Zero-Waste Christmas Party

      

            In our Environmental Engineering subject, our professor tell us that we will be having a Christmas party. Zero-waste Christmas party. I was confuse first on how are we going to conduct a Christmas party that will not produce any waste?

            If we are going to order in a fast food, that will produce waste because it will include styrofoam which will be the container of the food and plastic spoon, fork and cups. So me and my classmates think of a way where we will not produce any waste. So beforehand we brainstorm and prepare for the Christmas party. We think of games that doesn't need any tools or equipment that will produce waste, we come up to a couple of games including trip to jerusalem, group yourselves and the national game for any party here in the philippines which is "Pinoy Henyo". During the first game trip to jerusalem which need music for the participant to dance before the the music stops and sits on the chair that is available, instead of using stereo or any speaker, we think of a way that we will not produce any waste even electricity waste, so what we did is, we sing the songs, which is really fun and is being enjoyed by everyone. The other games were as fun as the other games and we all did enjoy the competence of everyone. In every Christmas party, the food is always the highlight of the party. as I said earlier its hard to think of what food that will not produce any waste. So one of my classmate suggest that, we will just bring fruits, all of us agree to this because the idea is excellent, basically it will still produce a waste because of its skin and seeds. But if you will think it through, before the fruit became a "fruit" it doesn't undergo process that will produce waste. For example, a plastic cups, factories that produce plastic cups produce so much waste to the environment specially in our atmosphere, but the fruits is just being pick up on a tree and doesn't produce any waste or harmful agents to the environment. Overall I can say that our party is a success because all of us enjoyed and happy including our professor, and we did achieve "Zero-Waste Christams Party"

The 11th Hour

The 11th Hour is one the greatest documentary about nature and environment that I watched. It is packed with knowledge and facts about the current condition of our world. It discuss past and future problems with all its details that awakens me about the current situation of environment and how grave it is. It is an eye opener for all of us, I recommend watching it for better understanding and awareness in the situation of our world.

1. Describe some of the emotions you felt during the film. Which aspects of the video had the greatest impact on you and why?

While watching the video, I feel some emotions like sad and shock. The part in the video that has the greatest impact on me is when they discuss that people think that they are superior to all species and living things in the world.

2. What information contained in the video was new to you?

The part when they presented the urban eco environment, where some of the buildings have an eco-environmental friendly system, and some of it works like trees where they cultivate sunlight and generate it as electricity.

3. What topics presented in the film would you like to explore further? Do you know that you need to know in order to continue learning about environmental issues? If the answer to that question is no, how can you find out what you need to know?

I want to explore further about the urban eco environmental friendly system, because I’m an engineering student and it interest me. No, but with the help of the internet I think it can help me by researching further about this particular topic and the organization here in our country that focus in this kind of matter.

4. Discuss the ways that eating locally produced food is an environmental issue. What can individuals do to support local production and consumption of foods?

Because eating and patronizing locally produced food helps lessen the global warming, why? Because let’s say a banana that is from from china or hongkong, it travels so much longer with the fuel guzzling transportation than bananas that are produced locally. We can help by buying and patronizing locally produced food, that it will not get a high demand in the market and lessen the demand for imported foods.

5. Who should see this film and for what purposes? Who might be unreceptive to the ideas in the film and why?

People in the Government and those who are in power over this matters for them to see that the problem is worse than what they think it is. They themselves are the unreceptive people about this ideas in the film, because they are well aware about this problem and still do nothing.

6. Share one issue or item that you wrote on your index card while you were watching The 11^th Hour.

One issue that I wrote is about improper waste disposal and how it greatly affects us and our environment.

7. As a result of your having seen this film, what, if any, specific actions do you think you will take?

As a student I can’t do something major that will turn around all of this, but by making little steps like spreading the knowledge, advocating what has to be done and the issues at hand, I think that is the action that is realistic to what I can do for now.

Root Cause Analysis

In our last meeting in this subject, our professor asked us to group ourselves into three and discuss our own blogs in the group that we did in the first meeting of this subject. After discussing our blogs, we did an activity called "Root Cause Analysis" where we list down the problems we include on our blogs and track down its root cause. After listing numerous problems, we came up to one problem that caught our attention. We decided that we will pick Scarcity of Oil as our main problem. Then we proceed to track down its main cause.

Discussing our main problem we all agreed that the cause of scarcity of oil is first, increase in the demand, because in our world today, the demand keeps rising and never decreasing, second cause is oil is limited. The cause of the increase in its demand is the continuous consumption, and the cause of its being limited is that oil is a non-renewable resources unlike others. The cause of the continuous consumption is that many industries use oil as its main source of power. Cars is one of the main consumer of oil, imagine how many thousands or millions of cars use oil daily. Factories and Power plants also use oil as their main power. We come up that the cause of the things I mentioned above is that it is a human necessity, we need it in our daily lives and it’s really important for humans to keep moving forward through tomorrow.

So what are the possible solutions in these two main causes? For the Non-renewable our group thinks that we cannot do something if the oil is really non-renewable, so we think that developing alternatives to oil that is renewable and will give us the same power and effect we need. As for the Human Necessity, our group thought that catering to human needs is the only answer to this one.