gvenhastoes

[gvenhastoes]

I want to end this little blogging journey of mine with this picture. It is the picture of a metal straw. Plastic straws have been around for decades. They take minutes to manufacture, but years to degrade. They stay on the earth, unusable, for centuries and millenia. They are the old. But with metal straws, one can do everything one wishes to do with a regular straw, but this one is reusable. Metal straws can take the same minutes to process from raw metal to furnished steel, but can take years to be used and is perfectly recyclable. This is the idea of sustainable living. And I hope by sharing my little experience here in this blog, I can share those ideas as well.

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I want to share a story. Its about my journey through the app process of UP MBS (Marine Biological Society). Its not about EnE 31, but I want to share it because I feel that it relates to the cause of environmentalism. UP MBS is an org dedicated to spreading awareness about the ocean. Founded on the principles of environmentalism, it uses the sport of skindiving to inspire people to take care of our one, big, ocean. I applied for this org as I was taking EnE 31. Pictured above is a sticker we were selling as a project to raise funds. Now I want to share my story of applying because I feel like the application process, and my taking of the elective EnE31 woke me up to realize the gravity and the necessity of striving for sustainable living. In the app process, we we're required to listen to lectures about the ocean, about the org, and about skin diving. While in between all of the talks and lectures, we were reminded that "every dive is a clean up dive." Now MBS is known for its dives all across the Philippines, and every member is expected not only to go there to just sight see, but to help in the cleaning efforts of the community, of the ocean,topics and even trying to provide sustainable living and disposal practices for the coastal communities. In its project entitled Seaseed PH, it tries to provide materials recovery facilities, recycling programs and even alternative livelihood practices for the locals- to ensure the long term preservation of the dive sites we all love and enjoy. In the end, I wasn't able to pass the skills test necesaary to complete the app process. Nevertheless, the lessons learned and the ideas shared about not using straws or the use of reusuable food containers, are here to stay. Saving the earth isn't something that one single person can do. It is the collective effort of everyone being educated and making a stand to help protect our only home. It takes all of us to save the world.

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In summary:

In a day, I used : 16 mugs for drinking 1*2 mugs for brushing 8*2 mugs for washing 14 dippers for bathing 4*4 dippers for toilet-ing Total water used: 36.4L

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For washing the dishes, I used the mug to measure how much water I used; it took 8 mugs of water to wash the dishes.

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For taking a bath, I filled up a bucket with eater (measuring how many dippers it was) and used it to take a bath. I used 14L of water when I took a bath.

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I also had to measure how much water I used whenever i used the toilet. So I used a bucket, filled it with water, then used the water to flush the toilet. This dipper has a volume of 1L; I filled up a bucket with 4 dippers to flush the toilet- 4L of water was used to flush the toilet.

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For a whole day. I used this one mug (roughly 200ml) to measure how much water I drank. Throughout the day, I consumed 16 mugfulls of water. Roughly 3.2L of water for drinking. I also used this mug to measure how much water I use to brush my teeth. It was one full mug.

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Daily water consumption.

For our EnE 31 class, we were tasked to find out how much water we use everyday. We had to measure how much water we drank, how much of it we used to bathe, how much we spit when we brushed our teeth. Here's the story.

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Under poor management, the material recovery facility in Quezon Memorial Circle has faltered to a halt. It is now only a pipedream. But the fight is yet to be over. The fight for a sustainable future is now.

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<p>The intent was all good and well. The runoff from the composting pits was to be mixed with water for watering the plants with nutrient rich water. But when we visited, the facilities they had were decrepit, undermanned, and poorly managed. The picture shows a leaf grinder, which is supposed to grind the yard waste put into it into more manageable chunks for the worms. It no longer works.</p>

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According to the personnel we talked to, the project first started 6 years ago. Instead of collecting the food and yard waste in the park and hauling it all the way to dumpsites, management decided that it'd be much cheaper if they collected their waste, composted them, and used the runoff for watering their plants.

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This is all in contrast to another vermi facility our group visited in Quezon Memorial Circle.

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So long as the facility is kept under the capable management of the current task force, sustainability can be achieved!

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Another one of their products is Vermi Compost, which is compost made using worm poop. They house a type of worm called the "African Nightcrawler". These nocturnal worms eat and poop on top of the soil, creating a layer of nutrient rich compost which is then packed and sold for plant nourishment.

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The waste is first put into a bioreactor, which dries and meshes the waste into a dry heap of nutrient rich material. These are then collected, aerated, and mixed for up to 5 weeks before being used as fertilizer

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Last Thursday, we went to a Material Recovery Facility stationed in UP. It manages food and yard waste produced in the University, and turns this waste into compost.

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