Pollution 

While preparing for my presentation on pollution, I learned that there are several types of pollution, some of which are air, thermal, and noise pollution. Although it wasn’t particularly alarming to find that there are many different types of pollution, it was shocking to realize that nearly all of these forms of pollution are omnipresent in my daily life. Even as I’m writing this in my own room, I’m affected by multiple types of pollution: the bright lamp next to me contributes to thermal and light pollution, my roommate’s incessant spraying of air freshener is polluting our air, and my loud neighbors in the adjacent apartment are contributing to noise pollution as well as my growing dislike of them.

By beginning to notice the extent to which pollution is present in my life, I’ve also begun to comprehend the gravity of the problem of pollution in our world. The magnitude of this problem is daunting because it seems as though pollution is created exponentially faster than our efforts are able to eliminate it. Even Duke, arguably a very environmentally conscious university, is still far off from becoming carbon neutral. This observation therefore makes it almost ludicrous to think that in the future, an average suburban home can drastically reduce its emissions to the point that it would have a healthy relationship with its local environment.

Given that pollution is an exponentially growing issue, largely stimulated by our own ignorance, I believe the primary objective to battle it is to spread awareness by educating others. Ultimately, the environmental effect of one lamp turned off is almost negligible, but the environmental effect of having a million lamps turned off is impossible to ignore.

Works Cited

Rinkesh. “Pollution: Causes and Effects.” Conserve Energy Future. N.p., 24 Dec. 2016. Web. 26 Jan. 2017.

Discussion prompt: How many phones have you owned in your life? What do you do with the old one when you buy a new one: trash, donate, or recycle it? Where do recycled phones go?

Although I’ve been fortunate enough to have owned five phones in my life, it had never crossed my mind to recycle the old phones after I stopped using them. As a result, many of my old phones were sentenced to spend the remainder of their lifetime in trash: beginning in my garbage can and ending in a distant landfill.

While there are some cellphone owners that are diligent about recycling their cellphones, there are many others who share my ignorance. In the United States, roughly 90% of adults own a mobile phone of some kind, and on average, these owners replace their mobile phone once every 22 months. This means that Americans purchase 119 million phones every year, and of those new phones, only about 15 million will be recycled. This means that 104 million phones share the same fate as my old cellphones: becoming a permanent contribution to our country’s growing e-waste.

Of the portion of old cellphones that do get recycled, what happens to them? First, it’s important to understand that a primary motivation for recycling phones is to salvage the precious and valuable materials the phones contain, which are generally nickel, cadmium, mercury, and lead. Given this fiscal incentive, many recyclers lose interest in the environmental benefits their work can create and choose to neglect these green benefits in exchange for larger monetary returns. This compromise sometimes results in the practice of informal recycling, which uses primitive stripping and burning methods to extract precious materials from the phones. Unfortunately, these methods generally produce pollution and introduce harmful toxins to those performing the processing. While there are a few e-waste recycling companies that value the environment’s health, they lack the capacity to process the sheer volume of e-waste being produced, and consequently, a lot of excess e-waste is sent to foreign countries for unregulated and sometimes harmful e-waste processing, such as informal recycling as mentioned above.

While there are efforts to recycle phones, it seems as though all phones are not recycled equally; however, this only creates a great opportunity for innovation in this sphere that will ultimately help to protect our environment.

Works Cited

Acaroglu, Leyla. “Where Do Old Cellphones Go to Die?” The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 May 2013. Web. 27 Jan. 2017.

Anderson, Monica. “Technology Device Ownership: 2015.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. N.p., 29 Oct. 2015. Web. 27 Jan. 2017.

Https://www.facebook.com/156649064353744. “Your Smartphone’s Secret Afterlife (Smartphones Unlocked).” CNET. N.p., 02 Dec. 2012. Web. 27 Jan. 2017.

“20 Staggering E-Waste Facts.” Earth911.com. N.p., 08 Feb. 2016. Web. 27 Jan. 2017.

“Where Do Mobile Phones Go When They Die?” Triple Pundit: People, Planet, Profit. N.p., 01 May 2015. Web. 27 Jan. 2017.

I was a bit rushed on giving my ecofeminism lesson so here is the through rundown. Ecofeminism is a word I have never heard before participating in this assignment. I have heard of the word feminist and would consider myself to be one but, how did eco fit with women’s equality? After research, I see they are very much intertwined.

Ecofeminism came from women’s interconnected sense of identity. The term looks at how the environment connects people of different backgrounds including: race, class, gender, etc. Themes of empathy, caring, and connection have been deep rooted in the movement which, oddly enough, already tend to be associated with women. Ecofeminist are people who look at eco-social and environmental problems and work to correct those issues. They fight for human justice, interspecies justice, and human-environment justice while other feminist environmentalisms ignore species question.

An ecofeminist action is to work towards detecting and correcting a problem as they occur; not waiting until people in high standards start to become affected. Ecofeminist argue policies and practices of economic, environmental, interspecies, and gender justice that offer more effective strategies for intervention and prevention of crisis. They are environmental social justice advocates who fight for the rights of all when the situation arises. The take home for ecofeminism is women get stuff done the right way the first time.

Before reading about Globalization for class, I thought globalization was a panacea that had no draw backs. I was ecstatic that tools, ideas and medicines would be reaching every corner of the world. However, the Keywords passage made me think more critically about the environmental impacts of globalization and realize that the very nature of globalization is environmentally unsound. In order for the tools, ideas and medicines to reach new areas, they must get there.

While goods are cheaper and better built than ever before, the way the goods are being transported is similar to how they have always been. Today, factories in countries with low environmental standards make products, then the products are shipped or flown across the world and finally driven to where they will be sold. The entire process creates tons of carbon dioxide that makes the net benefit of the product negative. In order to maximize the benefits of cheap, high quality goods, society must pressure big business to invest sustainable manufacturing and transportation methods.

Indigeneity: relating to native species (naturally occurring outside of human manipulation), indigenous people (more original to an area relative to newcomers/settlers), political movements (to redress colonial oppression relating to economic marginalization, racial discrimination, and territorial disposition), and indigenous knowledge (the knowledge of human and non-human interactions in a certain region over generations).

Photo taken by me of Nonnie Egbuna

The most intriguing aspect of this word to me was the idea of human and environment interconnectivity. Often times, it is difficult to associate individual actions with the entirety of environmental issues, and this thought process stems from the notion that the environment and the human are in separate spheres. Under the definition of indigeneity is the acknowledgment of that indigenous people play a vital role in the ecology of the areas in which they inhabit. This idea parallels the undeniable truth that the lives of humans impact the environment and in turn the environment impacts the lives of humans.

Through this photo I portray this relationship through obvious visual depictions of the environment and the human. The attitude of my subject (Nonnie) is one of praise representing not only a connection to the environment, but a careful, mutualistic attitude towards the earth that we inhabit. An inclination that would prompt behaviors that promote sustainability and protection. The overwhelming presence of green in this photo depicts a tone of health and growth for the environment, as well as, for Nonnie. Together the subjects – Nonnie and the vines – portray a mutualistic relationship model for the human and the environment that includes growth and health for both parties.

Work Cited

Adamson, Joni; Gleason, William A.; Pellow, David N.. Keywords for Environmental Studies. New York: NYU Press, 2016. Ebook Library. Web. 25 Jan. 2017.

There is one common mechanism of causality, with respect to an urban population that – owing to increasing rural-urban migration – is shifting along virtually every axis- the Environment.

The Environmental issue is like a rope: at first it seems to be one thing, one entity, until you start teasing the ends, and then it begins to fray. And perhaps this is its most challenging aspect: there’s no one problem, which means there’s no one solution. Factors combine and connect: forces intersect and amplify, and people all around the world, regardless gender, caste and creed are affected. Today, more than ever before there is a need for extensive discourse on environmental affairs that plague not only us, but also future generations to come.

But why are we suddenly so aware of environmental issues? Let’s be honest, just for a second. Do we really care if the Balinese Tiger sub specie has gone extinct? Does it perturb us in the slightest, to know that the glaciers in the Himalaya’s are melting? I didn’t. You probably didn’t either. But our purposeful ignorance, can’t help us when we get sick. When someone we love falls sick.

For 3 years, I worked in a slum area in New Delhi. A curiously isolated enclave, it is a land without time, populated by rickshaws, street dogs, and narrow winding lanes. The vicinage was plagued with disease, delinquency and despair. The stench of urination and unbathed bodies would remain in my clothes as a staunch reminder even after I left. Open sewers served as a cesspool for multiple diseases, and as a swimming pool of sorts for the children that lived there. Cows, pigs and dogs lived in close contact with the people, there was open defecation and toxic garbage. Disease lingered in the air, just waiting for a chance to strike. I grew close to a girl, she was unsure of her age, but no more than 17 at the time we met. She was a wife, a mother, and a victim. A victim of our apathy, a victim of our ignorance, a victim of the disaster we are all responsible for. The water they got there was infected by pollutants, and her baby contracted diarrhea. Uneducated and unaware, she lost her child. Her husband works as causal labour in a cement factory, and has carcinoma of the lungs. Almost everyone in this tiny slum is living with TB or has latent TB. Yes, some might argue that adequate treatment might have saved her baby, and yes it might have. The husband should be wearing a mask and, the government should have more effective prevention strategies. If you’re asking these questions, I’d compare you to a goldfish in a bowl. Putting forward questions, only to do nothing about them, refusing to accept the reality that is.  Why did the child have to fall sick in the first place? Why are people living in such hell holes?

The lack of access to potable water, living in a toxic dumping ground and being subjected to every kind of pollutant is a reality that exists for many. It’s the best option, when no alternative exists. This made me aware of the dichotomy that exists in my society, and society’s globally. A certain segment of society chooses to be ignorant of the environmental issue, yet contributes the most to its detriment. The other segment bears the repercussions, and they are shunned in oblivion. However, there isn’t much time before both segments face the reality of the latter- and then it will be too late. We need to understand and show the correlates of health and the environment beyond a statistical abstraction. While basic Economics dictates, that correlation does not necessarily entail causation- it is a fact, that when Health and the environment are concerned it is.

I look around me now, almost ever other person I know is sick. Sick with a disease that is preventable. A disease they wouldn’t have contracted, had we stopped sweeping the environmental issues under the carpet, a long time ago.

Communication is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of the human condition, and the most imperative tool in combatting the global obstacles due to a deteriorating Environment. Who caused this problem? We did. Who is bearing the repercussions of this problem? We are (along with the poor plants and animals). Who can ameliorate this problem? We can. But who is the “We”?  Is it the activist, whose voice blares on the TV? Is it the tree hugger in the forests of Rajasthan? Or the guy smoking Marijuana who can’t shut up about the “beauty of extensive green”? “We” is them, its you and me. We need to leverage a broad scientific education against a critical appreciation of culture to fully explore the nascent capabilities of policy and advocacy of Sustainability and Ecology.

Companies are, and are becoming environmental activists, simply because it makes profitable business sense. It is naïve to think otherwise. TV personalities have the weight and sometimes the will to do better for the world we live in. I suppose Democracy is hogwash, when the powerful don’t get their way.

While it may be easier for them to be heard by more people, it does not negate the effects ordinary citizens have on the environment. One famous man never created the problem, and it is not going to take one famous man to solve it. When I think of the word ‘activist’, I see the word ‘intrepid’ sitting next to it. And next to intrepid, it’s distant cousin ‘intelligence’. They must sit together on a bench, perhaps a loveseat, and it is their conversation that can make one into a good activist.

In his book “Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere”, Robert Cox highlights the myriad of channels and conduits through which “Diverse Voices” relay specific needs and challenges in real-time, to the authorities who make decisions. According to him this “landscape of communication” is as varied and multifarious as the ecology of the Galapagos or the Amazon. According to Cox, human communication is in itself a form of symbolic action, and this is rightly so. The spectrum ranges from ordinary citizens to environmental groups to corporations. It is this very discourse that ultimately shapes our beliefs, ethics and actions. However, advocacy must be translated into action. Cox opines the “Linking of Social Justice to Environmental quality” as seen in Environmental Justice, and promoting sustainability.

Simple and comprehensible policies are the most effective for societies evolving politically, demographically, and economically. I often wonder, with all the pieces in place, how do welfare states – founded on the principles of equality, social justice and democracy – display such inequities in Environmental issues and access to health care; how do we combat the systemic and institutional forces arrayed against the weaker section of society? Why are nations of engineers, doctors and activists, so curiously resistant to sustainable innovation? What we cannot do is stagnate, cling to the models of the past: because the future is now, and we are accountable. We can make a difference- we is you and me.

Cox, Robert, and Phaedra C. Pezullo. “Chapter 1 Studying/Practicing Environmental Communication.” Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2016. Print.

History is a very important aspect of most disciples that study human behaviour. Ecology interestingly encompasses both the study of human behaviour on the societal level and on a personal level. Therefore history is integral to understanding not only the large-scale patterns of humankind’s impact on the environment, but also our personal virtues, actions, and opinions concerning what it means to be eco-friendly. Without history, we are forced to look at the status quo isolated from all the events that explain why the present is so. History illuminates dimensions of positions, injustices, and actions that would otherwise be lost. For example, studies show that discrimination against non-whites continues in the housing market. Examined in isolation, one can easily be led to think that this is not telling of a larger and deeper issue of discrimination in our society. However, given the context of slavery, Jim Crow laws, etc., discrimination in the housing market can be seen as a symptom of larger-scale racism in America. History allows us to overcome this myopia.

Specifically in relation to the environmental studies, history allows us to be aware of how certain opinions and positions concerning the environment have arisen. For example, when discussing corporations and lobbyists, Cox uses history to show how the emergence of “greenwashing” (misleading advertising that claims a product promotes environmental values) is actually another form of corporations masking their real environmental impact. Overall, the use of history in environmental studies will add more dimensions to our discussions on current injustices.

Cox, Robert, and Phaedra C. Pezullo. “Chapter 1 Studying/Practicing Environmental Communication.” Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2016. Print.

Dewan, Shaila. “Discrimination in Housing Against Nonwhites Persists Quietly, U.S. Study Finds.” New York Times, 11 June 2013.