Human Population and Pollution

Week 3: Human Population and Pollution

Lab Report Form

Updated: 2/28/2018

Name:              _________________

Date:               _____25/4/2020____________

Professor:        _________________

Important Note! Section 1 of this lab requires that you track your waste production for five days.  To complete this lab on time, please begin recording your trash production as soon as possible.

In addition to conducting a daily audit of the waste that you produce (either as a household or as an individual), the remaining components of the lab are estimated to take another 45 to 90 minutes to complete.

Introduction:

The human population first reached 1 billion (i.e. 1,000 million) people in 1804, roughly 5 thousand and a few hundred years from our earliest records of human writing. However, it took just over a century for the global human population to gain another 1 billion people to reach a total of 2 billion people in 1927. Only thirty-three years later, the world population had gained yet another one billion people, and by 1974 the human population reached 4 billion people.

As our population skyrockets, our society has become ever more energy-intensive. People everywhere are now using more energy, more material goods, and producing more waste than ever before.  The intensity of this resource extraction and waste generation is depleting mineral and energy resources globally, destroying ecosystems, and threatening the livelihood of other species and humans alike. A recent estimate indicates that, on average, a US citizen generates almost 4.4 pounds of trash every day- which is 1.6 pounds (36%) more trash than Americans produced on average in 1960.

In this lab, you will explore how much the global population has grown since your birth and how much trash you produce daily.

Section 1: Waste Audit (64/80 points)

Introduction

When asked about having a waste processing centre (or dump) located in their community, it is common for Americans to respond with the phrase, “Not in my backyard”. Of course, no one really wants to be near the areas where we collect the trash and waste produced by our cities and communities. However, waste management may not always be something that we can export to poorer neighbourhoods or less populated areas. As you monitor how much waste you produce on a daily basis, consider what it would be like if you could put your waste nowhere other than in your backyard.

The resource list below can be useful when you analyze your trash for what can and can’t be recycled or composted.

Resources

• What can I Recycle? Retrieved from: http://www.wm.com/thinkgreen/what-can-i-recycle.jsp
• What is waste recycling? Retrieved from: http://www.eschooltoday.com/waste-recycling/what-is-recycling.html
• A simple list of what can and can’t be recycled. Retrieved from: https://www.ecoscraps.com/blogs/sustainable-living/76411652-a-simple-list-of-what-can-and-cannot-be-recycled
• California’s list of what can be recycled: http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/publiced/earthday/what.htm
• What you can and can’t compost: https://www.compostinstructions.com/what-you-can-and-cannot-compost/
• Advancing Sustainable Materials Management. Retrieved from: http://www.epa.gov/smm/advancing-sustainable-materials-management-facts-and-figures

Directions

Log your production of trash for five days using Table 1.1. Catalogue all of the waste that you generate within the categories listed below.  If you keep a logbook or notepaper and pen with you as you go through your day, you will be able to collect your data more accurately. You can then transfer the data at the end of each day to Table 1.1.

Observations

Table 1.1 Waste Log (38 points)

Analysis (10 points)

There are many ways to reduce waste, including reducing consumption of disposable items, reusing items, and recycling materials that we can no longer use. The impact of organic and Food waste can also be minimized by composting. Use the references listed above or conduct your own research to estimate what percentage of each category of waste could be recycled. The “What can I Recycle?” site hosts an interactive tool that allows one to look up various items. Enter your estimates of the percentage of each waste category that was recyclable in Table 1.2, along with your estimate of how much of the waste in each category, you actually did recycle, reuse, or compost.

Table 1.2 Estimated Percent Recyclable, Reusable, or Compostable and Percent that You Did Recycle, Reuse, or Compost

Conclusion (16 points)

Respond to each of these questions:

1. In which categories did most of your waste fit into?

Most of my waste products fit into the plastic bottles, b= plastic bags and wrapping as well as Food and organic waste.

2. In which categories were there the most opportunity for you to reduce your waste easily?

Food and organic waste was the category with an opportunity to reduce waste. This is because organic and Food waste are used as fertilizers. Hence throwing in the garden enabled them to decompose and provide manure and organic fertilizer. Plastic bags and wrapping is another waste that I recycled every day. Once the bags are purchased, they are recycled as bags to carry anything you buy from the market.

3. In which categories was there the largest discrepancy between the percentage of waste that you could recycle vs the percentage that you did recycle?

The glass bottles are the waste category with a high rate of the discrepancy. This is because the amount of glass waste I produced is very low compared to the rate of recycling I did.

4. In which categories did you recycle the most? Why?

The Food and organic waste category is the one I recycled the most. Food and organic waste are highly produced at home. Moreover, Food is a common and a must commodity to be purchased at home. Hence, the recycling of food wastes into organic waste is very high due to its availability.

5. How important would compost be to reducing your trash production?

Composition helped in reducing organic waste, especially Food and organic waste. Food and organic waste are one of the waste categories with a high rate of production. Hence, the daily waste that comes from this category.

6. How much of your waste generation was related to your diet and products that you ate or drank?

The total of that waste is plastic bottles, glass bottles, plastic bags and wrappings as well as the Food and organic wastes. The total of that waste is;

0.3+1.5+1+2.79 kg

7. How much of your waste production was related to purchases that you could have easily avoided?

4.3 kg of the waste could be easily being avoided.

8. Reflect on your observations and learning in this section. How do you think society might transition to producing less waste?

There are several ways society can reduce or produce less waste. Recycling is one of the most effective ways.  For instance, the consistent buying of plastic bags and bottles which, when used, are thrown away, can be avoided. One can buy a bottle to carry water regularly from home.  Reusing also the best method to reduce or produce less waste.   People can reuse the products they brought.  Examples of such products include plastic bags and wrappings.

Section 2: Population Growth (16/80 points)

Resources

https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop/table_history.php

To find world population estimates for more specific dates, you can use one of the data sources listed here:

• https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/international-programs/about/global-mapping.html
• http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
• http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/world-population-growth/
• https://www.census.gov/popclock/

Observation (4 points)

Fill in the blank entries in Table 1.1 below using the resources provided above. The current global population can be found at census.gov (the last link in the resources above).

Table 2.1: World Population Estimates

Analysis (8 points, divided as shown)

Fill out Table 2.2 by using the entries in Table 2.1.  For column 1 in Table 2.1, find the number of years between 1900 and your birth year and the number of years since your birth and the current date (your age in years).  For column 2 in Table 2.1, find how many more people were on the planet in your birth year versus 1900, and how many more people are on the planet now than in your birth year.

Table 2.2: Human Population Growth Analysis (4/8 Analysis points)

To fill out Table 2.3, column 1 Time Period in years will remain the same as in Table 2.2. To fill out column 2, the per cent change in the population, take the entry in each row of column 2 in Table 2.2. and divide it by the number in the same row of table 2.1. This is dividing the Population Change that you found in Table 2.2 (column 2) by the starting population for that epoch that you found in Table 2.1. If you now multiply this number by 100%, you get the population percent growth rate.

For instance, if the Population Change you found in row 1, column 2 of Table 2.2 was 1,350 million people and the starting population in 1900 shown in Table 2.1 was 1,650 million people, the Percent Growth Rate for that period of time is 1,350/1,650 = .81, which means that from 1900 to 1959 the global population increased by 81%!

Table 2.3: Human Percent Growth (4/8 Analysis points)

Conclusion (4 points)

Summarize your observations and results.

Environmental pollution is approximately said to be 99% contributed by Humans. A large proportion of the waste we found in our environment comes from various human activities.    Food and organic waste occupy a large section of pollution. However, one advantage with these types of waste is that it is not a waste. Instead, it is used as manure due to its decomposition. Plastic bottles are the ones which are highly disposed of as waste products. Their challenge is that they take hundreds of years to decay. In the table on weekly recordings of daily waste, plastic bags indeed are highly used as well as the plastic wrappings.  Furthermore, their rate of recycling is also very low. The increased rate of waste disposal, according to the data, is due to the increasing world population. The world population is increasing by a billion every decade, according to the data shown in this case.  This is a clear depiction of the relationship between pollution and population.

What kinds of changes could human society make in order to accommodate your observations in a way that will preserve the possibility of future generations living well?

There are several ways, and they include;

• Recycling methods
• Reusing methods.
• Avoiding unnecessary things which contribute to environmental pollution.
• Burning of wastes such as plastics after use.
• Population control to avoid pollution. Population control can be done through family planning strategies. An increase in population increases the rate of pollution. Regulating the population growth rate implies that we are regulating pollution.