced in WV by DuPont. The toxic chemicals are now apart of every person on this planet because we consume them through food or water. 

The chemicals from Teflon products cause cancer in animals and people. This pollution causes 9 million premature deaths annually. This number is compelling to me. Teflon, DuPont, and 3M have all tried covered up this information. They offered settlements to those effected, but the class decided not settle and filed a class-action law suit against DuPont. There is no amount of money that fix the lives that are taken by C-8 and other synthetic chemicals created by these companies. To this day DuPont and 3M still try to cover up what happened and continues to happen. The exposures to the contaminated water, air, and soil kill more people than smoking, hunger, natural disasters, war, AIDS, or malaria (thedevilweknow.com). This is shocking and scary. Peoples lives are affected daily by this. 

It’s important to remember that the Teflon products are still used in houses today. There is no way to escape the chemicals that are used in these products. It’s in our carpets, floss, water resistant clothes, and non-stick cookware. The producers of this film wanted to uncover what they have tried so hard to cover up. This documentary was eye-opening and educational. It made me sad watching this. This has effected they entire planet and it can from Americas backwards economics. This could have been prevented and it wasn’t. Now our generation must find ways to live with this and try to fix it. The documentary can be viewed on Netflix, I also recommend checking out thedevilweknow.com for more facts and information on the issue. 

Reducing Waste

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I recently moved to a new apartment and live with less people than before. I alway thought the amount of trash/waste being produced was due to living with 3 other people. However, I have realized this is not the case. I alone produce enough trash to fill a medium sized trashcan in one day and I am not conscious about recycling. I believe food is the biggest part of the wastes I produce.  So, for the past few weeks I have been tracking how often I have to take the trash out and how fast the trashcan fills up. It was shocking to see that what me and my roommate alone produce. We are both very busy and rarely home so it shoots us both to see how much we throw away. Since making a conscious effort to reduce wastes we only take the trash out once a week now and have a separate bin for recycling. 

Im more conscious about buying things as well, trying to reduce the use of single use plastics can be challenging at first. I buy a plastic water bottle everyday because I forget my reusable bottle. Not only am I wasting my money, I’m also wasting resources. So, I make an effort to fill my water bottle at night and put it in my refrigerator and grab it before I leave in the morning. I also stopped buying smoothies and started making them at home. I use my own reusable cup and straw, saving the planet from wasting another plastic cup and straw. 

In the few weeks I’ve been making these changes I’ve seen plenty of changes. I produce less trash and I have been saving money (in many ways). I would probably spend about $50 a week between smoothies and single use plastic water bottles. Now I am saving that money and helping reduce waste! I struggled with this at first, but quickly overcame the struggles once I got into a routine. It is important to be aware of the wastes you are producing. You never realize how much is being wasted until you track it. I encourage whoever is reading this to track your wastes and come up with ways to reduce them. It can be challenging in the beginning but it is worth it. My goal for the summer is to create a compost area in my back parking lot for be and my neighbors to use! Happy waste reducing everyone! 

Nature Inspo

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If I were to rate myself, I would say that I am more connected to the natural world than the average citizen. Undoubtedly, I believe this connection has strengthened over my lifetime as I have become more knowledgeable about the importance of the environment and focused my attention more to the value and power of nature. I’ve had multiple experiences and encounters that have increased and fueled my interest into the environment and natural world. Traveling to different countries has opened my eyes to both natural beauty and destruction, and I have learned that there is great value in preserving nature. As a result, I became a vegetarian to try to do my part in preserving the natural world, and have also changed my approach to medicine. I prefer to use holistic and homeopathic remedies to maintain my health. I also prefer to spend most of my time outside, and I believe that being connected to nature and environmental sustainability almost go hand in hand. They bounce off of one another and when combined have positive benefits for the person as well as the environment. I think that being connected to the natural world is important because it makes a person brighter and happier. Nature has instinctive calming effects that put everyone at ease, especially on a beautiful day. Connecting to nature allows us to be more environmentally friendly and conscience. It has also been studied that nature can reduce depression and just cause a person to overall “feel better”. Endless research has justified the fact that nature is correlated to better mental health and has calming effects. For these reasons, I believe we all should aim to connect with nature more.

For my five minutes in nature, I went outside on my porch. I love it out there as my roommates have the entire border covered with plants and herbs. It is very pretty and relaxing. The only drawback is that my porch is near a busy intersection on Vanderhorst. At five o’clock during the weekdays, you can see and hear the rush hour traffic. Fortunately for me, I decided to do this on a beautiful morning. When I was out there, I felt as though I could see and breathe clearer. Breathing in fresh air just made me at ease. I also felt the natural calmness and relaxing effect after being out there. Taking these five minutes alone allowed me to clear my head, and organize my thoughts in a better fashion.  I was able to prioritize my tasks at hand for the day and think about my busy, last week of college. As I was thinking about this, I was observing the cars and the pedestrians as they walked by. There were 2 different people going by that were walking their dogs. Another part of me thought about watering the plants on the porch as well, although I didn’t actually do this. I would honestly compare this small five minute experience to a mediation. I have done guided meditations in the past. This experience left me feeling the same way as guided meditations have, relaxed and with a clear mind.  Meditation in fact, is the process of quieting the mind in order to spend time in thought for relaxation purposes. (from https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/4949/meditation) I would definitely recommend this experience to anyone in need of a small break.

Personal Change

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Throughout this semester I have learned in many different ways how my lifestyle affects the Earth. Before this class, I thought I was a pretty environmentally aware person. I had stopped using plastic bags, straws, and face washes with micro-beads in high school. The first time I was shocked about the impacts I still had on the Earth was during the carbon footprint exercise. Although my “Earths” were lower than the average American, I was still embarrassed and surprised. The biggest impact I have was from my driving. About five times a week, I drive from James Island to Seabrook Island. I did not think much about carpooling with my friends. After the carbon footprint assignment, I made more of an effort to carpool with other people. At least a couple times a week, I carpool with some of my friends now. Although in a perfect world I would be able to carpool everyday to reduce emissions, carpooling some is better than nothing.

Another part of my carbon footprint that was not apart of the assignment is the carbon emissions produced by the food industry. Food that travels across the country or even the world produces lots of carbon emissions. Not only is buying locally better for the economy, but it is better for the environment. This is not the only way my thoughts about food have changed. Chicken nuggets used to be my favorite food, especially Tyson’s. After watching the food documentary, I walked into kitchen and threw away all the chicken nuggets I could find. I was so surprised and disgusted by that documentary. I think majority of the population just doesn’t know how bad our food industry has become for ourselves and the environment. I have also tried to move to more of a plant based diet especially after Professor Saunders’ partner gave us that speech. He proved that a good diet can have a lot more effects than I realized. After that equation that calculated how many protein I should be eating, I realized I was eating too much. Most of our calories should be coming from other types of food. Although I have not completely removed meat from my diet, I have become a lot more conscious about my decisions. I do intend of eventually becoming a vegetarian, and I am spreading awareness to my family and friends. Fortunately, most of my friends have already made this switch. I believe if I did the carbon footprint assignment again, it would be lower.

I also try to make other small changes like taking shorter showers, trying not to buy clothing with plastics, turning off lights and such when I can, etc. It is important to do everything possible because unfortunately, it is very hard to live in the United States without a carbon footprint, which is upsetting.  I figured if I am going to have to have a carbon footprint, I will try every day and every way I can to reduce it. Fortunately, I am moving downtown in August so I will no longer drive to class, which will further reduce my carbon footprint.