Alwaysfornature

Biodegradable Plastics

‘Waste’ is a blanket term used to describe products of human life that are thrown away or disposed of. This can include everything from plastic to food waste to urine and faeces. Biodegradable waste is waste that can biodegrade. That is waste that will naturally break down and be returned to the soil as chemical elements in a reasonable time frame.

What are Biodegradable Plastics?

Plastics are everywhere and are used in almost all areas in the modern-day. It would be really difficult to imagine our daily lives without plastic.
The use of plastics has a downside, especially concerning its negative impacts on the environment. Plastic materials generally take centuries to breakdown naturally in the environment. Advancements have however been made towards the manufacture and use of biodegradable plastics.

The makeup structure of biodegradable plastics makes them easily break down by natural microorganisms, giving an end product that is less harmful to the environment. As such, biodegradable plastics are perceived to be more eco-friendly due to their environmental benefits, which are hard to deny compared to ordinary plastics.
To minimize environmental pollution, this type of plastic is undoubtedly a better choice, although, it still has its downside.

There are various Advantages of Using Biodegradable Plastics. To mention a few:

1) Biodegradable Plastics are Easy to Recycle
2) They Consume Less Energy During Their Manufacture
3) There is a reduction in the Amount of Waste Produced
4) There is Lower Petroleum Consumption
5) Decrease in Carbon dioxide Levels
6) Decrease in Emission of Greenhouse Gas Levels
7) Biodegradable Plastics Products Do Not Release Harmful Products Upon Decomposing. Etc.

Disadvantages
1) Biodegradable Products Come at a Higher Cost
2) There is a Need For More Crops and Croplands to Produce Biodegradable Plastics
3) Biodegradable Plastics May Produce Methane in Landfills
4) There is a Need For Costly Equipment For Both Processing and Recycling.

Please note that the existence of biodegradable plastics is not the most sustainable option, the most sustainable option of course is to prevent the production of plastics as a whole.

Biodegradable plastics still take a while lot of time to decompose when we could use organic and safe packaging in its stead.

Thus, while in a society without other options, biodegradable plastics may be the best option, when you do have the option, choose other. Choose natural, choose reusable,choose sustainable.

Like always, the order is to Reduce, Reuse/Repurpose and then Recycle.

References:

https://www.explainthatstuff.com/bioplastics.html

https://sciencing.com/benefits-biodegradable-plastic-22789.html

https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/advantages-disadvantages-uses-biodegradable-plastics.php

Monday Environmental Quote

“We don’t have to sacrifice a strong economy for a healthy environment”
Dennis Weaver

Why don’t you ponder this as you go on into the new week?

Know that people that are sustainable have been successful and will continue to be successful because they have chosen the infinite way.

Know that our various economies can survive just as well and even better with a healthy environment. An environment where we don’t have to worry about air pollution killing millions per year when it could be prevented, where our children can see the animals we loved as a child and not just hear about them in books, where families and communities can stay in their homes without fear of being uprooted by the latest oil drill.

We can be economically successful with a healthy environment.

Have a great week.

The Bamboo Plant

Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on Earth. Certain species can grow up to 91cm a day – 4cm an hour – at a speed of 0.00002mph.

Bamboo grows incredibly quickly, which is one reason it is often used to make sustainable, eco-friendly products. Re-planting bamboo is fairly easy thanks to the swift growth rate of the plant. The spreading root structure allows one rootstock to produce several shoots, permitting horizontal growth.

Some species can literally grow 10 centimeters per day! If you actually had the patience to sit there all day, you would notice the growth by the end of it.

Bamboo was the only plant to survive the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. It’s versatile, too, and can be used to make flooring, cups, furniture and even bicycles.

Sources:

Guinnesseworldrecords.com
Bbc.co.uk

THE LOVE CANAL TRAGEDY

Quite simply, Love Canal is one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in history.

The cruel irony is that Love Canal was originally meant to be a dream community.

Love Canal is a neighbourhood in Niagara Falls named after a large ditch that was dug in the 1890s for hydroelectric power. The ditch was abandoned before it actually generated any power and went mostly unused for decades.

In the 1920s Niagara Falls began dumping urban waste into Love Canal, and in the 1940s the U.S. Army dumped waste from World War II there, including waste from the frantic effort to build a nuclear bomb. Hooker Chemical purchased the land in 1942 and lined it with clay. Then, the company put into Love Canal an estimated 21,000 tons of hazardous chemical waste, including the carcinogens benzene, dioxin, and PCBs in large metal barrels and covered them with more clay.

In 1953, Hooker sold the land to the Niagara Falls school board for $1 and included a clause in the sales contract that both described the land use (filled with chemical waste) and absolved them from any future damage claims from the buried waste. The school board promptly built a public school on the site and sold the surrounding land for a housing project that built 200 or so homes along the canal banks and another 1,000 in the neighbourhood. During construction, the canal’s clay cap and walls were breached, damaging some of the metal barrels.

Eventually, the chemical waste seeped into people’s basements, and the metal barrels worked their way to the surface. Trees and gardens began to die; bicycle tires and the rubber soles of children’s shoes disintegrated in noxious puddles. From the 1950s to the late 1970s, residents repeatedly complained of strange odours and substances that surfaced in their yards. City officials investigated the area but did not act to solve the problem. Local residents allegedly experienced major health problems including high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and chromosome damage, but studies by the New York State Health Department disputed that. Finally, in 1978 President Carter declared a state of emergency at Love Canal, making it the first human caused environmental problem to be designated that way. The Love Canal incident became a symbol of improperly stored chemical waste.

Clean up of Love Canal, which was funded by Superfund and completely finished in 2004, involved removing contaminated soil, installing drainage pipes to capture contaminated groundwater for treatment, and covering it with clay and plastic. The total clean up cost was estimated to be $275 million.
According to the New York times, The head of the Environmental Protection Agency decided that much of the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, N.Y., is safe enough from chemical contamination to permit people to move back in. However, this attracted criticisms from environmentalists including the former head of a Love Canal citizens’ group, who said that the decision set a bad precedent for assuring public safety from abandoned dumps

This occurrence cannot be regarded as an isolated event. It could happen again anywhere in any country unless we move expeditiously to prevent it. Landfills can, of course, be an environmentally acceptable method of hazardous waste disposal, assuming they are properly sited, managed, and regulated. Love Canal will always remain a perfect historical example of how not to run such an unregulated operation.
To prevent future occurrences, hazardous wastes must be controlled from point of generation to their ultimate disposal, so dangerous practices resulting in serious threats to health and environment will not be allowed.

Sources: https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/love-canal-tragedy.html

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1986457_1986501_1986441,00.html

https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/envirobiology/chapter/6-4-case-study-the-love-canal-disaster/

https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/15/nyregion/government-says-abandoned-love-canal-homes-are-safe-now

Health and Biodiversity: Coronavirus

It is no secret the changes in the type and prevalence of human diseases have occurred during shifts in human social organization. The recent emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases appears to be driven by globalization and ecological disruption.

Diseases like schistosomiasis, lyme disease, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, West Nile virus, and even malaria! Yes, malaria. Changes in plant diversity – particularly through habitat alteration, fragmentation, and deforestation – can increase the risk of malaria transmission through effects of mosquito on survival, density, and distribution.

Links between biodiversity and human health are often complex, with the interplay of regional and global drivers, such as human migration and climate change, acting over relatively long periods of time, not to mention the non-disease health consequences of biodiversity loss, such as psychological well-being, that have been discovered.

Therefore, it was a matter of “when not if” an animal passed the coronavirus from wild bats to humans, according to scientists. Infectious disease experts agree that, like most emerging human disease, like ebola, rabies, sars and mers, among others, this virus initially jumped undetected from animal to animal across the species barrier.

Prof Andrew Cunningham, from the Zoological Society of London, explained: ”We’ve actually been expecting something like this to happen for a while. These diseases are emerging more frequently in recent years as a result of human encroachment into wild habitat and increased contact and use of wild animals by people.”

It is possible that we may never be able to know how exactly the first person in Wuhan Seafood Market got infected, but we must never not remember that our actions that affect the loss of biodiversity in the environment have far-reaching consequences on our own health.

Sources
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/59/11/945/251209
Wolfe ND Dunavan CP Diamond J . 2007. Origins of major human infectious diseases. Nature 447: 279–283.
Google ScholarCrossrefPubMed

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52529830
Subject: Coronavirus: A hunt for the ‘missing link’ host species – BBC News

Ten Facts On Waste Management In Africa

This waste monday, we have found some facts about waste management in Africa that we think you might find interesting:

1. In 2010 Africa was estimated to have 4.4 million metric tonnes of mismanaged plastic waste. This figure could rise to 10.5 million tonnes in 2025 if nothing is done.

2. The African Union has set in Agenda 2063 that it hopes that African cities will be recycling at least 50 percent of the waste they generate by 2063.

3. USD 6-42 billion investment is required to finance adequate waste management on the continent. However the waste sector is viewed as a high-risk investment in Africa.

4. The informal sector is heavily involved in waste management in Africa. Millions of Africans make a living by collecting, sorting and recycling garbage.

5. More than 130 people have died in landfill collapses in Africa in 2017-2018, two-thirds of whom were woman.

6. Only 4 percent of the waste generated in Africa is recycled.

7. 90 percent of the waste generated in Africa is disposed of to land, typically to uncontrolled and controlled dumpsites.

8. Waste collection services on the continent are inadequate. The waste collection rate is only 55 percent in Africa.

9. On average, 57 percent of municipal solid waste in Africa is biodegradable organic waste, the bulk of which is dumped.

10. Viable resources are being lost to the economy through dumping of waste such as polymer, fibre, metals and nutrients.

Source : sheisafrica.eu

Monday Environmental Quote

I mean who’s going to contest this?

“I think Nature’s imagination is so much greater than man’s, she’s never gonna let us relax!”
Richard Phillip Feynman

Look to the stars , to the moon , to the land biodiversity,…

Don’t get me started on the Blue World(the waters). To think man hasn’t explored 95% of that world is mind-boggling to say the least, afterwards, look at yourself. You are perfect, nature is perfect.

Why wouldn’t you want to protect such perfection, such creativity?

Love Nature, Love Life, Love Serenity.

Be a nature lover, it’s the coolest thing you can ever be!

Climate change caused this Fijian village to relocate

Fiji has always experienced the worst impacts of climate change such as sea level rise, warmer temperatures, ocean acidification and intensified El Niño patterns.

Vunidogoloa was the first Fijian village to feel the impacts of climate change. As early as 2006,floods and erosion die to sea level rise and increased rains had grown stronger, reaching homes and destroying crops. Hence, the villagers feared for their children, suffered from agony and experienced the worst consequences on their land: crops destroyed, scarcity of drinking water resources, fewer yields from fishing and endangered access to roads.

The village had to implement several adaptation techniques to mitigate the risks and impacts of climate change. Several homes were moved using their own resources and a petition to the Japanese government led to the construction of a seawall to protect from sea-level rise and inundations. This seawall would later turn out to do more harm than good as water that escaped the seawall couldn’t flow back into the sea undisturbed and this actually exacerbated flooding.

Relocation this seemed like the last resort. The villagers sought help of their government in 2006 for relocation however steps towards a relocation plan were not taken until 2012, when the National Summit for Building Resilience to Climate Change was held.

The new location was built with equalist intentions and participatory decision making with the villagers. Solar panels and a natural drainage system were installed.

The relocation process commenced in 2014 which transferred the villagers from the coast to a nearby location inwards and with a higher altitude. This new location was named Kenani.

Animals Lose Fear Of Predators Rapidly After They Start Encountering Humans .

Most wild animals show a site of predator avoidance behaviours such as vigilance, freezing and fleeing. But these are quickly reduced after the animals come in contact with humans through captivity, domestication or urbanisation according to a study led by Benjamin Geffroy from MARBEC (Institute of Marine Biodiversity Exploitation and Conservation).

The scientists found that contact with humans led to a rapid loss of animals’ anti predator traits, but simultaneously, the variability between individuals mutually increases and gradually decreases over the generations in contact with humans.

The authors proposed that this two stage process is caused by reduced pressure from natural selection as a result of living in a safer environment, followed by artificial selection by humans for docility in the case of domestication.

Animals showed immediate changes in anti predator response in the first generation after contact with humans suggesting that the initial response is as a result of behavioural flexibility which may later be accompanied by genetic changes if contact continues over many generations.

Other results from the research showed;
1️⃣ Domestication altered animals’ anti predator responses 3 times faster than urbanization while captivity resulted in the slowest change.

2️⃣ Herbivores changed behaviour more rapidly than carnivores and that solitary species tended to change quicker than group living animals.

The study demonstrates that domestication and urbanization exert similar pressures on animals and can result in rapid behavioural changes.

The loss of anti predator behaviours can cause problems when those domesticated or urbanised species encounter predators or when captive animals are released back into the wild.

Understanding how animals respond to contact with humans has important implications for conservation and urban planning, captive breed programs and live stock management.

Effect of Climate Change on Children

Climate change has multiple negative effects on humans.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, climate change affects humans in the following ways:

(a) increased mortality and morbidity associated with heatwaves and fires and increased risks of food- and water-borne diseases

(b) increased risk of undernutrition due to diminished food production in poor regions and adverse effects of climate-altering pollutants, and

(c) increase in vector-borne diseases

Children are more vulnerable to heatwaves, especially infants and athletes. Extreme weather events, such as severe storms, floods or wildfires, not only directly threaten the lives and safety of children, they put them at risk of mental health problems.

Poor air quality from climate change can cause breathing problems, especially in children with asthma.

Climate change has led to a rise in infections such as Lyme disease, diarrhoea, and parasites, which are often more hazardous to children than adults.

A child’s vulnerability is magnified by dependence on adults who may have been adversely affected by a shared extreme weather event. For instance, after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, many adult members of family units suffered PTSD, depression, and anxiety after living for weeks and months without access to clean water, electricity, and in many cases, basic medical care. For this reason, some were not capable of meeting the physical and emotional demands that such a disaster imposed on their children.

The “fingerprint” of climate change on future generations of children begins before they are born, as pregnant mothers endure environmental crises similar to those their children will experience after they are born.

Children are the least responsible for climate change but will bear the greatest burden of its impact. The WHO estimates that close to 90% of the burden of disease attributable to climate change is borne by children under the age of 5, in both developing and developed countries.

If climate change continues, so will the effects on children as they grow into adults. They will live in a world with: Unhealthier air, Fewer species of plants and animals, Less land, Less food, Mass migration, More instability, as people and governments argue over limited resources

We really need to act now! We can contribute a lot to prevent its negative effect on future generations starting today:

a) We can reduce our energy consumption and waste—as individuals, families, communities and societies.

b) We can work to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas—and increase our use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.

c) We can create and strengthen systems that can help keep us safe from the effects of climate change, such as early warning systems for extreme weather, and ways to keep people safe during extreme weather and natural disasters.

d) We can find ways to strengthen our health care system to be ready to help not just in cases of extreme weather or natural disaster, but also to help with the effects of extreme heat and poor air quality.

e) We can advocate for local, national and international policies that lessen greenhouse gas emissions.

Sources:
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention; https://www.jci.org

Methane from Agricultural Sources

Agricultural waste can represent a significant source of methane.

The anaerobic decomposition of livestock and poultry manure, common to manure heaps and slurry tanks, leads to large amounts of methane production due to its large organic carbon content. Similarly, the processing of industrial and domestic waste water and sewage can also produce significant amounts of methane.

In total, such waste accounts for between 14 and 25 million tonnes of methane emission per year globally.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas 28 to 36 times more effective at trapping atmospheric heat than CO2.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Historically, methane emission from this source is likely to have been much lower due to lower livestock numbers and relatively low livestock densities. Today though consumer demand, for meat and dairy products in particular, requires ever higher numbers and densities of livestock.

Clearly, man is directly responsible for methane emission from livestock manure and human sewage. Where animal manure would, in the wild, be spread over a wide area and decompose aerobically in the natural environment, intensive livestock rearing methods mean high concentrations of manure build up in relatively small areas. Such conditions lead to a predominance of, methane producing, anaerobic decomposition of the manure.

In a similar way, greater human numbers and population densities have led to larger concentrations of waste water and sewage in collection areas, such as sewage works. Human waste processing can also produce large amounts of methane if anaerobic decomposition is allowed to predominate.

The trapping of methane from strong sources of livestock manure methane, such as slurry tanks, has already proved a very successful way of reducing methane emissions to the atmosphere from this source. The recovered methane, often called ‘biogas’, can be simply flared off as carbon dioxide or can potentially be used as a fuel.

Other options include a move away from such intensive rearing methods, with an increase in grazing time for animals and so a greater dispersal of their manure. For human waste water and sewage, ensuring aerobic decomposition using aeration methods is an oft employed strategy, though methane trapping and subsequent burning is practiced at some sites.

Source: http://www.ghgonline.org

Monday Environmental Quote

Change is needed for progress to occur.

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
George Bernard Shaw

We must be open to change, to change our mindset before we can achieve our progressive goals.

We must change our mindset towards economic growth and nature conservation before we can achieve all set goals national or international.

Seek Change and Change again, the good way.

1970s Global Warming Scare: A Cooling Earth

In the early 1970s, a different kind of climate worry took hold: global cooling. As more people became concerned about pollutants people were emitting into the atmosphere, some scientists theorized the pollution could block sunlight and cool Earth.

In fact, Earth did cool somewhat between 1940-1970 due to a postwar boom in aerosol pollutants which reflected sunlight away from the planet. The idea that sunlight-blocking pollutants could chill Earth caught on in the media, as in a 1974 Time magazine article titled “Another Ice Age?”

But as the brief cooling period ended and temperatures resumed their upward climb, warnings by a minority of scientists that Earth was cooling were dropped. Part of the reasoning was that while smog could remain suspended in the air for weeks, CO2 could persist in the atmosphere for centuries.

P.S : In the wake of the 1970s global warming scare, Peter Gwynne wrote a remarkably popular Newsweek article in 1975 titled “The Cooling World” and Climate Change Deniers are still relying on it till today.

Source : http://www.history.com

Celebrating 33 years of the Montreal Protocol

It’s WORLD OZONE DAY

As children, we were all taught about the ozone layer and how there is a hole in it which was bad.

On September 16,1987, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (Montreal Protocol) was signed. This treaty is generally regarded as the most successful global environmental treaty having garnered signatures from all 197 UN countries. Not to mention that it has been widely successful in its application which has led to the reduction in the size of the Ozone hole.

In fact, it is reported that we’ve successfully phased out 80% of Ozone Depleting Substances(ODS) compared to 1990 levels.

This success is in part attributed to the collective action by the global community as well as the application of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities as regards developed and developing countries.

The phase out of these ODS also play a large part in the curb of climate change, preventing the emissions of greenhouse gases which contribute to global warming and climate change.

This Protocol reminds us as a global community of what we can achieve if we make conscious steps to work together, providing solid technical and financial support to developing countries as well as making the sustainable switch from climate change inducing actions.

THE WORLD HAS FAILED THE WORLD. Biodiversity Loss Pt. 2

In 2010, 196 countries had come together to set targets. These targets were called Aichi targets and they were centered on how to tackle the issue of biodiversity on a planetary scale. In a bid to do this, they had set 20 targets to revive the dying state of biodiversity but unfortunately, as it sounds, these countries had failed their said target and this Aichi target was barely accomplished.

According to the review that was carried in 2014 to assess the pace of the accomplishment of these targets, it was said that biodiversity was still at its brink of dimness.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services reviewed that “one million of the nearly 9 million estimated plants and animals could be pushed over the brink in the next few years by habitat destruction, pollution, overexploitation, the spread of invasive species across the globe, and increasingly, climate change.“

Furthermore, it was recorded that usually common birds are now being more vulnerable to risk of extinction and human induced factors .

During these last weeks, the World Wildlife Fund’s 2020 Living Planet Report estimated that globally, populations of nearly 21,000 species of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and amphibians plummeted by an average of 68 percent between 1970 and 2016.

The major causative factor to these biodiversity casualties is

1. The intense harvesting of seafood than the fishes could ever replenish. 2. Agriculture which leads to land destruction which comprises 40% of the world’s habitat.

In a bid to make these target more effective they’ve increased the annual finance from $80 billion to $90 billion and also advised to make it the basic policy of each and all countries and to as well be inclusive with every human to endeavor to make a change rather than damage.

Source: National Geographic

DO:
✔️Protect our biodiversity
✔️Stop overfishing
✔️Eat less meat to reduce the demand
✔️Call out companies and organizations posing serious threats to biodiversity in their bid to source for fuel or their continued pollution.

Effects of Climate Change on Parasitoids in the Arctic

Through a unique research collaboration, researchers at the University of Helsinki have exposed major changes taking place in the insect communities of the Arctic. Their study reveals how climate change is affecting small but important predators of other insects, i.e. parasitoids.

“Predators at the top of the food web give us a clue to what is happening to their prey species, too. These results increase our understanding of how global warming is changing nature. At the same time, they suggest new inroads for finding answers to big questions in the field of ecology,” says Professor Tomas Roslin from the University of Helsinki and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

The researchers’ main discovery was that clear traces of climate change can already be seen in arctic insect communities.

“In areas where summers are rapidly warming, we find a higher proportion of cold-sensitive predators than we might expect based on the previous climate,” Roslin notes.

The study joined research teams working in Greenland, Canada, Russia, Norway, Finland and Iceland, which together compared regions where the climate has changed at different rates and in different ways in recent decades.

Parasitoids are fierce predators but sensitive to changes in climatic conditions.

“The climate of the Arctic is currently changing about twice as fast as the global average. Therefore, the Arctic region provides an important laboratory when we try to understand the effects of climate change on nature,” says Tuomas Kankaanpää, lead author of the study and active at the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki.

We have the parasitoids to thank for our crops and gardens. Parasitoids are among the main enemies of herbivorous insects, and without them much of the world’s greenery could disappear into smaller mouths. In the Arctic, the parasitoids are, in fact, the most numerous and species-rich predators.

Source: “Climate change recasts the insect communities of the Arctic.” ScienceDaily.

Recycling

Recycling is a way of extending the usefulness of something that has already fulfilled its initial purpose.

A new product can be made out of it and it becomes useful again. The process starts when you separate the materials that can be recycled from your other trash. Those materials are then collected by a recycling company or collection program in the community.

Recycling is important for a lot of reasons some of which include; the fact that
👉🏾it protects the environment,
👉🏾it cuts landfill waste,
👉🏾it reduces future costs and
👉🏾it recovers non-renewable resources thereby conserving finite natural resources among others with the end game being saving the environment.

Nigeria is one of the biggest contributor of solid waste in Africa with an estimated 32 million tons each year. To promote the idea of recycling Nigerians exchange waste for cash and this is an effective way of spurring people on to recycle and work harder towards cleaning the environment.

One of the challenges of recycling in Nigeria is that it is very expensive.

Startuptipsdaily.com says it costs estimately about 25million Naira to set up a plastic recycling factory.

Recycling is very important for a host of reasons and we as Nigerians should make conscious effort to recycle any materials that can be recycled and imitate other countries who have successfully incorporated recycling into their normal way of life so as to ensure a cleaner and safer Nigeria.

Sources;
The world counts
WWW.Voanews.com
Quartz Africa(qz.com)
Startuptipsdaily.com