Ozone Layer & Its Depletion!!

        Ozone layer is a deep layer in the stratosphere within the atmosphere, surrounding our MOTHER EARTH that has a high concentration of ozone in it. Ozone is a relatively simple molecule, consisting of three oxygen atoms bound together, yet the ozone layer is extremely important by providing shields or absorbing actions to protect the entire Earth from the biologically harmful ultraviolet radiation that comes from the sun.

   The ozone layer can be depleted by free radical catalysts like chlorine, bromine and nitrites. The concentrations of chlorine and bromine at the atmosphere has increased dramatically during recent year due to the release of large quantities of man-made organic halogen compounds especially chlorofluorocarbon (CFCs) that is used in aerosol cans, air-condition and refrigerator. 

   Each radical is then free to initiate and catalyze a chain reaction capable of breaking down over 100,000 ozone molecules. The breakdown of ozone in the stratosphere results in the ozone molecules being unable to absorb the dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun and thus reaches the Earth’s surface.

   As years go by, the continent-size hole in Earth's ozone layer has been getting bigger and bigger. With less ozone in the atmosphere, more and more harmful ultraviolet radiation able to strike the Earth and resulting in changes in molecular DNA which can lead to skin cancer and changes in plant growth.

   Since the discovery of CFCs causing the damage of ozone layer in 1989, most of the countries had ban the import  of CFCs containing aerosol cans. In 2003, researchers announced that the international ban and the limited production of CFCs containing products had successfully slowing the rate of ozone layer depletion.  


Ozone layer

Green Computing

   Green computing or Green IT means environmentally sustainable computing or IT. It is also defined as the study and practice of designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers and associated subsystems to optimize its efficiency and creating minimal or no impact towards our environment.
 

    Nowadays, in order to address the impacts of computing/IT had done to our MOTHER NATURE, many companies has adopted a holistic approach and make the entire IT lifecycle greener by addressing environmental sustainability along with the development of IT. 

The ideas or design of Green Computing has to go through the following steps:

1. Green use — reducing the energy consumption of computers and other information systems as well as using them in an environmentally friendly manner.
2. Green disposal — reusing old computers and properly recycling unwanted computers and other electronic equipment.
3. Green design — designing energy-efficient and environmentally sound components, computers, servers, cooling equipment, and data centers.
4. Green manufacturing — manufacturing electronic components, computers, and other associated subsystems with minimal impact on the environment. 

    

   Furthermore, several countries have adopted energy-management programs, such as Energy Star, an international standard for energy-efficient electronic equipment that was created in 1992. Energy Star can significantly reduces the amount of energy consumed by a product by automatically switching it into “sleep” mode or "standby" mode and thus effectively reduces the power used for the appliances of the product.

E-waste is a BIG problem!!

   Electronic waste also known as e-waste can be defined as the loosely discarded or broken computers, monitors, televisions or other electrical or electronic devices. Nowadays, e-waste is one of the fastest growing segments of the waste stream of many countries. More and more PCs and electronic appliances get replaced each year, in the end e-waste dumping is turning into a serious problem.
   Normally, e-waste is routinely exported out by developed countries to developing countries but often in violation of the international law which also means those tradings are at most illegally done. It was reported that in UK alone for 2003, there was 23000 metric tonnes of waste collected exported out to India, Ghana, Nigeria, China and Africa for the recovery job.

   

    Electronic scrap components are generally rich in toxic organic chemicals and harmful metals such as cadmium, lead and copper. Not only that the disposal of e-waste may involve significant health risk to e-waste workshop workers, if the safe recycling procedure was not followed properly, it may lead to a bigger problem which is the exposure or leaching of such materials to the people and the environment.

   E-waste recycling issue has become an emerging problem in India. In just few years, India is now a major e-waste dump yard of the world. It was reported that the uncontrolled burning, disassemble and disposal job had bring the poor to an earning but has also resulted in vary of environmental issue like water pollution and air pollution. Besides, the health effects among the workers had also been questioned. Below is a documentary relating the e-waste issues happening in India:

How BIG is your CARBON FOOTPRINT?

   Carbon footprint is the measure of the amount of green house gases, measured in units of carbon dioxide, produced by human activities. A carbon footprint can be measured for an individual or an organization, and is typically given in tons of CO₂ emissions per year.

   Do u know that a person’s carbon footprint is the direct effect their actions have on the environment in terms of green house gases  emissions?. In general, the biggest contributors to the carbon footprints of individuals in our nations are transportation and household electricity use while the secondary carbon footprint is dominated by what we eat, what clothes we were and what personal products we are using.

   Some of the environmentally concern purpose websites provide the carbon footprint calculator whereby each of us can count how big is our carbon footprint. Following shown a breakdown of a typical individual's carbon footprint:

   Each of us can make a difference to our MOTHER NATURE just by reducing our carbon footprint and its easier than we think to get started. Firstly, we may need to calculate our individual's carbon footprint to know how BIG is it. Usually it is made up of a series of scores for example like Transport score, Energy score, Food score, and Waste score.

   Then, we can locate on the area that has created a bigger score and thus focus on reducing the carbon footprint on that area, a good example is to catch on public transport instead of driving your own car to work. Here is a list of ideas on reducing our carbon footprints through daily lives:

• Buy locally produced goods and services. Goods and services that are produced locally eliminate thousands of pounds of carbon by reducing fossil fuel on transportation and yet is normally cheaper in price.

• Plant a tree! Trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen and they also provide you shading in a hot day.

• Reduce excessive baggage and pack lighter when taking flight. Planes flying with extra loads tend to use more fuel.

• Bike or walk whenever possible to a nearby destination instead of driving to reach there. And if u drive, drive at below speed limit to save fuel and gas emissions.

• Buy secondhand household items and save the carbon cost of the production of new goods.

• Use the washing machine only when it is fully loaded, as this can reduce the operations frequency and thus save energy.

ECOSAN Toilet: A new way to be harmony with our MOTHER NATURE!!!

   Ecological Sanitation which also known as ECOSAN is a concept on our sanitation system which recognized human excreta and household waste water as the resources to be recovered and to be reuse. In converse to the common practiced linear waste management that we had now, ECOSAN is much more enviromentally friendly in terms of nutrient and energy recovery.

   ECOSAN toilet is a dry toilet or waterless toilet which also means ECOSAN toilet bowl does not need to flush water, in that way we can prevent the wasting of water. In ECOSAN toilet, urine and faeces are separated by 2 compartments. The feaces will be decomposed by microbes and become soil-like. Both the feaces compost and urine can be used as natural fertilizers in gardening.
   In this way, not only that ECOSAN is ecological friendly, it also helps in conserving the water resources and quality as the solid-water separation job is very difficult. As the ECOSAN toilet doesn't use water, we can also save up to 60% of monthly bills!

Here's a clip about the construction of ECOSAN toilet projects by UNICEF India,

Brilliant way to save our MOTHER NATURE: Eat less meat!!!

    More and more of us are becoming environmentally concern of our MOTHER NATURE and care deeply about the global warming, climate change as well as disappearing wildlife habitats or rain forests, but we do not really realize that our own eating habits are a major contributor to these issues.
  Do u believe that the price of eating one hamburger from McD is 55 square feet of rain forests which also equal to the end of half ton of trees as well as the habitats of wild animals? This is because in order to supply a huge amount of meat products are causing the clearance of rain forests to plant grains for animal feeds.

   Each year, the area of rain forests that we are losing is bigger than the size of Denmark! Yet, each tree in the forest is capable of releasing 40 gallons of water to the atmosphere and the oxygen released is sufficient for surviving 200 people!
  To produce a pound (454g) of meat, we need 12 pounds of grains, 2500 gallons of water and 1 gallon of petrol. A pound of meat can only feed one person for one meal. But, with the same amount of grains, we can produce 12 pounds of bread which can feed a person for 18 meals!
    We humans eat about 230m tonnes of animals a year, which twice as much as we did 30 years ago. We mostly breed four species including chickens, cows, sheep and pigs emit methane and other greenhouse gases and produce mountains of physical waste.

    Switching to a meatless or vegetarian diet is definitely helpful in fighting the climate change, but if you can do it in a quick run, just by cutting down the meat potion every time during meal do help a lot too. By going vegetarian, the protein intake will be normally replaced by soy products. Also, there are many great vegetarian options and recipes available now, vegetarian meal has never been more delicious.

    People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal (PETA) is an organization on animal rights. PETA has been influential in raising in campaigns on encouraging people to to vegetarian. PETA's starter vegetarian kit is available for free on the PETA website which will help us to kick start on saving our planet. PETA's slogan says "Whether you go vegetarian for the environment, for your health, or for animals, you have the power to change the world, simply by changing what’s on your plate!"

PETA

3R CONCEPT

     Are you a 'green' person? Do you always concerned about the ongoing environmental issues of our MOTHER NATURE? Whether you are or not, there's no excuses now, we are supposed to do something to replenish our natural environment for us and our future generations.We should by now be mindful and concern in slowing the trend on climate change of our earth. Have you ever heard about 3R concept? The 3R stands for Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

REDUCE

The first step to reducing our impact on the environment is to reduce the amounts of resources that we consume and use. We should think twice before we buy or use anything. 

Here are some of the ideas on reducing our waste:

 Waste Disposal

• Print and photocopy as little as possible. Also, do it double-sided.

• Use e-mail for mailing purpose to minimize paper use

• Send and store documents like necessary papers and business proposals electronically instead of on paper.

• Simply by changing the margins on our Word documents to a smaller inches, we can reduce the amount of paper used by almost 5%.

• Choose products that come with minimized packaging and do buy refills.

 There are also many ways to optimize our energy consumptions.

Energy Consumption

• Turn off unused or unneeded any electronic devices at all times.

• Leaving a space between our refrigerator and the wall increases air circulation around the condenser coils, allowing the fridge to operate more efficiently and thus less electricity used.

• Reducing the air-conditioning temperature by 1°C will reduce 5-10% of the electricity consumption and avoid up to 300kg of CO₂ emissions per household and year.

• Use natural lighting instead of electric lighting whenever possible.

• Park our cars in the shade whenever possible. This may lowers the temperature in the gas tank by up to 7 degrees, significantly reducing fuel evaporation thus reducing fuel consumption.

•  Brush teeth by using a cup of water instead of running tap.

REUSE

• Reuse old plastic bags or get a reusable shopping bag.

• Donate the old clothing to a local charity.

• Use old newspaper, magazines as wrapping papers.

• Reuse seashells by crushing into small pieces as decoration in the garden.

• Donate old books to the library or an orphanage.

• Reuse old papers as memo pads.

RECYCLE

    Do you know that by recycling  just one aluminium can saves 90% of the energy needed to produce a new one? For 1kg of recycled plastics, the CO₂ emissions reduced by 1.5kg and by recycling 1kg of paper instead of landfilling it avoids 900grams of CO₂ emissions as well as methane emissions.

• Recycle our organic waste by composting it in the garden to reduce the green house gas, methane emissions.

• Recycle our old computers and gadgets by sending them to the electronics recycle booth.

• Learn how to do sorting of recycling items such as aluminium cans, papers, plastics and glasses to ease the recycling process. 

Every person is the right person to act. Every moment is the right moment to begin. Now is your time to act!!

We made our MOTHER EARTH fell sick and barely to be recovered!!!

   Whether the 2012 predictions will eventually happened or not? To be honest, at this point we do not know. What we know is that our MOTHER EARTH had shown us the signs of 'she' is falling sick and it was all because of us, the human kind.

   We thought we was brilliant to create new technologies to ease our lives, open up forests to feed, to accommodate our increasing population. We never consider about the impacts those had to do with our earth and environment. Now, whether we are facing the coming of the 2012,end of the world or not, one thing we should do now is to take initiative and actions to recover our MOTHER EARTH's sickness!


CLIMATE CHANGE

    Climate change can be define as the variation in the Earth's greenhouse or the on going variation in regional climates. Already, climate change is more alarming nowadays and has created huge impacts to the earth. The extreme in temperatures,  the rising sea levels as a result of melting polar ice caps which then cause more and more storms and floods experienced in many regions of the world.

  One of the obvious sign of climate change is  the ongoing global warming. Global warming refers to the average rise in surface air temperature.Over the past 100 years, the global average surface air temperature has abnormally increased by 0.74 °C.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that if this trend continue, by 2100 the global average temperature is most likely to increase by a further 1.8°C to 4°C or maybe the worst to be up to 6.4°C.

                                                                      Extreme weathers

                                                            Melting of ice in south pole

                                                       Climate change in Spain (2007)


   If we don't do something now, climate change is predicted to cause more and more damage to the functioning of our natural environment which then may disrupt the supplies of our food, raw materials, animals' habitats and other vital resources. Here's a video about a 12 years old girl from Environmental Child Organization (ECO) giving her speech in a conference to fight for her 'FUTURE'!! She had silenced the world to listen to what she had to say.

  

NATURAL DISASTERS!!

  Natural disaster is the impact of a natural-occurring hazard has such as flood, tornado, earthquake, volcanic eruption, epidemic diseases and more.  Environmental issues such as climate change had been a major contribution towards the incidence of natural disasters.

 
   Some of the recent natural disasters around the world includes:

• Flooding in the Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia. (4th Jan 2011)

• Flood and mudslide in Brazil (13th Jan 2011)

• Drought in East Africa (1st Jan 2011)

• Russian summer heat wave (9th Aug 2010) 

•  Haiti 7.0 magnitude earthquake (12th Jan 2010)

   According to the United Nations (UN), 2010 was one of the worst years on record for natural disasters over the past two decades, leaving nearly 297,000 people dead. The Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) counted that there were 373 natural disasters in the year of 2010. Besides, the economic cost of the 373 major disasters recorded in 2010 reached 109 billion dollars!

2010's disasters were deadliest in 2 decades

2012: The End Of The World?!

    As we're celebrating the coming of 2011, some of the people are worried about the coming of the 'DOOMS DAY' which believed to be happened on 20.12.2012. Do you believe in 2012 being the end of the world? Whether you yourself believe it or not, 2012 has got to arrive to us someday anyway!
    Actually, there are a number of theories and predictions which shown 2012 may be be the end of the world. Here i would like to justify a few of them. End of the world 2012 predictions:

• PROPHECIES OF ARMAGEDDON IN HOLY BIBLE: Biblical prophecies says about the GREAT TRIBULATION on the earth. (20.12.2012 is not predicted in the bible as the 'ARMAGEDDON DAY) The holy bible not only speaks a battle of Armageddon but also the increased in natural disasters, diseases and wars. Besides,  Matthew 24:29 says "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the SUN be darkened, and the MOON shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from the heaven, and the powers of heavens shall be shaken" whereby it told us about the coming of a JUDGEMENT DAY.

• MAYAN CALENDAR 2012: The ancient Mayan calendar also known as Aztec calendar was set to end its final baktun (cycle) on 21.12.2012 suggested a prophecy of the end of an age and maybe the world. One theory mentioned about an alignment of the MILKY WAY galaxy and researchers believe that this may cause a shift in the magnetic pole. Another theory which may coincide with the 2012 deadline is NASA shown that there will be an extra powerful solar flare which may be large enough to cause disruptions to the earth. Here's a picture of the Mayan calendar:

                                                                                  

• NOSTRADAMUS 2012: Michel de Nostredame or also known as Nostradamus was born in France in 1503. He was a pharmacist and later developed great interest in occult sciences. Later around 1550, he began summarizing about a thousand of these undated quatrains into a book and published as “The Prophecies". He was famous in horoscope as well as a legendary psychic. He precisely predicted about the 911 incident in US through a drawing of a burning castle. (shown below) Meanwhile, Nostradamus's 2012 predictions was a bleak picture of massive destruction and havoc brought about by a comet. It is not known whether this comet will strike our earth or will pass very close to our planet, causing massive earthquakes and other massive occurrences.     

                                                 

2011

2011 is a brand new year.. brand new kick start to a whole new a level of life.. To me, 2011 will be an awesome year.. 2011 is the year that i will be graduating from UCSI.. It's personally exciting because i can drown myself in to the real working enviroment and be responsible of myself.. I would love to experience new things, surrounded by new people and to earn money.. Here, i hope i'm blessed throughout the year and cheers all the way..!!