Unit Assessment Reflection: Environmental Reflection

Source

Global warming, along with the cutting and burning of forests and other critical habitats, is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc: it is us.
-Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth 

These few words from the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, help bold the damage us humans have wasted on the environment. Throughout this unit, I have learned about how humans have affected our environment and ecosystem through reading and my own research, and have attempted to combat it with a solution to one of many environmental problems: human waste.

Research Paper: A Solution to Municipal Waste

Once we settled into our environmental unit, one of the first things we did was begin our research papers. Our research papers were about an environmental topic of our choosing, which we had to research the causes and effects of, then design an innovative solution to combat this problem. The problem I chose was municipal landfill waste and its constant growth.

EPA: Source

This is a problem because landfills feed into carbon and methane emissions (as can be seen above, municipal landfills account for 20% of methane emissions). This leads to the creation of nearly 89 million metric tons of methane in the US alone. Now, this methane comes from plastics and compostables being put into the municipal landfill, decomposing and producing these greenhouse gasses. I go into further detail about this problem in my Research Paper, but that is the basic idea of the paper. Writing this paper not only taught me more about the subject I was learning about, but helped me better convey my ideas through an informational and formal text, gathering evidence from credible sources. 

The Sixth Extinction

After doing all of this research, we all got to learn more about other detrimental environmental problems by reading the Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. The book discusses the impact of humans on our world, and how the world has had many mass extinctions, but there might be another one directly caused by humans. This extinction will lead to a giant decrease in biodiversity and the overall quality of our world. Even if we humans survive, many won't. We acidify the ocean, take down forests in favor of our own space, ruin the atmosphere and many more things to cause there to be less livable conditions for species, meaning less species as a whole. We humans have always been this way, starting out by killing off hundreds of species of megafauna and the human-like Neanderthal.

Example of Sketchnotes (See English Notebook for more) 

While I read the book I took these sketchnotes to help me keep track of the ideas said. I participated in group discussion and asked questions about how this mass extinction may affect us. Reading this book made me connect different ecological problems and realize they all have a giant effect on our environment and biodiversity. It used my English skills as a reader and analyzer and furthered my ecological knowledge. 

Environmental Project

To finish off our environmental unit, we created a model of the solution we came up with during our research paper. Our model was of a garbage can that has three compartments, one for recyclables, one for trash and one for compostables. In the original concept there would be a sensor at the front that would be able to detect the molecular makeup of the object being thrown away, then open up the compartment it corresponds to. Then it would automatically spin the compost bin and wash off the recyclables in the recycle bin every 30 minutes or so. 

During the process of this project, Isaac and I harnessed technology to create a basic 3D model, then made the full model with available resources. We had to use many power tools, wires and motors to make it a reality, but now we have a partially working prototype model. It doesn't have the sensor, as that wasn't readily available, but it does spin the compost and wash the recycling. 

We have plenty of ideas for redesigns and adjustments, but our product did showcase all of the thought and work we put into this project. This project used science and technology skills to build, and English skills to finally present to our class. 

To bring things back together, over the course of this unit, over the course of this unit I have read and analyzed informative texts to further my learning in ecology and have used credible resources to learn and inform readers, then used all of that knowledge to come up with an innovative solution to an environmental problem. The one thing that has stuck closest to mind is that humans are a powerful species, and we have control over the Earth, whether we like it or not. We have to work together to protect the other species for this planet and keep it habitable for all life.