Climate Change-The 3R’s, Incineration, Biomagnification and Eutrophication

 So, we all know of the harmful effects of excess greenhouse gases like CO2, methane etc. but something that often comes in our minds is what we, as responsible citizens, can do to protect our Earth ? After all, we are not leaving the planet permanently any time soon. Well, today I will be talking about one of the simplest things you could do that would affect the climate positively- RECYCLE !

Recycling is definitely good for the environment, it saves energy, helps reduce waste and also makes us more self-aware. Another benefit of recycling is it also helps save forest and ecosystems. But I get it, none of these directly affect you as a consumer, so why should you care? Well, for starters, expect markets to drastically change within just 10 years, because the effects of climate change are going to be so severe by then and temperatures are going to be so high, that organisations will have no choice but to act! This means that cost of commodities like plastic and prepared and not prepared food items among other things are going to go higher. So, we might as well get into the habit of using materials like plastic less, and when we do use them , to make sure we recycle them and not throw away the bag after just using it once.

You might question what good this will do, and it is a valid question. To answer this, let me tell you about three phenomenons that YOU can help in reducing, just by doing simple things like recycling, walking more and eating less meat.

The first is incineration, which is basically burning of organic waste, as you can see in the picture below. This is bad because not only is heat energy required to burn the waste, but also the gases and ash produced are harmful for the environment. So next time when you produce organic waste like banana peels or food left on your plate, try making some manure out of it, or if it is edible, you can feed it to the street dogs starving in your locality (it is really a thing in India!). Let me also tell you why people thing incineration is a great idea and don’t want to recycle-

Incineration is financially better than recycling because it's cheaper to burn waste for energy than the expenses involved in recycling. But it's more expensive than disposing of trash in a landfill. Incineration reduces waste volume by up to 90 percent of the original amount. But all this doesn’t make it not better for the environment!

 

The next one is eutrophication, which is basically when you dump too many things in the water and it becomes too rich in nutrients and minerals. This causes algae growth which in turn blocks sunlight and oxygen. So yeah, marine plants and animals die. I know you can’t really do anything about the waste being dumped into water bodies, but next time, try producing less waste.

The final one is biomagnification, which is basically when an animal or plant eats something toxic and then another animal eats the first animal or plant and this goes on until these toxic substances reach the human body and affect us. By the way, this chain of eating and being eaten is called a food chain. What can you do about it? Well, as before, produce less waste and if you are feeling particularly well, you can make sure that the animals and birds around you aren’t eating something they aren’t supposed to eat, like plastic.

Finally, please don’t waste food and try becoming a flexitarian if you eat too much meat (a flexitarian is someone who occasionally eats meat).Why ? Because agriculture accounts for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, but about a third of all food grown on this planet never actually gets eaten. So, what ends up on your plate makes another big difference.

Also, know that getting your protein from beef instead of plants produces at least six times more greenhouse gases and uses 36 times more land.

A study also revealed the importance of how the food is produced. For example, beef raised on deforested land results in 12 times more greenhouse gases than those grazing on existing pasture.

So if you do eat meat, get it from local organic farms if possible.