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Nicholas Perkins
Recently for my Mom's birthday, we decided to take her to SF for lunch. We went to the Oakland port to take a ferry ride that would take us to Fisherman's Wharf where our lunch was at. When we were waiting for the ferry, I really noticed how much trash and how green the water was. It wasn't the nice blue color we like to picture our water to be, but instead it was a sick green color, to where you couldn't see the bottom of the floor in the water. There were soda and beer bottles littered across the shore as well as just floating across the water. As we got on the ferry and made our way to SF, I also noticed a landfill off to my right.  I thought it was in a strange place right next to the water. Even though landfills are regulated, and made safe, still though putting a landfill right next to the water? Is that really such a good idea? What if there was an error with the lechate collecting system at the bottom, the lechate would just seep out into the water.

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Paxton Buckley
I went camping by the delta for a couple days with my church a little while ago and I didn't realize until now how harmful campfires can be. When you think of campfires, you normally think of the comforting, crackling sound it makes or the yummy s'mores you cook over it. However, most people don't think about the air pollution that campfires contribute to. The burning of wood produces microscopic particles that can easily be inhaled into the lungs and have adverse effects on human health. The wood particle matter greatly contributes to the already-prevalent problem of air pollution in our world today and oftentimes, its production is unnecessary. In developed countries, the burning of woods is generally not used for warmth or for cooking food, but instead for entertainment. While the issue may not be avoidable in developing countries, where they don't always have access to a better source of heat and cooked food, we can at least do our part here by reducing our output of wood particles.

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Shae Mercer
It's been pretty rainy on and off recently and while shopping with my dad I noticed a patch of shiny oil amongst small puddles of water. This reminded me of the issues of water pollution and the problems following urbanization. The oil was on the pavement of the parking lot, an impermeable surface, with seemingly nowhere to go. But, as soon as it started raining again, that oil, and many other harmful chemicals, would be swept down the storm drain, into water ways, and possibly even agricultural fields. Roads and cars are a large part of nonpoint source pollution, but it can't really be avoided. The best solution is to slowly integrate more sustainable vehicles into use, but that could take decades to be fully integrated, and it still wouldn't salve all the problems that roads cause in terms of water pollution. This situation is not nearly as harmful as something like an oil spill but it also adds up and is better not to enter the environment at all.

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Is Tradition Above the Law- Julia Urteaga 

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Is Tradition Above the Law- Julia Urteaga 

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At work, I am so used to mindlessly repeating transactions for customers hours on end. The old traditions of coding the tags,and typing each number into the cash register, along with the never ending Celine Dion soundtracks make walking through the doors feel like a time portal 20 years back in time. But what I did not realize is that one of the oldest traditions of all of McCaulous is the plastic blue bag given freely to each customer. I never realized that despite proposition 67 in California, the store was still giving our plastic bags: no ban and no cost. What made this tradition above the law? I starting questioning this free distribution of plastic bags at work until it became more than just a mindless motion. Consequently, I realized that I am the one giving away the material that is harmful to the environment, and that I had no control of what the consumer chose to do next. Would this end up on a plastic landfill in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, around the neck of a sea turtle, or properly recycled? The magnitude of bags from one struggling department store alarmed me to the vast distribution of plastic around the world. From Chapter 16 about waste management and proper waste treatment, I was able to understand the power of legislation to prevent an unsustainable practice from continuing. But what scared me is how can we know the laws are followed?

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Wind Turbines- Should We Continue to Invest in Them?

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Wind Turbines- Should We Continue to Invest in Them?

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by Gabi Ballardo

About a month ago, I went on a road trip in California to visit colleges.  On the way back from my trip, I saw wind turbines along the agricultural fields. It reminded me of our unit in which we learned about energy use.  Out of all of the forms of renewable sources that are used to produce usable energy in the United States, energy generated by wind turbines make up very little of our current electricity generation.  If we can make the switch to more renewable energy sources, especially those that are nondepletable, we can become much closer to creating a more sustainable world.  The issue is the initial cost associated with installing these wind turbines and solar panels that produce energy.  It is also problematic that these wind turbines can be noisy or considered unaesthetically pleasing to look at for people that live near them.  Even though it can be very expensive to implement these intial installments, ultimately, by investing money into renewable energy sources, we can slow the depletion of our resources and benefit economically as well.

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by Jack Kennedy

The other day I was hiking around Fish Ranch, and as the sun set and the afternoon turned into dusk, the city below me began to light up. As I watched the city of Oakland begin to glow, I remembered what I had learned from my AP Environmental Science class. Although the view was beautiful, the city and its lights took away from the full natural beauty of the landscape of San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.
The light pollution given off by the city makes it difficult to appreciate the world around us. In addition to the light pollution, the city also produces a large amount of air pollution that although causes a cool sunset, is full of toxic chemicals that we breath everyday. Light pollution and air pollution are two externalities related to the growth of cities, and in order to continue to grow while reducing human impact on the environment, we need to focus on finding was to lessen these types of pollutants.

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Sea Otters as Indicator/Keystone Species

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Sea Otters as Indicator/Keystone Species

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by Margo Lowry

This picture was taken in the Monterey Bay on one of my kayaking trips, and sea otters are a species that I usually come across on these trips. Sea Otters are keystone species mainly because they forage on sea urchins and other herbivores that eat the kelp. A keystone species is a species that, if it were gone, would have a great affect on the ecosystem. If the the sea otter to urchin ratio is off it can result in a reduction of kelp, leaving kelp forests to be barren and depriving a lot of animals of shelter and a home. They can also be indicator species, or species that show when there is something wrong with the environment, because they live and feed in the near shore marine environment, so they would be one of the first to detect any spills or pollution coming from shore.

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This past weekend I had gone to visit my Aunty and within her apartment complex, and I had seen this pile of washers and dryers. After reading this past chapter on e-waste and the different types of waste management, this really stuck out to me. It saddened me to see this because after watching the video that we watched in class about how e-waste goes to developing countries and how the people within those countries are at risk for serious health problems, but yet still look through the pile of e-waste for metals. I feel that so many people don't realize exactly where all of our e-waste goes to, but as a society we need to find a better way to deal with our e-waste. It is unacceptable to put people in developing countries at risk, and it is even more saddening to know that people in the developing countries are suffering through poverty, so they have to look through these piles of e-waste to make some money. Also we should use products that are less toxic to prevent this from occurring as well as include interchangeable parts so that the broken parts will E repaired and reused.

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(continued from the first post I tried to make)

The compost pile was teeming with insect life and I had a really good time trying to find as many species as possible. We found some rolly-pollies, earwigs, and long red worms, as well as some weirdly huge and flat woodlice, really fast red centipedes, and black millipedes. The compost pile made me think back to our eco columns, since the decomposition chamber was basically a mini compost. It also made me think about this past chapter on waste management, since there is a section about how composting can be a good way of reducing waste. This is especially seen as effective in Alex's household because his family maintains a pretty sizeable garden in their backyard, and the compost is really goof fertilizer. I thought it was really cool how their organic matter gets recycled over and over again, since they eat the fruits and vegetables that they grow and then put the rinds and remains back into the earth through the compost pile. Something else about the pile that I thought was kinda weird and cool was that the mulch was pretty warm, even though the day was cold. I realized that that was due to the carbon and decomposition that was taking place in the pile.

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A week or so ago, I went to Alex's house to hang out and watch their beehive being filled with fresh bees. At this time, they also had to move a pile of firewood that had been sitting in a pile for around two years to make room for something and check on the compost pile.

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Olivia Conte
I took this picture very recently when I was on a plane arriving in Rochester, New York. What really struck me as I looked out the window was the amount of lights on in the city. While it definitely looked beautiful, I couldn't help but think about all the electricity that was being used. I would not have given this much thought had it been any other time during the day, but I took this picture at 1:30 in the morning around the time my flight was landing. Who on earth needs that much electricity at 1:30 in the morning? Most people are asleep, and it seemed to me that we were essentially just wasting electricity. The "essentials" per say that needed power at this time were really just traffic lights and 24 hour facilities like hospitals. I began to think whether there was a more efficient way to have streetlights that would not require as many or as much electricity to be generated. I remember talking about light efficiency earlier this year, specifically a picture in the book that showed the difference between two different kinds of lights. One had a type of shade over it that allowed the light to have a much wider range compared to one in an adjacent picture. Even starting small and using streetlights such as these would be a step towards energy efficiency. We've learned so much about the energy crisis facing our world today, and in order to solve it, we must begin by addressing the current uses of energy and find ways to cut back. In the recent waste chapter, we learned about the benefits of the three R's: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Just like reducing is the most effective way to approach waste management, it is also the most effective way to approach electricity management. We can recycle energy and use renewable energy sources, but that is only temporarily sustainable. Finding ways to reduce energy usage all together is the best way to initiate real change.

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Nikki Musco
I took this picture in Colorado when I was driving back from the mountains. This was in a valley of two very large mountains, and as one can probably tell, there is not a lot of air pollution evident in this area, which is a very rare case today in the US because of how much production is occurring. As we know, when a pollution source is located in a valley, a thermal inversion can occur. This is when the polluted air gets trapped in-between a layer cold air and then another layer of cold air. This is obviously not the case because of the extremely low population which means low pollution levels, but this is a location where thermal inversion would be common if pollution sources were based there. This is also a possible scenario for acid deposition. This is located close to a city so the wind currents cause the polluted air to travel. While this infected area is moving, it finally reaches this location and combines with hydrogen creating acid precipitation release in this area, but obviously in this case it would be contaminated snow. It is unlikely that this is polluted snow, but because of its close proximity to a city with high pollution outputs, it is always a possibility. It is also very obvious that this has a very high albedo, which means that it absorbs little to no heat, and it is all reflected back into the environment. Another topic related to this picture is runoff, when the snow melts, it will all run off, picking up sediment and carrying it into the closest body of water, and this just adds to the buildup of sediment and other contaminants that the melted snow will eventually pick up.