Jasmine's student blog

My last blog about saving the environment will be more open ended than the rest. In this blog I’ll be talking more along the lines of wasteful products like things like plastic bags, plastic water bottles, disposable razors and feminine products. These are smaller things that usually go unnoticed when talking about saving the environment because they are so small and casual. Let’s get down to business.

According to One Green Planet, “It is estimated that the U.S alone goes through 100-billion single-use plastic bags every year!” Also, one single bag takes 1000 years to completely decompose. That’s a lot of wasteful product being flushed into our ecosystem. Plastic water bottles are pretty useful and easy for on the go, but have you ever looked at the facts? According to Ban The Bottle, “only one in five plastic water bottles gets recycled.” Can you imagine where all the other ones go? Next, we have disposable razors. Disposable razors are pretty useful if you like the feel and look of a clean shave so they’re also pretty popular. One Green Planet says, “about two billion disposable razors are dumped in landfills every year,” Since they are not recyclable, they do not get thrown away properly and end up in our garbage too often. Of course feminine products are used quite a bit, so there should be some type of substitute for these necessities. According to RCTOM, “The average woman uses over 11,000 tampons in her lifetime” that is a huge number of one-time-use products being thrown into landfills.

How can we fix this? Easy! I have examples on how we can fix almost all these things! First, instead of using plastic bag after plastic bag, buy one of those eco-friendly canvas totes everyone has been raving about. Plastic water bottles are a thing of the past with the ever changing reusable water bottle! With so many types to choose from, you won’t have trouble finding a couple you like. Disposable razors can easily be replaced with 1 single stainless steal razor with disposable heads that can certainly be recycled properly. Sanitary napkins, panty liners and tampons can now be replaced by reusable menstrual cloths, “period” underwear and reusable menstrual cups. If everyone is able to make eco friendly switches like the ones I’ve suggested, or even ones they think of on their own, the planet will start getting back to it’s healthy state one reusable product at a time.

sources:

Good, Kate. “10 Things That are Super Convenient but Also SUPER Wasteful.” One Green Planet. 01 Feb. 2016. 27 June 2019 <https://www.onegreenplanet.org/lifestyle/things-that-are-super-convenient-but-also-super-wasteful/&gt;.

“A Blog Devoted to Banning Plastic Water Bottles & Staying Hydrated.” Ban the Bottle. 27 June 2019 <https://www.banthebottle.net/&gt;.

Shreya. “The Ecological Impact of Feminine Hygiene Products.” Technology and Operations Management. 27 June 2019 <https://rctom.hbs.org/submission/the-ecological-impact-of-feminine-hygiene-products/&gt;.

For my second blog, I chose to tour the blog gviusa. I like this blog site because it’s very organized and uses graphics to get the readers attention. In the images, they have more exotic animals than what we usually see and I think that also part of the eye appeal. The blog also uses big headers for new paragraphs when they chose to move to a new subject to indicate switching gears for the readers which I know can be very helpful for readers and I also had issues with breaking out my writings so I liked seeing this blogs technique. The blog page itself also had it’s contact items right at the top of the page, like their phone number, which I think was pretty useful considering it’s a company everyone can work for. The one main thing I didn’t really like is that the blogs widget tabs were small and in white, so with the bright image under them they’re kind of hard to see. They also don’t have a work cited area so I’m not sure if they used different sources or not but I thought that was kind of strange.

Source:

Collins, Alix. “Why Should We Save Endangered Species?” GVI USA, 2018, http://www.gviusa.com/blog/why-should-we-save-endangered-species/.

For my next blog, I’ve chosen to talk about wildlife endangerment because I like animals. But being an animal lover, this topic is sad and I try to avoid it at all cost. The truth can no longer be avoided. As I do my research, I hope to shed some light on this sad topic and spread ways us humans can help endangered animals.

There are many reasons why so many animals are becoming endangered, according to Endangered Earth, “There are now 41,415 species on the IUCN {International Union for Conservation of Nature} red list, and 16,306 of them are endangered species threatened with extinction.” Humans have a lot to do with species becoming endangered which is a sad, but true fact. It’s good in the sense that we have more control and more overall power to fix the issues. Here are some reasons for extinction that I picked up from the Fact Monster website: habitat loss. Humans tend to think more about themselves instead of the already-there species living in the places they want to take over. With stuff like deforestation, TONS of animals lose their homes at the hands of humans without being appropriately relocated. Pollution is also a big reason for the endangerment of certain species. A big thing is trash, because some animals deal it as food and a lot end up dying from complications of trying to eat garbage, especially plastic. One last reason I myself never realized was the introduction of exotic species. It doesn’t sound harmful but when you think about the possible new germs and diseases a certain animal brings in, you can tell it will probably be a big issue because homeland species may not be able to tolerate specific bacteria and germs.

When species become endangered, it is a sign of an ecosystem’s imbalance. This balance is difficult to maintain: the loss of one species often triggers the loss of others.The conservation of endangered species is important for humans as well. A well-balanced ecosystem purifies the environment, giving us clean air to breathe, a healthy water system to support diverse marine life, and arable land for agricultural production.Why should us humans care? The blog Gviusa states it quite simply,

When species become endangered, it is a sign of an ecosystem’s imbalance. This balance is difficult to maintain: the loss of one species often triggers the loss of others.The conservation of endangered species is important for humans as well. A well-balanced ecosystem purifies the environment, giving us clean air to breathe, a healthy water system to support diverse marine life, and arable land for agricultural production.

This article is saying that without certain species, the ecosystem fails to work correctly. Messing up our clean air, healthy water, and farming land. We need ALL of these things in order to survive. In order to maintain a healthy balance, we have to keep the ecosystem the way it’s meant to be. It’s sort of like the butterfly effect, as in if you take one small thing away like a specific species, it can really damage the whole world as time goes on. 

What can you do to help? A simple form of helping endangered species is cleaning up after yourself, not leaving out trash animals can get to and potentially kill themselves with. Another thing I remember is when the panda was said to be soon extinct, they made panda centers (I’m not sure of the official names) but basically they followed the pandas reproductive cycles and helped them breed appropriately which of course brought up their population. No, I’m not saying make a center like this, but donating to help build centers like this would help a lot for the repopulation of certain species.

Source:

Collins, Alix. “Why Should We Save Endangered Species?” GVI USA, 2018, http://www.gviusa.com/blog/why-should-we-save-endangered-species/.

kasnoff, craig. “Promoting the Plight of Endangered Species and the Efforts to Save Them.” Endangered Earth, http://www.endangeredearth.com/.

Why Do Animals Become Endangered?, http://www.factmonster.com/math-science/biology/plants-animals/why-do-animals-become-endangered.

For my first tour, I read Sadie’s because she’s funny and the first one that popped up on my feed. Off the bat it’s easy to tell that Sadie uses humor to connect with people and I really like that because I’m the same way. A lot of people are able to connect with humor before anything else because it’s kind of a safe space. I think Sadie is strong in that area. Another thing she did was just let it all out. She let herself be vulnerable and I think writers who are able to do that, not hold anything back, are the best writers and are very powerful. She also keeps a light mood on kind of sad topics when she had every chance to just let her emotions go, she kept things at a mutual tone. Sadie also gives good background information so you don’t have to confused and have tons of questions. Overall I really enjoyed Sadie’s and I’m looking forward to reading more about her student fails because they’re probably very relatable.

The next blog I read over was Certeria’s. Her topic on the particular blog post I read was her view on educational discipline. She did not make it hard for you to understand her feelings about this subject. The thing I struggle with while connecting to this blog is being white, so I’m not able to put my self in her shoes or any other persons shoes who has experienced this or knows the feeling personally. It was hard to connect in that sense, but it made me more dependent on her words rather than confirming everything with my own experiences. I think she has that as a strength because I’m in no place to say “this hasn’t happened” or so on. One small thing I am able to connect with is that she’s talking about the educational system, which I’ve been apart of for 12+ years so there are definitely things I can agree with about stuff like detention being useless and using the resource officers as a weapon in a way towards kids who might have issues within the class. I’m intrigued to hear more from Certeria because she might be able to share things with me that I’ll never have to experience so hearing personal stories is something I really enjoy so I will continue to read her no filter posts.

The third blog tour I did was on Breanna’s blog. I was IMMEDIATELY intrigued because I flippin love dogs. At first, I barely read and instead looked at the pictures she posted. That is my favorite part of her blog and I think that will remain my most favorite. There’s definitely a line between “eh animals” and “I’m obsessed with my dog he is my baby” so I feel like people will either really enjoy her topic blogs or have absolutely no interest in them, which together could be both negative and positive. I actually feel kind of sad I didn’t do something similar with my dog Bella. I loved the story about how she got liberty too because everything is kind of humerus and I just love it. This blog is going to be my favorite sorry everyone else but I just love the dog post one and can’t wait to see more pictures.

Sources:

Breanna. “Hook, Line & Sinker!” WordPress.com. 2019. World Press. 25 June 2019 <https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/96287148/posts/2323464368&gt;.

Certeria. “Post #2 my view on educational discipline.” WordPress.com. 2019. World Press. 25 June 2019 <https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/96287227/posts/2322963756&gt;.

Sadie. “The Good, The Bad, and Some Serious Fails.” WordPress.com. 2019. World Press. 25 June 2019 <https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/96287295/posts/2323637005&gt;.

For my mentor blog I picked the blog “The Ocean Cleanup” for a couple different reasons like ease, tidiness, and variety. Also there were some things I didn’t like, like missing info and the shopping link so lets dive into my blog.

I will start off with what I didn’t like in particular so in the end, we can end of a good note. While trying to do some research, the article kept saying the word “they” without any introduction to who “they” were and never specified it within the entire article. After further investigation I realized the sources that were used were “they” so it was a bit generalized since the article had about 7 sources, but I figured out “they” (the sources) were credible once I was able to check their websites and look deeper into their research. Not many people are going to question it the way I did and go onto the sources page so that part could be more clear. Perhaps by stating something like “according to” or “blank reported blah blah blah” just to ground the readers. The other thing that was kind of annoying was that if you wanted to buy merchandise to support the company, you would be directed to a different page, and people won’t be willing to do as much because it just seems more like a hassle or a bit more unprofessional. Especially with maybe older people who barely understand technology and think everything’s a virus, it would be just to confusing and you’d lose customers that way.

Onto the positives because I still really liked this website. I had mentioned how I liked the ease and by that I mean by how simple everything was set up. With the new wave of technology I think that some things can be incredibly complicated but this site was simple and down to the point. The homepage/opening page explains the websites whole purpose and then, right on the top there’s tabs that bring you directly to the page you would like to go. You can learn about the technology, get updates, hear about milestones, and one thing really helpful to me was that the website provided a whole page of what I call “backup information” that describes and teaches readers the “why?” aspect of their purpose. The last thing I really like about this web page is something that kind of piggybacks off the idea of “backup information.” Every fact and source used was hyperlinked. It was very easy to find the source and be able to go to that page to look deeper into the information for deeper understanding of the topic.

Lastly, something I liked and thought was very important overall was how appeling it was to the eye. One thing I noticed was how the color theme matched the purpose of the mission. The purpose is about saving and cleaning the ocean, so the colors on the page reflected that with blue and cool hues. Like mentioned earlier, the tabs were at the top of the page, right where your eyes would fall. Below the tabs is the “purpose point” which was nicely formatted in the middle so your eyes are focused on that alone.

All in all, I really liked this blog. It was very useful to me for my purpose of using it but as just a random person reading it I think you could learn a lot and take away some good information. It’s not too hard to navigate, I had minimal trouble besides the weird pronouns but I figured it out eventually. I think I’ll consider using the color tones to match the mood.

Sources:

“The Ocean Cleanup.” The Ocean Cleanup. 20 June 2019 <https://theoceancleanup.com/>.

In this blog post about saving the environment, we’re going to be going over the …dun dun duuun… plastic straw epidemic. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll give a brief introduction. Plastic straws have become a huge issue pollution-wise. A lot of people say they are a huge waste, because they are a one-and-done product that could be completely replaced with a more efficient, less wasteful invention, the reusable straw because the plastics straws rarely make it into the garbage. In this post, I hope to slurp up some good information to share with you guys, and make you more careful about what you put in your mouth.

Straws are a pretty useful invention. If you think about it, how many straws do you think you use in a week? A month? A year?! If you’re like me, that number may be pretty high, especially if you have a thing for caribou coffee or McDonalds fountain drinks (I swear they have the CRISPIEST pops). Let’s get down to the actual numbers though. According to nationalgeographic.com and National Park Service, “Americans alone use 500 million straws daily” that is a LOT of straws being thrown out, and half the time they don’t even make it into the recycling because of their size. Many areas around the United States and the United Kingdom are banning, taxing and boycotting plastic straws. Along with many other plastic made items like plastic cups, plates and utensils etc.

Why should you care? Well I’ll tell you why. Let’s talk about how straws affect the human body first. According to the Washington Post, “Sipping from a straw introduces air into the digestive tract. This can cause uncomfortable digestive symptoms, such as gas and bloating.” Does that sound familiar to you? Maybe you’ve experienced this without even realizing it’s the straw. Try ditching the straw one time and see how your digestive tract feels without the use of a toxic tube. Another thing the Washington Post mentions is how drinking sugary, acidic drinks may increase cavities, A.K.A tooth decay because the liquid is then more concentrated on certain areas of teeth. The scariest thing to me the Washington post had to say was about chemicals:

Most single-use plastic straws are made from polypropylene, a type of plastic commonly made from petroleum. Polypropylene is thought to be food-safe in amounts approved by the Food and Drug administration. But there is evidence that chemicals from polypropylene can leach into liquids and may release compounds that could affect estrogen levels, especially when exposed to heat, acidic beverages or UV light.

If that doesn’t make you feel a little unsettled, I’m not sure what will. There’s evidence that proves the chemicals can alter your hormones and that is in no way shape or form good news. By consuming liquids through plastic straws, you not only risk harming the environment, you risk the health of your own body by messing up your hormone levels.

Lastly, let me inform you on ways you can help yourself and the environment. First and foremost, STOP using plastic straws. Don’t ask for them at restaurants, opt out at drive-thrus and don’t buy them from the store. You like straws because there may be germs and other gross stuff on your cup? Buy a couple reusable straws and bring them everywhere you go! I have a link you can use to buy some! Reusable straws. They’re pretty cheap and last for a long time and of course, save the planet a lot in the long run! Sometimes you may forget to bring your reusable straw, so a plastic straw is the only thing available but that’s okay! Just make sure it makes it’s way into the proper waste bin. That ladies and gentlemen, is the plastic straw epidemic. I hope I opened your eyes some and you choose to help out the environment! Thanks for reading!

For my final project, I decided to pick helping the environment. I chose this topic because not only is it very open ended, but it is also something EVERYONE can be apart of. There’s smaller ways you can help the environment, like collecting plastic bags, using reusable straws, etc. and also drastic things, like the biggest ocean cleanup of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 10 years, that began September 8th, 2018 according to “The Ocean Cleanup.” Of course, it would be hard for everyday people like you and I to be able to do what System 001 (the ocean cleanup apparatus) is doing. With this blog I hope to point out some bigger problems the environment is having, explain how it’s affecting each and every one of us, and give my best solutions through research and other fact-searching endeavors.

Since I’ve mentioned ocean cleanup, I figured it’s a good starting point. Let’s dive into ocean conservation. Let’s start with some garbage facts. According to a study done to set the largest pacific ocean cleanup posted on Nature.com, the following was reported, “At the time of sampling, there were more than 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the patch that weigh an estimated 80,000 tonnes {tons}. The figures were much higher than previous calculations.” To put this into perspective, that’s roughly the size of blank jets. That is the area of the great pacific garbage patch alone. Imagine all the other big AND small bodies of water littered with waste.

Why should you care? For starters, if you’re like me, you like animals more than people. Our marine life is getting the butt end of OUR (human) ISSUES. A lot of plastic in the ocean share characteristics with food like color and size, so for marine life it looks like some yummy food. Only to find out it’s indigestible and kills many ocean babies. During one study it was found that “about 700 species have encountered marine debris, and 92% of these interactions are with plastic. 17% of these species affected by these plastics are on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species.” You don’t have to be good at math to realize that has no positives and is quite dangerous. Have I caught your attention yet? Don’t worry, I will with this next fact. Plastic pollution costs 13 billion dollars per year. This fact includes the cost of cleaning up the beaches and financial losses dealt with by fishermen. If you don’t mind that much about money, here’s another scary fact. Once that marine life has consumed the plastic, it now carries the toxins and chemicals within the plastic. If us humans consume that marine life, we then are also carrying the toxins and chemicals in our bodies. Humans will not evolve around ingesting toxins and chemicals.

Now you want to know how you can help? The biggest way you can help here is to pick up after yourself!!! And if you have the heart, pick up after your lazy fellow humans!!! Throw all trash away and recycle properly. Another thing you could do is donate!! Specifically to companies that are helping clean/save the oceans, like the website I was on and learned so much from. Here is a link if you are interested: The Ocean Cleanup Donations. I’m sure there are many other places you could donate as well. If you are more of the active type, you could go to your local beach or body of water and do the dirty work yourself too!!! And always, ALWAYS call people out for littering. Thanks for reading!

Sources:

Lebreton, L., et al. “Evidence That the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Rapidly Accumulating Plastic.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 22 Mar. 2018, http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w

“The Ocean Cleanup.” The Ocean Cleanup. 20 June 2019 <https://theoceancleanup.com/>.

For my blend of three articles from class essay, I decided to pick a subject that I did not like in the beginning. I chose this topic, writing your articles around your audience, because I read an article, I believe it was the first article we were assigned to read called “Why Blog?” by Alex Reid, and in my notes I have the following written, “He (the author) talks about finding what audience you want to write to, which gives me the idea of who am I trying to be? When I feel like it’s not about who you’re trying to attract, it’s more of what do you want to put out there under your name” So with that small quote from myself, I can tell that I took that suggestion negatively and didn’t even try it before discarding it into the depths of blog despair. After reading more articles, and having them mention that yeah, it’s a pretty good idea to consider your audience before you even start writing. The main thing about targeting your audience is being able to change the article with persuasion, using emotional triggers, strong facts, open ended relatable statements that the audience can take and run with. In the article “Reading like A Writer” by Mike Bunn, he talks about how to understand the words and sentences in the way they were written, instead of “what was the author trying to put out there for us to grab?” It’s more of a “what did the writer stuff in the article while they were writing this for us to find?” type concept. Bunn also talks about how to consider the audience with this different concept, he says, “…If you know the outset that the author is trying to reach a very specific group of readers, then his or her writing techniques may seem more or less than if he or she was trying to reach a more general audience.” (Bunn 76) This quote ties in with the fact of targeting the audience with specific messages, this author went on and described a war-based quote said by Barack Obama because he was trying to target the anti-war audience, rather than people who were pro-war because it shifts the entire mood following the quote. The quote was a straight power move. The last article and quote I was able to tie into this is the “Annoying Ways People Use Sources” by Kyle Stedman. His title is very explainitary on what he talked about through the article, but he does also mention audience too. He says the following about anticipating who will read your work, “…The more effectively you anticipate pickiness, the more likely it is that readers will interpret your quotations and paraphrases in the way you want them to.” (Stedman 243) In this quote, Stedman explains to the readers how to think like a reader, and consider how the targeted audience will intake the information. You have to be very precise with your wording, and phrasing so that it “rolls off the tongue” nicely, and readers get the correct connotation from your piece of writing. It’s important to stay a couple steps ahead of the future readers of your posts, so that your phrases trigger the right emotions, your facts back up your statements, and your connections can be relatable. All in all, in the end, I did change my opinion on thinking first about your reader, because I see now that not only does that help tremendously while trying to start writing, but it makes for a better article just in general. You better connect with the audience and therefore you get more attention.

After reading chapters two and three of “Seeing Ourselves Through Technology,” I definitely understand this book more, and with that I was able to make more connections and overall comments. The first thing I wanted to bring up again and go more into detail about from my notes was when the author talked about social media and the filters people put on there, they say, “Twitter filters out long form writing, requiring us to limit ourselves to 140 charaters at a time.” I wanted to dive more into this because I definitely connected with this statement the most and I think by itself it means a lot and can generalize a lot of things in this day in time. First off, I know I explained some of my twitter usage in my notes so I’ll summarize it here. I used twitter as my completely controlled platform, I could have it totally private if I wanted and could say whatever I wanted. But I only had one thing holding me back, and that was the character count. It was definitely harder to express myself with so little room, but I made it work. Second, it really reminds me of how people kind of cut themselves perfect, the cookie cutter type personality where they limit themselves, and hold themselves back from social media because they aren’t prepared for people to see all parts of them, the good, the bad and the ugly. So in terms, it’s much bigger than just limited characters, it’s limiting everyone’s unique qualities. The Last reason I connected to it was when at the beginning of the class, we talked about how twitter and snapchat were kind of like microblogging so I was kind of like “oh I’m already a professional.” in those terms, because I’ve tweeted in my past and use snapchat every day.

One other big thing I stuck to was actually in chapter three. It circulated the idea of artists doing photographic art projects for literally years just to get minute long videos, or just a huge collection of photographs, and that is basically the old version of snapchat. I say this because the main feature of snapchat is to just constantly send back and forth selfies, and now they’ve added the “memories” feature, where the photos or videos are shown to you the anniversary of when they were taken, and to me that’s like the modern-ish version of what these people did for years, and we do it now without any intention (besides saving or deleting the content).