How to recycle and upcycle

Our world is in a bad situation because of our reckless use of fossil fuels for the last century and one of the few solutions we have to this problem is to capture the extra carbon dioxide we let into the atmosphere. Gathering carbon from the atmosphere which is called carbon capturing was a very expensive practice but as science of carbon capturing made it more viable for companies. This improvement of technology made startups pop out all around the world creating carbon capturing systems but it is a hard thing to do, many create more carbon than they capture, but this carbon capturing plant in Sweden is about to shake the market and make the carbon capturing systems not only common, it will also make them profitable. Climeworks in Switzerland is now capturing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and their 2025 goal is to capture %1 of the carbon in the atmosphere of our planet. It might seem like a small impact but as the numbers of these plants increase, their impact will be seen and appreciated. These plants capture the carbon dioxide into small pellets that can be used in industrial processes of other products, and also can be sold to fizzy drink producers which makes them profitable. Also many countries around the world are taxing the carbon emitting companies and use this money to support startups and plants like this one in Switzerland.

Paper Cups

  Every year an average of 2 billion pieces of paper cups produced in Turkey. These cups are widely used in homes, schools, and offices. The use of paper cups especially in my university (Abdullah Gül University) is very high. A student use approximately 2 paper cups per a day and there are more than 1200 students in AGU. This is very huge number. So, why the usage of paper cups so widely?  Because the use of paper cups is considered more environmentally friendly. Actually, the real situation is a little different.

    Research shows that plastic cups are more environmentally friendly than paper cups. While the amount of energy required to produce and use for 75 plastic cups is 20 MUe , this rate is 30 MUe for  75 paper cups,, which means 50 % more waste of resources than carbon cups. Additionally, as a result of the use of 1,000 paper cups, 550 kilograms of carbon gas are released, while this figure is only 215 kilograms for 1 thousand plastic cups.

   To sum up, finding a solution to the use of paper cups will contribute to reducing the carbon footprint.

In the next blog. I will provide information about the solution to this issue.

See you.

The best way to prevent the complications caused by high levels of carbon in our atmosphere is to not let it into the atmosphere in the first place. It is much harder to collect the carbon in atmosphere when it is dispersed all around.

There are many ways like biking, walking rather than taking the bus, having a plant at home etc. to realize this idea.

As a computer engineering student what I recommend my fellow computer engineering students is to push themselves hard to write efficient code that uses less computing power to run and use power saving mode when not doing something that demands high power input. It might seem insignificant at first but since computer programs can be easily copied and run on other devices it adds up overtime and will make a trend of low consumption high yield which is beneficial for everyone. By tempting myself to write more efficient code both made me a better programmer and is implicitly beneficial to the ecological balance of the earth.

We all see much news about climate change but we are not very careful about this.  Even some simple touches in our daily life can make a huge contribution to reducing our carbon footprint. Then, I decided to make some touches in my life that would reduce my carbon footprint. For example, I spent an average of 120 liters less water per week by reducing my shower time by 5 minutes per day. On the other hand, I changed all light bulbs with energy saver ones. I also unplugged all electronic appliances in my home when I was not using them. I think even these small touches have a big impact on reducing my carbon footprint. If we all start doing things like this, we will make a major contribution to the reduction of global warming.

See you in the next post.

Mert Kandemir

This project shows us that we can benefit from the smallest things that we consider to be of no value such as bottle caps .

In Long Beach, New York, the youth of Long Beach collected over than 25,000 plastic caps in only one month’s time a mosaic called “when the Beach meets the Bay,” has been made using these bottles caps by a small team of committed assistants under the guidance of Lisa Be, working 12 hours every day for 30 days they placed 25,000 plastic caps one by one into galvanized steel panels.

The ecological impact of this project was great, this project helped to reduce the amount of plastic in Long Beach, New York, Improved the appearance of the street and make it appear more beautiful and educated the people about the importance of plastic recycling.

Resource : https://www.theinertia.com/music-art/25000-plastic-caps-brighten-street-corner-post-hurricane-sandy/

See you in another blog …..

Yazan Ishtyah

We all know that water is one of the things that we can’t live without it, so it has to be available all the time, we can get it from a lot of places and resources for example during the classes or even when we go shopping we buy water in plastic bottles.

My research will focus on these plastic bottles effects because after being done with these bottles we throw them in the trash or even in different places around the campus without knowing the consequences of this action on the surrounding environment or on our health. knowing that plastic takes years to dissolve, for many reasons if we don’t recycle this plastic, this will affect our environment and our health in a very bad way such as :

• Create plastic pollution in the campus and the surrounding environment, because we don’t know where these bottles are going to end up, maybe on a sidewalk or under a tree … etc.   

• One of the best things here in our campus is the natural landscape and throwing the water bottles inside the campus will ruin this view.

• After reading a lot about this subject I found out that if water stays for a long time inside the plastic bottles will end up Bad and will cause health problems for us if we drink it.

•   The process of manufacturing plastic and turning it into bottles contribute to the increase of carbon footprint as one 500-milliliter bottle has a total carbon footprint equal to 82.8 grams of carbon dioxide.

In the next blog I will identify the solution of this problem and how can we deal with it in the right way

See you

Yazan Ishtyah