What's the point of Balloons!?

Over the fourth of July weekend I could't help but notice all the balloons; a child here, a child there, all of them with red, white and blue balloons.  Everything seems so patriotic and the mood is light and fun.  Then a shutter of kids say "look a balloon in the air!".  This is normally followed by another balloon being released, like it's a competition to see whose balloon will reach the clouds first.  Not to mention sporting events!  These are the worst balloon criminals around, releasing hundreds of balloons into the air purposely to celebrate a touchdown or victory (Fig. 1).  As an environmental advocate and an aspiring biologist I ask the question "what harm are these balloons doing to our environment?".  As a human being I ask "what the hell is the purpose of balloons anyhow?".  Do we really need an inflated piece of rubber or latex tied to a string in order to show team spirit or patriotism?  So let's just take a look at what these spirit driven latex bubbles filled with helium are really doing to our environment.

Figure 1- Hundreds of balloons being released into the atmosphere.

There are two types of balloons used extensively in the balloon business: foil and latex.  Latex is a natural occurring substance which is highly biodegradable.  Research shows that latex balloons degrade at rates equal to a oak leaf (D.K. Burchette 1989).  What is not biodegradable is the foil or mylar balloons and the ribbon attached to a balloon.  Any balloon released into the atmosphere should be a latex balloon with natural cotton string attached (not ribbon).  This will allow the balloon upon popping a higher rate of decomposition and less time to affect the environment.  A balloon once released travels as high as 28,000 feet, exposed to temperatures as cold as -40 degrees Fahrenheit.  This extreme elevation and temperature causes the balloon to expand and shatter into tiny pieces (D.K. Burchette 1989).  These tiny pieces of latex then flutter back to earth and are scattered over a wide area.  As stated earlier the tiny latex pieces and cotton string will decompose at a rate equal to an oak leaf. 

The problems are with the ribbon and foil balloons.  Their decomposition rate is much slower and is harmful to the environment.  Many waterbirds and sea life consume things of a small jelly like structure: squid, jelly fish, minnows, snakes, etc.  These foil balloons and ribbons mimic this natural food source and cause sea life to ingest these unnatural balloon particles.  After a thorough investigation into the subject my environmental side is put at ease knowing that latex balloons coupled with cotton string pose no immediate threat to the environment.  However, foil balloons and ribbon do.  Should you be apart of a balloon release of any kind make sure you're releasing latex balloons with cotton string. Some states have already passed legislation outlawing the mass release of balloos.  I support this step for two reasons: 1) What's the point in releasing hundreds of balloons which are going to float away in seconds? It just seems like a waste of money and time to me. 2) Even though the latex balloons pose no immediate harm to the environment, what good are they doing?  

Overall, support latex balloons with cotton string and raise awareness regarding foil and mylar balloons with ribbon.  I think overall we can have fun, show patriotic support and raise awareness at events in other ways then spending money on releasing hundreds of balloons into the air just to have them burst into tiny pieces and float back to earth. 

References:

Burchette, D. A Study of the Effect of Balloon Release on the Environment. . Retrieved , from http://www.theballooncouncil.org/pdf/balloon-release-study.pdf

Could You Live in a Steel Box?

This new post I must credit to my brother.  He was the first to tell me of this radical way of recycling.  Most of us are accustomed to recycling and do it part of our everyday life (or so I hope!).  Recycling is good and is needed, but could we get radical with the idea of recycling!?  When I mean radical, I mean think outside the box and live in something as unpredictable as a steel shipping container!?  For those who are confused or unsure what this particular item is, see figure 1.

Figure 1- Steel shipping container

I'm sure many of you are thinking that's not livable, but I assure you it is!  Not to mention quite sustainable and we are reducing and recycling!  Man I love it when everything comes together, win for us and a win for the environment.  I think it is awkward and quite absurd we live in stick built homes on a cement slab with glass windows and asphalt shingles!  What is natural and sustainable in living this way!?  Seem a** backwards?  Well yes it is and that's why I'm here posting about it.  Lets look at ways people have turned a basic, affordable Steele shipping container into a sustainable way of life.

1) Apartments- Provides affordable living while looking aesthetically pleasing.

2) Office building and/or Retail store- Provides affordable space while reducing cost of maintenance and is surprisingly secure.  As seen in the picture the containers can be configured to keep steel doors on.  How secure would your retail store be from theft in one of these puppies!

3) Homes- Provides an affordable place to live with little maintenance and again is quite aesthetically pleasing with a modern charm.

It amazes me, nature has provided us with such an amazing compound, why not recycle it into something better than what it was intended for!?  I totally dig the idea of walking my dog down a street lined with homes built from recycled material, wouldn't that make you feel apart of the world?  Like we're doing our part to live a more sustainable life?  

Containerization all began as a way to shave a few dollars off the cost of sending Malcom McLean's trucks between New York and North Carolina (Levinson, 2008).  So what started as simple invention to ship some trucks, revolutionized shipping and the world economy!  Now these same containers have the ability to shock the world again by making sustainable place to live.  Sure it's not all peaches and cream, they have some disadvantages as well, such as, conducting heat well and the spillage of certain cargo in the container could pose health risks (Shipping container housing-Pros and Cons).  But overall it's a novel idea that should be considered and researched more.  

References

 Levinson, Marc. The box: how the shipping container made the world smaller and the world economy bigger. Pbk. ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. Print.

"Shipping container housing – Pros and Cons." Container Transportation. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 May 2014. <http://www.container-transportation.com/shipping-container-housing.html>.

From Toilet to Tap

I was watching the news this morning like every other morning and a story caught my attention.  This story involved a drought stricken Wichita Falls Texas.  A recent and prolonged drought for more than 3 years has caused water levels of Wichita Falls to fall below normal levels.

Figure 1- Lake Arrowhead, or what is left of it (Wichita, TX Gov, 2013).

The city is scheduled to run out of water in two years if something does not happen.  The city has reached out to scientists and researchers to help find a solution!  This solution is to reuse waste water from: sinks, washing machines, dishwashers, showers, and yes, toilets.  However, toilet water will only make up a fraction of the waste water that is planed to be recycled (Wichita Gov).  This process is known as direct potable reuse, where a cleansing and filtration process takes place.  This process includes advanced filtering, chlorination, and reverse osmosis.  Sure this idea seems extreme and many have turned their nose up at the idea. But, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Some citizens have already vowed to purchase only bottled water once this recycled water is put in motion.  If you read the last blog we already touched on this subject, bottled water is not any healthier for you or the environment!  Again I say, we have become so accustomed to a sterile environment we can't even fathom the idea of using and drinking recycled clean water.  We would rather pay a fortune to pollute the environment with plastic bottles!?  I commend the government of Wichita Falls for taking drastic steps to try to recycle and reuse waste water.  Could this be a new process more cities around the country will implement?  Only time will tell.  I am one who welcomes the idea of reuse.  Water is a limited source and we must learn to work with nature and not against it if we want a sustainable environment.

Check out the link below for a CNN video explaining it more

Waste water to Tap

A simple reminder to "Like" us on Facebook @ Follow Nature's Lead for more blogs, photos and videos regarding working with nature and not against it. 

What is the Real Price of Bottled Water?

One thing that comes to mind when thinking of things that are a** backwards, is bottled water.  You walk into a store and there's bottled water stacked to the ceiling ready for your purchase.  Again, this whole concept of sterilizing our environment has made us pansies.  We think that plastic bottled water is safer than our tap and while were thinking that we're also polluting the environment with plastic bottles! These plastic bottles are polluting the very environment we are getting our water from, how ironic!?  We retrieve water from aquifers, filter this water half a** and then put it in a plastic bottle with a fancy name.  We drink this water and think, ahhh how refreshing, then throw it out.  Sure some of these bottles make it to the recycling center but many don't, they end up polluting our environment.  So lets look at some facts about bottled water and how we can reduce and work with nature, not against it.

FACTS:

1)  Half of Americans drink bottled water, spending 24-10,000 times more per gallon on water than they do for tap water (Potera, 2002).  Isn't that an interesting factoid?  We're actually paying to pollute!

2)  We believe some bottled water comes from a glacial spring, when it really comes straight from one companies tap (Potera, 2002).  Man are we just idiots or what?  We're lining the pockets of big corporations to pollute the environment.

3)  Bottled water is becoming increasingly popular, with a current US market greater than $5.7 billion and a world industry greater than $35 billion (Bottled Water Web, 2002).

4)  The market is growing at a rate of approximately 10% a year and is anticipated to become second only to soft drinks as Americas drink of choice (Bullers, 2002; FDA 2002).

5)  There has been research concluding there to be more microbacterial growth in bottled water compared to tap water (Raj, 2005).

WAYS WE CAN WORK WITH NATURE:

1)  Use stainless steel reusable water bottles.  Nature has given us this amazing alloy to use, let's use it!

2)  Buy a water filter for our home tap should you feel the water is nasty or not safe.  Then fill your stainless steel water bottle!!!

3)  If you must use plastic look at the bottom of the bottle (should be displayed).  There should be a triangle with a number inside.  Numbers 2, 4 and 5 are the best bet (yalesustainability, 2009).  Nalgene makes a number 7 bottle which is BPA free, so that should suffice as well.

CONCLUSION:

Reduce and reuse!  It's amazing the amount of money we are pouring into company pockets for water that is as equal or worse compared to our tap water we already pay for!  Plus the bottles pollute the environment. If this doesn't seem a** backwards to you, I don't know what is!

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REFERENCES:

Potera, Carol. "The Price of Bottled Water." Environmental Health Perspectives 110: a76-a76. Print.

Bottled Water Web (2002) http://www.bottledwaterweb.com (accessed April 2003). 


Bullers, A. C. (2002) Bottled Water: Better Than the Tap? FDA Consumer Mag. July-August.

Sean D. Raj, Water Environment Research, Vol. 77, No. 7, Stockholm Junior Water Prize Research Papers (Nov. - Dec., 2005), pp. 3013-3018

Do you know which number plastic bottles are safe to reuse? (Yale Sustainability Blog)

http://yalesustainability.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/do-you-know-which-number-plastic-bottles-are-safe-to-reuse/

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Economic Wealth Or Oxygen To Breath, What's More Important?

In terms of society working a** backwards with our environment, try this on for size.  Did you know that broad-leaf forests in tropical countries cover 1260 million hectares or 9% of earths total land area (1)? The loss of these forests is proceeding at at rate of around 7 million hectares annually, with 4 million hectares being deforested in Latin America alone (1). In terms of numbers that doesn't sound too bad; but when you consider that this 9% of the earths total land is considered the lungs of the world and hosts some of the greatest biodiversity on the planet, that's a big deal.  A great percentage of our oxygen comes from this region, some estimate ~20%.  Not to mention the amount of carbon the Amazon sequesters from our environment is unbelievable.

Why is it that economic gain through harvesting timber and clear cutting for farm land is more important than the health of our biosphere?  What good can come from ravaging our natural resources for economic gain just to suffocate in the end due to decreased oxygen? Or possibly burn up due to an increased amount of carbon in the atmosphere? These are important questions we should be considering as we as a global society deforest arguably the most important ecosystem on the planet. Check out the graph provided below displaying the fluctuations of carbon intake and oxygen production by our world.

Figure 1- Displays seasonal and latitudinal variations in the concentration of atmospheric CO2.  The upward trend in concentration across years results from anthropogenic CO2 inputs to the atmosphere (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, Carbon Cycle-Greenhouse Gases).

To sum it up, we're clear cutting areas of the rain forest (earths lungs), while emitting more CO2 into the air!?  Seem a** backwards? I believe so. I provided links below to organizations that are educating the public and fighting against rain forest deforestation. If you have others I did not not include please add the link in a comment. 

Rain Forest Concern

World Wildlife Organization

References

My source is a tad dated, but was used anyhow.  A more recent source was later read and stated similar facts where numbers differed slightly. 

1)Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the 

   United Nations. 1988. An Interim Report on the State 

   of Forest Resources in the Developing Countries. 

   FAO, Rome

How Can We Reduce Flooding?

Since we had the recent cold front slowly move through the east and cause major flooding from Florida to New Jersey; I wanted to discuss some things regarding our infrastructure and how we're working against nature and not with it.  So much damage occurs from flooding: roadways get washed away, cars get flooded, houses are lost and major erosion happens.  If you consider how the environment has the ability to absorb water, it's amazing we don't work work with it more.  We have built a network of impervious surfaces, such as roads and parking lots.  These impervious surfaces increase the amount of water suspended on the land surface, causing flooding to occur.  We altered the landscape to allow for a more comfortable drive and aesthetically pleasing look.  In doing so, we completely degraded the environments ability to absorb water through the soil.  This not only leads to flooding, but a host of other nasty side affects, such as: higher temperatures and increased pollutants to our rivers, streams and lakes.  However, what can we do to combat this issue?

Under natural conditions, only about 10% of precipitation runs off the surface of the landscape, 50% soaks into the ground, and a surprising 40% is taken up by the trees and other vegetation and sent back into the atmosphere through the process of evapotranspiration (P. Flinker, 2010).  This is simply astonishing!  So I shouldn't even say it but I will, cutting vegetation + impervious surfaces = bad news bears.  If the precipitation is not able to penetrate the ground surface it becomes runoff and is dumped into small streams and creeks.  Approximately 75% of the stream miles that feed our waterbodies with clean water are small enough to be straddled by a child (P. Flinker, 2010).  This makes these streams very sensitive to land use changes and susceptible to pollution.  We must understand this and put management plans in place to control this unnatural flow of water.  By keeping overall impervious cover below 10% of the landscape, the landscape will retain its natural ability to absorb runoff and filter runoff from developed areas and prevent flooding (P. Flinker, 2010).

Figure 1-Changes in site hydrology with increasing impervious cover (US EPA)

Filtration of the runoff through the soil is imperative to clean water.  The environment has a natural "Brita" water filter built into it, it's called soil!  Soil filters impurities and makes clean water which is filtered into our aquifers, streams, rivers and oceans.  After all, this is where our drinking water comes from!  It's amazing we care more about materialistic things in this world and not this!  We will have to save that rant for another blog in the future.  If you haven't got the trend here, EVERYTHING is interconnected.  How we interact with our surrounding DOES affect us.  Without the filtration of the runoff an increase of nitrogen and phosphorus enters our water system.  This leads to dead zones in our bays and waterways and red tides in our oceans, caused from algae blooms (L. Polycarpou, 2010).

Figure 2-Showing a red tide (M. Godfrey)

I did not want this to turn into a research paper by any means, I just want to portray how interconnected we are with our environment and how we are doing things a** backwards!  So here is the big question, what can we do to decrease impervious surfaces and increase water absorption?  

1) Green Roofs

Research has shown that green roofs retain over 50% of precipitation (EPA).  This is beneficial, less roof runoff=less water in the streets.  Green roofs seem like a no brainer compared to an artificial asphalt roof that retains 0% of runoff.

Figure 3- Green roof (B. Victoria)

2) Rain Gardens

Rain gardens allow for runoff to be absorbed and filtered back into the ecosystem. These can be placed around homes, roads, overpasses and parking lots to improve physical and biological integrity.

3) Permeable Surfaces

This allows water to penetrate the surface which decrease surface water flow and runoff.  Think if we made all parking lots, driveways and sidewalks of a permeable surface!  That alone would decrease flooding from surface water runoff. 

Figure 4-Permeable surface (Expocrete)

These are main examples of what we can do to improve water quality and decrease flooding.  The next time a heavy rain passes through, remember this blog and observe how much surface water is retained from impermeable surfaces.  Nature is a spectacular marvel!  It blows my mind to think that we have been given the tools to live in a less polluted and degraded world, but we destroy those tools with our own man-made version?  How does this make any sense!?  Hope you enjoyed my rant on how we can reduce flooding.  Please share if you enjoyed or learned something.  If you want to add anything, by all means comment.