geography

Fun Facts

Presently, 80 per cent of municipal and industrial solid waste in Canada is disposed of by landfilling processes, with the remainder disposed through recycling, resource recovery and incineration.
Recycling one aluminum can saves an amount of energy equivalent to half that can filled with gasoline.
Every year nearly 900,000,000 trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills

Benefits:disease control

control of vermin that spread disease less chance of infectious outbreaks and contamination of groundwater less rodents and insects that otherwise pose a public health risk. Fewer habitats and sources of food will decrease its population prevent indiscriminate burning or burial methods that could pose long term health risks, such as lung cancer, or dead bodies attracting disease carrying rodents environment prevent smog, something many places in Asia are experiencing partly due to improper waste disposal cleaner quality air and drinkable water from reservoirs cleaner environment means healthier and more successful ecosystems. more scenic, better international reputation thus attracting more tourists, helping the economy better atmosphere leads to happier and more productive people more space for development. For example, instead of having waste dumped everywhere, it could all be relocated to a waste processing plant to either get incinerated or composted. This saves land for agriculture, recreation, housing, etc. more fertile soil from composting, improving agriculture reduces the risk of accidental injury to staff, clients, visitors, and the local community reduce odor

Benefits:Recycling reduces the amount of solids for disposal, thus less garbage because it is being reused recycled products available for use for ex: many batteries and phones can be recycled and used as parts in new products saves energy, saves resources (eg: tons of trees can be saved for making paper by replacing it with recyclable paper) reduces the need for new landfills and incinerators organics can be used as compost for better soil and helps soil organisms (worms) slows the consumption of natural resources by using recyclable resources instead an easy way to make people environmentally aware and make a difference make money by recycling

Drawbacks:

Waste processing plants
Waste management plants take up valuable space for development, and will also emit pollution significant amounts of co2 and toxic gases are produced and released into the atmosphere building and maintaining processing plants such as incinerators are expensive and require long term investments thus may be very risky for investors incinerators produce fine particles that sometimes gets emitted into the atmosphere, hurting the quality of the air old Incineration plants release deadly emissions into the atmosphere waste management plants are undesirable (eg: odor from landfills) by countries and downgrades the value of property around it

Health probs increase of harmful emissions and particles can lead to health programs highly toxic fly ash (residue generated from combustion used in incinerators) needs to be properly disposed otherwise pose a threat to local communities hazardous; it can pose a risk to employees and residences near the facility, creating a liability risk for the company. landfills may cause groundwater contamination and reduced air quality, posing a health risk for nearby communities.

Animals and ecosystems area of land could be permanently damaged; eg soil can no longer be used for agriculture landfills may cause groundwater contamination and reduced air quality, posing a health risk for nearby communities
Waste management plants take up valuable space for development, and will also emit pollution

Associated prob animals die due to the ingestion of the plastics. They also sometimes are hurt by them, for example seagulls often times get their heads stuck in a 6 pack plastic ring, which can suffocate them and lead to a horrible death. damage boat and submarine equipment, litter beaches, discourage swimming and harm commercial and local fisheries.
Solutions
Get groups of volunteers to clean up garbage that shows up on beaches.
Eliminate the usage of plastic bags. These bags are generally recyclable, but billions of them are thrown away every year.
Hard to implement: cleaning up could, in turn, do more damage than good because of the delicate ecosystems throughout the oceans. Plucking out the different plastics throughout would be a threat to plankton, which are the base of the marine food chain and account for almost half of all photosynthesis on Earth! This would severely damage the marine life, and would lead to certain animals not being to live the way they're used to - and could cause extinction! the act of cleaning the ocean itself would also require a lot of fuel, which is definitely not something you'd want to use on a trip trying to clean up for our mistakes! We'd probably wind up polluting the air more than we clean up the water!

2wk C

By switching some of my daily foods to locally grown or organic alternatives, I've decreased my carbon footprint on this planet and reduced pollution.

Eating locally grown products meant reducing my mileage eating foods and drinks.

Also, by consuming organic food I have lessened the amount of insecticides and pesticides made and spread across the country.

This challenge made me realize that sometimes staying "green" may not necessarily mean making sacrifices. I found organic and locally grown food equally or even better than its counterparts.

By beginning to compost my fruit peelings, I am able to recycle useful plant parts back into the ground.

Through this process, soils gain more nutrients and also increases the success of ecosystems within.

I am also helping because there will be less waste at the landfill, taking up fewer space. By reducing the amount of solid waste in landfills, I increase the lifetime of them and also decrease the amount of greenhouse gases produced from them.

Now, I find that small contributions like having a compost bin is very important and if everyone did this there would be much less landfills across the world.

By turning off the lights whenever I'm not in the room, I save the energy to power the light bulb from power stations, which produce greenhouse gases and other harmful emissions.
Through this challenge, I was able to see how easy it was to help the environment, and that every effort counts, no matter how big or small.