Skip to main content

Environment: Much More than the Straws



In recent years, plastic straw has entered the target of environmental awareness campaigns around the world. Several establishments and cities have created alternatives to the use of the utensil as a solution to encourage the population to reduce the number of plastics in the oceans. Teresina joined the attempt and established, in law, the prohibition of the use of the item in establishments. But there are those who do, daily, also common attitudes, even more to reduce the impact of their actions on the environment. The reuse of food, choice of non-polluting transportation and selective garbage collection are among the decisions of Teresinos to contribute to a healthier world.

Iara Gomes is one of those who is fully aware that much of what is considered garbage can be reused in a very positive way. The backyard of her house is the concrete proof of what she thinks: fruits, medicinal plants, flowers and ornamental plants spread through the ecosystem cared for and nourished from the leftovers of food from her family's daily consumption.

Through composting, the teacher transforms what would be thrown away into fertilizer. In her backyard, an immense quantity of fruit plants is spread that shade the entire space. All of them are planted and cared for by her. "I learned from my grandfather, from an early age, how to like the field and the planting. I started little by little and now that I've learned how to move a little on Youtube, I can get more tips", she says.

With the experiences of life, she learned that the bark of plants and vegetables, when separated and mixed in the right way, are able to produce a powerful fertilizer for plants, flowers and vegetables that she sees growing in her backyard.Already with the Internet, she understood that she could use worms for the production of humus and accelerate even more the process of care of that ecosystem.

In four compartments distributed in the backyard, Iara produces all the fertilizer she needs through the techniques. That's how she and her family saw the production of waste that is discarded drastically reduce, while the benefit of having access to food grown without pesticides increases. Not even the coffee grounds, which are widely consumed by the family, go to the garbage. "Every day, I select and separate what I'm going to reuse. Everyone here already knows. Today, we discard only hygiene and food items that cannot be reused. But even plastic and cans, I separate them to reuse them as a pot", he comments.

In the backyard, fig trees, soursop, mango, jabuticaba, ata, condessa, banana, blackberry, vegetables and flowers are enriched with the benefit of reuse. "I have a bit of a health problem, in fact, most of the family is already in the third age. I have fibromyalgia, and on days when I'm in pain, the best thing is to move around, when I come here and start messing with the plants I don't even know what pain is. It does a lot of good," he says.

With experience, Iara makes assertive recommendations that it is possible to produce even in small spaces, if there is light and care, any plant can develop. "Before, I had a vegetable garden in the window. So it's possible to have your garden even in an apartment. Growing chives, oregano and other vegetables is very easy. Life is related to light, so with water and sun everything grows", she concludes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Photovoltaics: Band Diagram

In the previous post we discussed silicon, which is the most used material in photovoltaics. In this post, we introduce the band diagram, for which we will use silicon as an example. We will start our discussion of the band diagram with the Bohr model of the silicon atom. In semiconductor materials the outer shell of the atom, which is called the valence shell, is not completely filled. The outer shell of silicon contains 4 out of the possible 8 electrons, which we call valence electrons. As we discussed in the previous post, each silicon atom in a crystalline structure is bonded to four other silicon atoms. The bonds between the silicon atoms are called covalent bonds. These bonds actually consist of two valence electrons that are shared by two silicon atoms. All valence electrons are fixed in the lattice, forming covalent bonds, and are therefore immobile. However, at a temperature above absolute zero, thermal energy is supplied to these miconductor and some of the vale...
Post a Comment
Read more

Watching videos on the Internet also harms the environment

Surprisingly, even the videos we watch on the Internet have an impact on the environment. A new report indicates that the internet is one of the top "villains" in the digital sector's carbon footprint, which now accounts for 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This share could double by 2025, leaving the digital sector on a par with road transport, as energy consumption in this sector is increasing at the rate of 9% per year. Published by the French research website The Shift Project, the report "Climate Crisis: The Unsustainable Use of Online Video" quantifies the impact of Internet video (VoD, "tubes", pornography, social networks and others) on the environment and the global climate. The study shows that, within all Internet data, online videos account for about 60 percent of the stream, or the largest volume of greenhouse gas emissions in the industry, with about 300 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e). Of this total emission,...
Post a Comment
Read more

I-V Characteristic of a Solar Cell

Now that we know a bit about the physical processes behind photovoltaic energy conversion, let’s take a look at the device that does this, a solar cell. In the next few posts, we will go deep into all the operating principles of solar cells. We will discuss the semiconductor physics and optics governing their behavior and you will really get a sense of how solar cells work. Nevertheless, let’s start by trying to understand an important aspect for any electrical component, the current-voltage or “i-V” characteristic of the solar cell. Here we see a basic solar cell schematic. There are many different components and layers and you will become familiar with the properties and purposes of all these layers throughout the blog. All you need to know for this post is that a solar cell can take energy from illumination, and convert it into electrical energy in an external circuit. This post’s objective is to answer ‘what’. You will need to go through the rest of the course to u...
Post a Comment
Read more