Fast Fashion 👕

 Hello! It's Julia. So last week at school, an Earth committee that Stella and I are apart of planned a bunch of things for the students to celebrate earth week. Every year there's a theme, and for this year we chose to talk about the fast fashion industry. I thought it would be cool to talk to you guys about the same thing. You might be wondering what fast fashion is, it's simply inexpensive clothing that is designed in a way that will fall apart quickly so that consumers have to go back to stores and purchase again. Another question you might have is how it's bad for the environment ? Well, first it means that we are throwing out more clothing. According to Value village (a second hand store), Canadians produce 10.5 million tons of textile waste per year. We also have to keep in mind that the fashion is the second most polluting industry after oil. That means the more we buy, the more we contribute to that pollution. Countries like, China or India, where most of this clothing is manufactured also don't have many laws protecting the environment. For example, to power their factories they are allowed to use extensive amounts of "dirty energy", such as coal, which creates green house gas emissions. This is one of the reasons why there is a layer of "brow cloud" that hangs over the northern Indian Ocean and parts of South Asia. Companies situated in these parts of the world are also allowed to dump untreated toxic water into rivers and streams. Another thing to remember is that cotton needs a lot of water, for example it takes 400 gallons of water to make one cotton shirt and 1,800 gallons to make one pair of jeans. So again, having to repurchase more clothing because it keeps on falling apart contributes to this water consumption. This is all awful, and it's not even to mention the ways to workers are treated. Now I'll will list the top 5 stores to avoid because they are know to produce fast fashion.

1. H&M

2. Zara

3. Top shop 

4. Forever 21

5. Gap

Thank you guys so much for reading, tomorrow we'll post some ways you all could help!

Make The Difference

     Hey. Today I'll be writing about what you could do to reduce the effects of air pollution. Air pollution is a very serious issue and creates a huge impact on global warming and climate change. As Julia explained in the previous post, there are many causes and effects of air pollution, but today Ièm asking the question: What can you do about it?

     1. Conserve as much energy as possible.
Sadly, there is a huge relation between energy consumption and air pollution. 80% of all our energy worldwide comes from fossil fuels which, as you know, are burned to produce this energy. Think of it, almost every single thing we do requires an enormous amount of energy. Turn off your lights more often. Reduce your screen time. Air dry your clothing. Use less hot water. There are many things you can do. (If you would like me to write a post one day of all the ways to reduce your energy consumption in your day to day lives, please let me know in the comments or feel free to send me a message on 1actaday's Instagram account)

     2. Greener Transportation.
If you are anything like most people, you move around a lot throughout the day. You are either going to work or school, or maybe simply just running some errands. There are about 1.2 billion people that drive cars which is equivalent to 16.4% of everyone in the world. This may not seem like a lot but our transportation contributes to 12% of all the greenhouse gases that are emitted. If you can start walking or biking to where you have to go. It's more eco-friendly but is also way healthier for you. If this is an issue, try public transportation whenever you can. The bus is on its way anyway so really, you are polluting way less. If you really can't explore any of these methods, at least don't be that person who leaves their car running when they aren't driving. Every action makes a difference. 

     3. Make your voice heard.
Start looking into different ideas such as carbon tax and spread the word. Even by raising awareness you can really leave a mark. Post about issues such as air pollution and climate change on social media, or contact authorities and companies about these issues. You may think that this won't do much, but even if only one person is now aware of something serious like this, they may think before they leave their room and turn off the light. In the end, this blog is based on the same theory. There aren't as many people who read these posts, but as long as I see that there is at least one person, I know I am making my contribution and doing everything I can. 

     Thank you for caring and keep making the world a better place.

Love Stella<3

Air Pollution

Hey everyone, it’s Julia! Sorry we haven’t posted in a while, Stella and I were away on a school trip to Washington DC and didn’t have time. Moving on, today i’m going to be talking about air pollution and its causes and consequences, then tomorrow we’ll be posting some solutions to the issue. 

Air pollution is created in many different ways. Many of you might think that it’s mainly created from us driving our cars, but the biggest contributor is actually to process to make all of the products we purchase on a daily bases. From the pollution created by all the factories to the transportation in between, it adds up to be a lot. Of course cars contribute a fair amount, but they are nowhere near as bad as some other things according to http://www.cleanerandgreener.org/resources/air-pollution.html . Farming is also top on the list, especially to farming of bovine which we've gone into detail about becoming vegetarian in a older post (which I'll link down below). Keep in mind that all the pesticides need to be included too because they do end up affecting the quality of our air. The last point I'll go over is the production of electricity. The main way our society produces electricity is by using fossil fuels, which causes a lot of air pollution to refine. According to research done http://www.science.smith.edu , United States electricity production is responsible for 62.6% of US sulfur dioxide emissions, 21.1% of US nitrous oxide emissions and 40% of US carbon emissions.

  

So now I'll go over some consequences of air pollution (which won't only be environnemental). So for starters sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide are the cause for acid rain which leads to damaging lakes, forests and soil. These two gases are also very damaging to our health. They lead to urban smog which is responsible for a sickness like Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (which is common with heavy smokers). Lastly, there's carbon dioxide which is of course a greenhouse gas, which leads to climate change. There are countless posts on the blog explaining climate change, so gain I'll link one down below. 

So please make sure to read tomorrow's post which will go over some solutions :-) !

-Julia

Here's a link to the vegetarian post: http://1actaday.blogspot.ca/2017/01/eco-friendly-diet.html 

This is the link to a climate change post: http://1actaday.blogspot.ca/2017/03/climate-changecatching-up.html 

Carbon Tax

Just a note before you read this, I wrote this for my English class (like Stella) so please don’t copy it or anything. 

Julia Ortiz 

ELA 3-01

Mr. Northey

Monday, March-27-17

Carbon Tax

            Did you know that according to NASA, 2016 was the third year in a row to have high record-setting surface temperatures?  I’m sure that it’s no surprise to you all that climate change is a big problem for our generation and the ones to come. As the planet’s temperature increases so do the sea levels leading to natural disasters and eventually landmasses being submerged under water. How do we stop this from happening? Well, there is a long list of things we can do to stop global warming, but I’m mainly going to be focusing on adopting a worldwide carbon tax. 

Before I begin talking about how implementing a carbon tax could help fix the issue, I’m first quickly going to explain what it is. It’s simply a tax put on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated from burning fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas. A number of countries, including Canada, have carried out a carbon tax, but it really must be adopted faster and worldwide to make a difference. 

Now that I’ve briefly clarified what the tax is, I’m going to talk about what kind of differences it would make if the world started charging a hefty amount for fossil fuels. 

First, more people would start using other forms transportation because it would be much cheaper than buying gas. This would take a lot of cars off the road and would start lowering carbon emissions. Then, there would be an immense growth in demand for electric vehicles. Although they are very expensive now, companies would definitely lower the price because of the increased demand. Third, the world would make a shift to renewable energy, because again it would be much less expensive than using fossil fuels. According tolandartgenerator.org it would take 510,000 km2 of land to power the earth using solar energy. This might sound like a lot but it’s only 0.05% of the unpopulated area of the Saharan desert. All of this would create no need to mine, drill or dig up the earth’s soil anymore. 

This whole domino effect to finally reach the outcome of stabilizing our climate wouldn’t be the only great thing to happen. There would be no more oil spills affecting aquatic life, no more air pollution to affect our health and the P.H of our rain would neutralize. I could go on forever, but the main point is that nature is connected and doing one thing leads to many others.

To conclude, our society really must make an important shift to renewable energy by implementing a carbon tax to provide a future for not only the next generations but also for all the other living beings on our planet.

       

       

Bibliography

http://www.iflscience.com

http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca

http://rameznaam.com

https://www.nasa.gov

http://landartgenerator.org