Recycling is very important for our earth. It's important that every country can handle their own recycling, so we haven't to send the rubbish to other countries. Nations like Ghana, Nigeria, India, Vietnam, China, Indonesia, etc suffer because they don't have their whole recycling and waste management systems up to a certain level. Matthew Cleary, pointed out that legislation has a key role to play, so for example you could taxate landfill and that could stimulate recycling but on the other hand he says you can also let consumers pay for the recycling by paying a little bit extra for the product itself so that a consumer actually pays for the recycling after the life of the product she or he bought. But he also said it would increase the price of a product a little bit more and it would also maybe trigger the consumers to think about if they really need a product.
Team: Dominic & Giorgio
Quiz:
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements; chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. As a fossil fuel burned for heat, coal supplies about a quarter of the world's primary energy and two-fifths of its electricity. Some iron and stell making and other industrial processes burn coal.
Advantages:
Workplaces
Cost effective resource
Disadvantages
Potancial damage to the environment
Question?
How long does coal exist?
Sources:
Kohle Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft
Advantages and disadvantages
How energy works
Vocabulary:
combustible - brennbar
strata- Schichten
Deepening of Coal
Coal, which has been a primary energy source for more than a century, began to form during the Carboniferous period, which took place between 360 and 290 million years ago. Plant matter accumulated in swamps and peat bogs, and after being buried and exposed to high heat and pressure — largely due to the shifting of tectonic plates — it was transformed into the coal that powered the industrial revolution and that the mining industry uses today.
Coal is the energy carrier with the biggest total resource. The advantage of coal is that coal is available over the world. Coal is problematic because it has an incredible CO2 emissions. In Switzerland was coal to the middle of the 20 century the main carrier and was used mostly for primarly energy as fuel. The most important coversion in the second energie was with coal gasifaction for the city energy. The role of coal in switzerland is so inncuous that in 1998 the coal carrier was canceled.The return of coal as a energy carrier in Switzerland is not really believable.
Lignite is the youngest type of coal. It is soft and ranges in color from black to shades of brown. As a result, it’s sometimes called brown coal. Lignite is mainly used for electricity generation and accounts for 17 percent of the world’s coal reserves.
Advantages of Lignite coal:
- Rather cheep
- Supports local economy
Anthracite is the most mature coal and thus has the highest carbon content of any type of coal. Nicknamed hard coal by the locomotive engineers that used it to provide energy to power trains, coal mines that produce anthracite or hard coal account for roughly 1 percent of the world’s total coal reserves, which represents a very small portion of the overall coal industry. Anthracite is also used in some older homes’ heating stove systems, and can be used as a smokeless fuel in hand fired furnaces.
Advantages of Anthrazit coal:
- Cheap
- Doesn’t produce smoke
Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and plant materials. Charcoal is usually produced by slow proces, the heating of wood or other organic materials in the absence of oxygen. This process is called charcoal burning. The finished charcoal consists largely of carbon. The advantage of burning charcoal compared to burning wood is the absence of water and other components. This allows charcoal to burn at higher temperatures, and give off very little smoke.
Advantages of Anthrazit coal:
- Cheap
- Doesn’t produce smoke
Team: Dominic/Giorgio
At our house we heat with three different heating sources. First we have a boiler. In the boiler we can spare warm water for taking a shower. But it's not very good for the environment, because a boiler need very much electricity.It's not renewable. We heat also with solar panels. They are installed on the roof of our house. The solar panels convert sunlight to electricity. So a house can produce their own electricity. At least we have a normal heating system like every other house.
Definiton:
What is electronic waste?
Electronic waste are used electronics which are destined for refurbishment, reuse, resale and recycling.
Norway and other european countrys lead the world electronic waste production. In 2017, each inhabitant in Norway produced 28.5 kg of electronic waste.
However, electronic devices can be recycled. They are often shredded and sorted. After they are separated into clean commodities that can be used to make new products.
The problem is, not every electronic device can be recycled easily. For example ovens or cooling equipments such as freezers, are often full of toxic chemicals such as lead and ozone destroying substances.
Sadly, electronic waste does often get mixed up with general household waste. If it ends up in general waste, it can not be recycled. This is why an efficient separation of waste is very important!
Question:
How big is the largest electronic waste landfill in Ghana? (landfill = Müllhalde)
Audio
Electronicwaste.pptx (14,50 mb)
Voc.
leaching - Auslaugen
landfill - Deponie
incinerated - verbrannt
Electronicwaste.pptx (14,50 mb)
Dominic and I chose electronic waste.
Airplane food facts
I took this article because it's very interesting, what happend with the waste after a flight. Several airlines have a plan to reduce their waste. From seperate kitchen waste they produce biogas.
Chicken consumption
It's a very interesting article. The interview with Mr. Kündig from the Heggenhof Grüningen. The questions are well chosen and the article shows really good the chicken consumption.
Future buildings
This article shows the development of the different houses. They descripe the actual situation and the issues. Which resources are used and how long it took to build the main building, and was it worth? The group search answers to this questions and visit NEST (Next Evolution in Sustainable Building Technologies) to figure it out.