Sustainable practice research

In order to produce a sustainable video diary, I’ve come up with some research for a few topics among those that we could do in everyday life.
The first issue that I came across is about power saving, how am I going to use power more efficiently; while still be able to maintain my habits. I do a lot of gaming, which requires a lot of power supply for my PC (it runs on an 800W power supply), and I’m also a heavy smoker. So I came up with the original “Cake or Pie” but with a little twist.
“Lighters or Matches”
One million matches can be made from each average-sized aspen. Therefore, three 20-a-day smokers would take about 45 years - if they lived that long - to strike their way through one tree's worth of matches. On a wider scale, the World Health Organisation says that about 15bn cigarettes are smoked every day around the world - one in three in China alone. If they were all lit with matches that would equate to 15,000 trees a day going up in smoke. (Incidentally, the tycoon founder of Swedish Match, Ivar Kreuger - who was found dead after his dealings triggered the stock market "Kreuger Crash" in 1932 - is said to have invented the superstition that it is unlucky for three people to share a light in order to get people to use more matches.) But those matches don’t require trees to be cut specifically, in order to produce them, since most manufacturer uses scrap wood.
This might be a reasonable response if all lighters used were refillable, like Zippos. But most lighters sold today are disposable. Bic, a firm that in 2005 "celebrated" the fact that it had sold its 100 billionth disposable pen, says that 4mil Bic lighters are sold worldwide every day - 1.46bn a year. It says a user can get up to 3,000 lights per lighter. Somewhat crudely, this means that, in terms of lighting cigarettes, one "tree" of matches equals 333 disposable lighters. But those lighters will end up in a landfill site or being incinerated.
An average lighter also releases about 0.25g of carbon dioxide per minute used. Not much perhaps, but its plastic - often nylon - casing, as well as the butane fuel used within, are both products of the petrochemical industry. Therefore, lighters cannot lay claim to the "carbon neutral" tag that matches made from sustainably grown timber can. Furthermore, cigarette lighter fuel is responsible for 64% of substance abuse deaths in the UK - a good enough reason not to create further demand for its widespread availability.
All this adds up to yet more reasons for smokers to try to give up, but the lesser of the evils seems to be to use matches, especially if you can establish where the timber is sourced and how the matches are produced.
For my gaming habit, it would be quite simple if turning off my computer could do the job, but apparently turning on your computer consumes more energy than leaving it on hibernate mode. However, if computer is left running in long term (even if most of the time in hibernate mode), its components will be damaged quicker since they don’t have time to release heat. As the matter of fact when one average computer is produced, an amount of waste that is 10 times the resource will also end up in landfills. Therefore, hibernate mode may seems to be the best solution so far, it does leave some unseen consequence.
Another issue that came across my mind was recycling.
There is some debate over whether recycling is economically efficient. Municipalities often see fiscal benefits from implementing recycling programs, largely due to the reduced landfill costs. A study conducted by the Technical University of Denmark found that in 83% of cases, recycling is the most efficient method to dispose of household waste. However, a 2004 assessment by the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute concluded that incineration was the most effective method for disposing of drink containers, even aluminum ones.
For example, recycling aluminum uses only 5% of the energy required by virgin production; glass, paper and metals have less dramatic but very significant energy savings when recycled feedstock is used.
Material Energy Savings Air Pollution Savings
Aluminium 95% 95%
Cardboard 24% -
Glass 5-30% 20%
Paper 40% 73%
Plastic 70% -
Steel 60% -

Doggy!

Found this guy on the street the other day, wish my land lord allowed dogs.

Some thought about last week

What stood out the most last week? Constant rain that is, you gotta hate the weather here, it doesn’t matter whether you are a local or a foreigner, the weather is plain bad and you know it! Put that aside, what happened at work was more interesting, a man came in asking for a bowl of chicken noodle. It wouldn’t have been so much of a story if he didn’t turn that order into a quiz, first he wanted chicken noodle, then he wanted the chef to dip some beef in there so that he can feel the taste of the beef. So I went asking if he just want some beef, and he said “no, I just want chicken noodle, but I want to feel the beef flavor too”. It was a simple request so I told the chef to take a note down, and he did. God knows if the man actually has an exceptionally sensitive tongue or he just wanted to be unique, but he sure was happy, and that’s all I care. So long as they smile, right?

About time to start blogging again

Right, it’s been a while since the last time I set foot on a blog; it’s been quite a busy and eventful year for me so far. Right now, we’re studying about sustainability (I hate that word) with Anna, I find it quite interesting to be honest.

The definition for sustainability is indeed very vague, but it can be related to anything in our living environment and most importantly, to the way that we’re living.

In my opinion, being sustainable means trying to preserve what we already have, using our resources sufficiently, and keeping the balance of the Earth.

“Social equality” is an interesting term, it reminds me of late John Lennon and the song Imagine, yea it sounds great doesn’t it? A perfect world, where everyone lives equally, yea right… As far as I can see, the very world that contains our society is dying every minute; while the level of ignorance is rising at the same speed. Yes I do reallise that there are more than one factor that affects sustainability; but they all come down to being manipulated by politic, and rarely are those people who have the political power brave enough to sacrifice their own greeds for common needs, in meaning of the global population.

As I mentioned before, sustainability is interconnected to pretty much everything surrounds us, therefore religion is not an exception. Let me differentiate religion from belief, because they are completely the opposite of each other, as far as I my knowledge allow me to know. Everyone has at least one belief; it could be either tangible or intangible. One must have a biological body to be alive, but to truly live; he has to believe in a certain goal and way in life. While belief is related to the spiritual element existing in every human being, religion is something created by human society for the sake of idolising their belief, over time religion has become much more than just a worship deity, instead mankind has corrupted it and turned it into a tool more or less for their personal desire, and somewhat a raison d'être for their deeds (apologies to anyone that is religious, but the truth is bitter). So much of a cliché; nonetheless religion has been responsible for over 50% of the dreadful slaughters in the past and still is the cause of many conflicts in our society, or at least a justification for those bloodshed. Ironic enough, most religions talk about loving the person standing next to you, none of them mentions anything about loving other religions. So why is religion related to sustainability? As the matter of fact, so many people died in the name of religion; moreover, it is used as a tool to brain wash people and turn them into believing meaningless wars that are raging across the land for the desire of power, wealth and anything alike. Even worse, religion makes people think that those who do not follow the same religion as they do are inferiors and should be eradicated, leading to breaking the theory of social equality.

Culture is not much different from religion; our society was created to have multiple cultures due to their living environment and belief. It was also created to have multiple culture stereotypes and barriers too, no matter how open minded you are, there are still barriers that make a human distant from one other. Culture differences lead to racism, classism, and sexism and so on. If we wish to maintain our world as a sustainable world, then mankind is required to work together and put aside their differences, how is that going to happen, when organisation such as the KKK is still exist? How is it going to happen, when theory like Apartheid still believed by people? I personally have a South African friend, and I was told that, even though their government has announced an end to the Apartheid segregation in 1994, 20% of their population still acts according to it, just because their education system is not strong enough to “de-brainwash” those who has been brainwashed by it.

Therefore, maintaining a sustainable world is almost an impossible mission is both an easy and almost impossible task, it is easy because we can relate it to the way we live and think; but it is such a hard task to accomplish due to the same reason, sustainability is too vast and interconnected to everything, could one be brave enough to change the world? You be the judge.