Technologies that help the environment by Iris Subashi, LSP Assisi/Italy
Jeff Kirschner is the creator of the app called Litterati. Jeff is a public speaker for corporations and universities and he worked as a writer with clients such as Levi's and Sony. In a conference of TED Talks he presented his invention: Litterati, a global community that works to create a litter-free planet. This community has been featured in National Geographic Magazine and Usa Today.
The story of Litterati began when Jeff and his daughter were walking in a forest. They saw a cats' bedding in a river and she said to him that it wasn't the right place for that thing. This event made him think of the summer camp where he used to go. A place where everyone picked up litter and in a few hours the camp was clean. Jeff had the idea to use collective cleaning and this was the inspiration for Litterati. Jeff started to collect photos of litter that he found on the pavement of his city and after he picked it up he published the photos on Instagram and began to explain to people what he was doing. Jeff created an app that collects both the photos and the information about the litter that was picked up (material, amount, origin). In a few days his photos were shared all around the world.
In this way Litterati became a community. Every photo tells a story about who takes it and also where and when it was taken. In a short time Litterati was full of photos, so Jeff decided to create a map with the help of Google Maps, where he signalled with a tag the place where the photo was taken. That means with this app we can control the areas of the city that are polluted and we can organize events everyone can participate in and help clean the city. The first city to be traced was San Francisco, but Litterati is expanding in all the metropolises around the world such as London, Sydney, Amsterdam.
In my opinion Jeff's idea is very useful for the environment, but mostly for visual pollution. It is also accessible to the majority of people around the world thanks to social networks, especially the new generations that could be more responsible for the future. With this app we can clean our cities in a short time, saving on expenses and at the same time having an ecological city and we can make this possible day by day.
picture taken from:Pixabay
Posted 22.05.2017 21:56
Who is really paying for oil? by Lorenza Liguori, LSP Assisi/Italy
In my class we’re doing a project with our English teachers. The assignement was to watch a Ted conference, to analyze it, and to present it to the rest of the class through a Power Point presentation.
In the TED conference that was assigned to me, the photographer Garth Lenz through photos taken by himself, introduces a recurring but ignored theme: The problem of oil.
Lenz begins his speech talking about Canada, showing photos in the background of the boreal zone located in the north of Canada, which is a key part of the natural heritage and also an important part of the cultural heritage inspiring a lot of artists.
This area is characterized by the presence of several forests and an incredible abundance of wetlands, which are one of the most endangered ecosystems. These wetlands are extremely important because they clean air and water, they trap large amounts of greenhouse gases and they're home to a huge diversity of species. Indigenous peoples have lived there for a very long time. In this boreal zone we can find beautiful places like the Peace-Athabasca Delta, which is the world's largest freshwater delta, and the perfect habitat for different species and important animals like the wild bisons; then on the top of a hill we can find the beautiful Great Bear Rainforest in which there are dry boreal forests of 100-year-old trees and then a completely different ecosystem made of coastal temperate rainforest.
As you'll understand these places are of world importance because these forests can protect us from global warming. The indigenous people that live there could teach us things that nobody else could, a lot of species find a home there among the trees or in the water. You could ask me: So what? What's the problem?
Let me explain to you that in the heart of this eco system there is the very antithesis of all of these values: The Alberta tar sands, the largest oil reserves on the planet.
Trapped underneath the boreal forest and wetlands of northern Alberta are vast reserves of oil and the mining and exploitation of it is creating devastation in a way that the planet has never seen before. The oil obtained from the extraction produces more greenhouse gas emissions than any other oil and this is one of the reasons why it's called the world's dirtiest oil and his tailings ponds are the largest toxic impoundments on the planet. But in spite of that, native people have to live and to eat contaminated food in order to survive.
Instead of talking about money and the cost of the oil, we should think about the true cost of it and that nature and the whole world are paying for it. We are losing a lot of places like the Peace-Athabasca Delta and the Great Bear Rainforest which are the ones that could help us survive the threat of the pollution caused by oil. The boreal zone is perhaps our best defense against global warming and climate change because the boreal forests trap more carbon than any other ecosystem, but what we are doing is destroying this carbon sink and turning it into a carbon bomb.
People all around the world think about the cost of oil and not about all that this can cause to the world and to the people who live in it. The project for the future involves a worsening of the situation by an almost four-time increase in production and what people should do is unite and ask for change in policy and stop the production of this dirty oil. We need to ensure that these wetlands and forests that are our best and most critical defense against global warming are protected. Everyone reading this article has a role to play and, I think, a responsibility, because what we can do here is going to change our history.
picture taken from:Pixabay
Posted 07.06.2017 12:47
A young solution by Leonardo Bonamente, LSP Assisi/Italy
Ashton Cofer is a genial kid, member of an ordinary family of 4 people: A father interested in gardening, a busy mother who is a housewife, a young sister who spends her weekend doing homework and using social media, and Ashton who enjoys playing video games. But video games are not his only hobby. Ashton has participated in an international LEGO robotics game for kids with three other students and with the same team he has worked on different science projects.
A few months before the divulgation at the Ted Talk conference, a couple of his teammates felt compelled to elaborate a plan to recycle Styrofoam during a trip to Central America where they saw beaches littered with it.
picture taken from:Pixabay
Styrofoam needs about 500 years to biodegrade and the US alone produces over two billion pounds of it. In addition, Styrofoam cannot be recycled like many plastics. First of all because recycled polystyrene is too expensive and potentially contaminated. It’s so clear Styrofoam represents a real problem! Considering it a non-renewable material, many cities across the US are passing ordinances to ban the production of many objects produced with it. But Ashton’s team wants more from their country and works to help the environment!
What Ashton has made is an extraordinary thing. He is a genial kid but, differently from other countries like Italy, his brilliance is supported by the school system where he lives, in this case America. In fact the American school system, especially for scientific specializations, supports the students’ creativity. The students of these institutions are genial because sometimes they associate to chemistry the simple things they see every day. In addition, they have the possibility to have funds easily and it helps them to continue their research. It was an ordinary Saturday at home when a brilliant idea just “caught fire”. Looking at and thinking about the grill going up in flames in the garden they hypothesized, using the carbon that’s already in Styrofoam, to create activated carbon which is used in almost every water filter. After many stimulating failures, they made the impossible possible: With the right temperatures, time and chemicals Ashton’s team created activated carbon from Styrofoam, demonstrating to be able to purify water reducing Styrofoam waste. So their plan can solve two global problems with just one solution and this is the reason why they received funds to invest in their scientific project by the NSTA’S eCYBERMISSION STEM-in-Action Program sponsored by the US Army as well as FIRST Global Innovation Awards sponsored by XPRIZE.
Posted 07.06.2017 13:09
What should we do? by David Del Bianco LSP, Assisi/Italy
Often we do not care about the environment, or better we do nothing about the impact that our actions will have on it. Everyone has his own ideas on this purpose, deriving from a mixture of what one reads or hears about it. All these ideas together form the environment folklore. Leyla Acaroglu in her “Ted talk” examines the question “paper beats plastic?”. She tries to give a new idea about the environment and how to have a positive impact on it. Something I thought about is this: Everything comes from nature and so every material has an impact on the world system. The systems are: The economy, the society, the environment. They are strictly connected so that every action has a repercussion on each of the others. From this point of view I think that we have to use the resources we have in a responsible way. But how can we do it? We have to try to waste less and we have to think about the little things because the addition of all these little things has a great impact. One example of these simple actions is not to throw away food, since a lot of energy and water is needed to produce it. Furthermore, when it rots it produces carbon dioxide and when it is thrown in the landfills it produces methane. Both gases contribute to climate change. Other actions are the following. Fill the tea kettle only with the amount of water needed, use public transports, keep the phones as long as possible and reuse bags instead of discarding them. It’s important to use reusable and recyclable material because by doing so we would stop one of the most polluting parts of the life-cycle of materials. The extraction of resources has a great effect on the environment. The life-cycle includes five main parts: Extraction, manufacturing, distribution, use, end-of-life. Every part has its influence on the environment and it’s our mission to try to obtain a positive result. This doesn’t mean that we do not have to consume anymore, but to do so in a more responsible way. Every material has its property and we have to use it well. Posted 09.06.2017 11:38
Olga Dziura - 19.06.2017 00:31
I reply to Diego's article.
Creating a litter-free planet is difficult challenge. We might even say it is impossible. I've never heard of Litterati. The actions that Jeff Kirschner has taken are so simple, but also brilliant. Litterati makes people more aware of problem and involves them effortlessly in making the change. I think initiatives like this are crucial, because only small steps work against such a big problem as the pollution of the planet.
Livia Kurucz-Morvai - 09.07.2017 14:52
I reply to Diego's and Lorenza's article.
The app Diego wrote about in his article is fantastic. It's very good that somebody created a very useful thing which can make our world into a litter-free world. It gave me inspiration. I would be so happy if my town would use this in the future. I want to thank your article and you of course that I could learn about Litterati.
Lorenza's article draws attention to a big problem and I agree with her thoughts. If everyone does just a little thing to stop this then every little change will result in something big. The way she explained things made me start to think about what we, teenagers, can do to stop this.