Biodegradable's Dark side

Picture

This is a picture of an example of a piece of biodegradable garbage. Most people think that pieces of trash like this would be good for the environment but there is actually a downside to biodegradable trash.

Summary

In this article it talks about how biodegradable trash can actually be bad to the environment. It says the major downside of rapid decomposition is that it releases a deadly gas into the environment; methane. Normal landfills create methane gas as the trash in it decomposes. In some landfills that methane gas that is released is captured and turned into an energy source. Most landfills wait 2 years for the methane to get trapped and stay in there before they collect it all. The bad part about biodegradable trash is that it decomposes a lot faster then that and the methane that that trash releases get released into the environment before it can be captured. A North Carolina University test shows that slower biodegration is more effective in landfills. They say it is the best way to help this methane problem. http://www.emagazine.com/magazine/biodegradables-dark-side?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EMagazineIssueFeed+%28E+Magazine+Print+Issue+Feed%29

Opinion

I am shocked that biodegradable trash is bad for the environment. I always thought that biodegradable trash was best for the environment. I find it interesting how landfill companies wait and let the methane collect underground for a couple years before they collect it for use to change it into usable energy.

Questions

1. How does the biodegradable trash release the methane gas?
2. What does it do when it is released into the environment?
3. Whats the best way to keep this from happening more?
4. Will the landfill companies do anything about it?

Plastic Seas

Ally's Post

A Sea Captain Chances Upon a Sea of Plastic Waste—And a Lifelong Mission—in the Book Plastic Ocean.

The picture was not showing up in my email, so I could not link it.

A thousand miles from land halfway between California and Hawaii is full of pollution. Captain Charles Moore states that there was not a minute that passed that he did not see plastic waste floating by. This scene has also been called “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” This issue is not only about plastic pollution in the pacific but also that it has reached ocean homes and creature bodies. The picture above shows realistically just how bad this has turned into. I think that the pollution needs to end so that the ocean animals stay healthy and safe.

Is this issue brought up in the media?

When did this get out of control?

How can it come to an end?

Some Like It Hot: in warming seas, some fish lose while others gain http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2011/09/some-like-it-hot/

- This is a picture of the northern european coastline where temperatures in the ocean are rising greatly.

-Warmer ocean tempertures can cause more diverse schools of fish in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean. Studies have shown that warm-water species are doing better in the European shelf then the southern cold-adapted types of fish. Stephan Simpson, from the University of Bristol, and his team have studied over a million square kilometers of the European continental shelf and over 100 million fish for the past 28 years. For the past 30 years the northeastern Atlantic ocean has been warming at four times the global average and is considered the "cauldron of climate change." Temperature influences egg maturation rates, growth, and fish larve survival and impacts the planktonic communites in the ocean. 72% of fish in Europe have already shown a response to the rise in temperature, 3 0f every 4 of those fish have grown in population. There is a chance of a further decline in cold-adapted fish as exotic warm water species grow.

- I was shocked to learn how much the ocean temperatures have been rising and I was also surprised by how much the fish and plankton were effected by the ocean temperature change. The whole world is going through climate change, land and water. I eat fish all the time and it worries me that some populations of fish are going down due to the change in temperature. we should pollute less to help climate control.

-Why isn't this issue discussed more?

Will polluting less cause the problem to go away?

Are there any ways to stop climate change altogether?

Will this issue cause a lot of problems for fisherman?

Dead in the Gulf

http://www.emagazine.com/magazine/dead-in-the-gulf?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EMagazineIssueFeed+%28E+Magazine+Print+Issue+Feed%29

-This picture shows the "dead zone" on the Gulf of Mexico. It stretches for thousands of miles along the coast. The red signifies the low-oxygen level (dead zone). 

- Dead zones are areas in the water where the oxygen levels are very low and they keep on getting lower. Predictions have been made that the dead zone on the Gulf of Mexico could possibly develop into being 8,500 to 9,421 square miles this year. To get a better understanding of how large this zone is, it's about the size of Delaware and New Jersey merged together. The origin of the dead zone comes from the runoff that goes into the Mississippi river which includes sewage, fertilizers used for crops, chemicals from factories, car exhaust and animal waste. When the nitrate and phosphate from the runoff mix with the temperate freshwater of the Mississippi river, it tends to sit on top of the cooler saltwater in the Gulf. This blocks the oxygen from getting deeper into the water and when the nicer weather comes, algae grows on top of the water, but since there is no life in the dead zone to eat it, the algae sinks to the bottom which then sucks up oxygen while it dies. Even fisherman are finding fish that have abnormalities. The good thing about this is that it could be fixed. The Black Sea had the world's largest dead zone, but after using less fertilizer (since it got costly), the dead zone went away completely. To fix the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, people need to be more careful when using their fertilizers and to make sure that sewage and other chemicals aren't dumped into the river.

-I knew that the oil spill was a big issue when it came to the sea life in the Gulf of Mexico, but it's interesting to see that the spill isn't really the only cause of the lack of life in the water. I didn't really know about dead zones before and apparently they could be anywhere.

1. Why aren't people putting much effort into not polluting the Mississippi river?

2. Why aren't dead zones talked about more?

3. Could the expanding of the zone be put to a halt before it's too late? 

whats up kids