Lee County "Combustion" Waste Energy Plant

Last week I went on a field trip to the Lee County Waste Energy Plant. We were greeted by the plant manager who talked to us about what the plant does, how it operates and its benefits. This energy plant takes all of the garbage from Lee County and burns it for energy. From this garbage, they also extract the metals and sell them at a profit. The plant manager believed that this plant was the solution to our garbage and space problem, aside from being the best thing since sliced bread. His reasoning was that he took something that was taking up valuable space and nobody wanted and turning it into a necessary utility. This plant is also reducing landfill usage by depositing ash rather than the entire product, extending the life of the garbage dump. Through the process of the plant, the rising ash and gases were neutralized for chemicals, making the plant a zero emission operation and lessening the impact on environment.

                                                            Trucks backing up to the dump pit


While I feel that this is a better step than continuing to entomb our garbage, it is not the end solution to our problem. The resulting ash, while being less dangerous after the treatment, still contains dense metals that are not removed, and the heavy ash that doesn't rise is untreated, leaving room for contamination risk. This metal laden ash is buried in the ground at the dump. While it does take up less room, the ash then makes the metals and other negative elements more concentrated when it is buried in the soil. Eventually, I fear that this concentrated source will contaminate the soil thoroughly and possibly affect the nearby water table.
I also feel that there is a conflict of interest in the plant. While there is a recycling plant at the complex, this only handles what is sorted at the consumers homes in the bins and not what comes in on the garbage trucks. Since his business is built on burning material, there is no drive or interest in sorting out the recyclable materials from the garbage because it would decrease his quantity of material to burn. He is already burning organic, plant waste instead of composting it which goes to show where his preferences are at. During our visit, the plant manager was lamenting the decrease in garbage his trucks were bringing in, due to the recession and the end of season. It seemed that as he was talking to us, he almost wanted to encourage us to become greater consumers, generating more garbage so he would have more to burn and more money to make, contrary to being environmental and sustainable.

Eating

We watched the movie "eating" in class this week. This film explores the love/hate relationship that women in Western societies have with food-- as a source of pleasure and comfort, on the one hand, and as something to be feared in a society that equates thinness with beauty on the other. Set during a birthday party where the guests (all women) are asked to talk about their feelings about food, the discussions also touch on their mixed feelings about their bodies, childbearing, and relationships. It doesn't really have a plot, It doesn't offer simple solutions, but it makes the important point that this love/hate relationship of women with food is not confined to those who might be diagnosed as suffering from an eating disorder. I found it quite true to life and engaging.

Here are some facts gathered by SELF Magazine,and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill regarding women and food through a questionnaire.

* 75 percent of women report disordered eating behaviors or symptoms
consistent with eating disorders; so three out of four have an
unhealthy relationship with food or their bodies
* 67 percent of women (excluding those with actual eating disorders) are
trying to lose weight
* 53 percent of dieters are already at a healthy weight and are still trying
to lose weight
* 39 percent of women say concerns about what they eat or weigh interfere
with their happiness
* 37 percent regularly skip meals to try to lose weight
* 27 percent would be "extremely upset" if they gained just five pounds
* 26 percent cut out entire food groups
* 16 percent have dieted on 1,000 calories a day or fewer
* 13 percent smoke to lose weight
* 12 percent often eat when they’re not hungry; 49 percent sometimes do

These facts crossed across racial lines and showed that the 30-40 age group had the same numbers as the 20-30 age group.

Top Soil

This week we watched a movie that explained why soil is so important to us, why we are losing it, and why that's bad news bears.
To be completely honest, I had never given the soil much thought. I grew up and lived in the Midwest for most of my life so soil was always around me; it was a part of normal life.

I have done some reading about this since the movie and It's amazing how great of an issue this is and there is nothing even being said about it in society! I had no idea that the topsoil loss was as bad as it is. I found a chart from the University of Michigan that sums it up.

I'm amazed that in North America, 66% of the soil is being lost to agriculture. I thought we would have learned our less from the dust bowl and soils importance, especially in our more advanced technology age.

I also thought that this is reflected on a map that shows where the worst areas of soil loss are happening.

You can see the serious concern and some concern areas are in the center of the continent, where a lot of the agriculture takes place. Interestingly enough, Florida is the odd spot of green in the southern U.S. I think looking at the map from a global perspective, it is clear how much of a global problem this is comparing the amount of stable terrain to concerning terrain, especially in Europe. I hope that more work is done in the future to bring light to this growing problem before it becomes a larger crisis but I'm afraid it won't gather much attention until it is almost too late.

The article that the images were gathered from, as well as being indepth on the topic, is:

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/land_deg/land_deg.html

Urban Gardens

We learned about urban gardening in class today. Generally, our group has had some interest in gardening but unfortunately, due to space in our dorms or apartments and/or pet concerns we have been unable to begin doing that. After we are done with this phase in our lives however, we thought that having a garden would be valuable to have as a hobby or to lower our food costs and become more sustainable. Here are some links to an article some tips for urban gardening, making it easier to accomplish and hopefully keep the plants alive.

http://www.urbangardeninghelp.com/

This video explains the benefits of gardening, and some simple systems to help keep them watered.

As we talked about in class, one benefit to having a garden that seems to be forgotten is to teach those around us and potential children where our food comes from and how much work and patience is needed to grow it. We realize that in this age, we do have a serious disconnect from our food. In many parts of the country, citizens never see their food sown, grown or in some cases raised and slaughtered. They do not see all of the work and resources that go into making that food and as a result, we do not value food as much. We waste literally tons of food every day and if it had been intelligently proportioned or saved for food later in the week, could have been saved from the garbage. I think that if more people saw how our food was raised, such as mutant chickens whose legs snap under their own weight or cows with more hormones than an adolescent human, that more of the public would demand a higher quality of food and more humane practices for raising that food. 

Echo Farms

One of the first things we saw was a stove that has been created to be easily built and fairly energy efficient. This traps more heat so less wood has to be cleared and burned.

This machine is used to press waste material into burning bricks. This way they can use what they have for fuel and clear fewer trees.

This is the brick the machine creates. Since they have so much condensed material in them, they are quite heavy.

Clean water is always needed in developing countries. This method uses water containers and reflective plates to use the UV rays to disinfect the water.

This is an easy to make smokehouse that people can use to dry fruit and meat so they can preserve it and have food after the harvest.

Bamboo is a quick growing, strong plant that is great as a building material. There is a chemical in the wood that binds with the water to make this plant incredibly strong. Clothes are even being made out of this plant now.

These are compost boxes. They were draining the juices out of this to experiment with anti-fungal, fertilizing and insect repellent properties.

These were in a section dedicated to urban gardening. These plants did not need a lot of soil but were still effective for food and materials. A tire with steady supply of water and sun can grow an incredible amount of plants.

This area demonstrated a wick method of watering. A barrel or container of water is placed upside down so water can drip onto a fabric base under the plants. As the plants soak up water, the fabric draws water from the water container and this minimizes water waste while not over watering the plants.

This compost heap is for organic material, which is later used as fertilizer and soil enrichers to get rid of waste material and return the nutrients to the soil

Echo Farms grew yams in this area. These dirty looking blobs are actually a bright, deep shade of purple if you cut one open. They looked nothing like what we have at Thanksgiving and are much more nutritious.

With this contraption, our tour guide demonstrated how villages can make water pumps in wells out of ordinary, easy to acquire material. The pump is so effective that it can draw water from 15 feet underground without a lot of effort. Children are able to use this pump, which can store water in barrels for later use.

To go inline with our latest topics in class about problem solving, here is a local video from WGCU's series on Water Woes.


http://wgcu.org/programs/earthedition/archive/2008/06/08/Elusive-Solutions.aspx

One way to help lighten our wasting of water is to water our plants intelligently. One method is the drip system, where water is dripped near the roots, maximizing the impact of a small amount of water.
 

There is a company that is capitalizing on the public desire for clean drinking water. They build water holes in contaminated parking lots that provide clean water from a local source.
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/urban-watering-holes-watermill-express

An Underground Shanty Town

In our last presentation, we had a small section about shanty towns. One we remembered hearing about, but never had the time to talk about in the presentation, was the underground shanty city in Freedom Tunnel.
The train tunnel was built in the 1930s under the west side of Manhattan so there could be development room above ground. Since the automobile and trucking boom never slowed down in that era, the tunnel soon became abandoned. The homeless in NYC then moved into the tunnel, numbering in the easily hundreds. The residents also decorated the walls in artwork/graffiti, including a recreation of Goyas Third of May and chiaroscuro style study of the Venus de Milo. In 1991 Amtrack reopened the tunnel for their use, bulldozing the shelters. Here are some pictures from an urban explorer journey of the artwork that still remains in the tunnel.

http://memoryleak.co.cc/2009/08/26/the-freedom-tunnel/

A pool of pictures from the tunnel:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/freedomtunnel/pool/

What remains of the Third of May mural
A plaque in the tunnel stating the beginning of construction/eviction.

The Cottage

On February 10th, we went to the Fort Myers Beach Cottage and learned about what the area was like in decades past. Our host grew up in the area and has lived a large part of her life in the area, sharing her experiences and preserving the history of the town. After her presentation, we tried some Grape Jelly and then hit the nature trail.




This was the giant water bug that our host showed us. Anne wanted nothing to do with this monstrosity of an insect.

We saw these Resurrection Ferns all around us on the nature trail, but mostly growing on trees

We were hoping to find some Sea Grape berries along the trail ( we loved the sea grape jelly our host allowed us to try!) but all we found were the berrie free plants

A handy sign we found that explains the different types of Mangrove trees.
A Red Mangrove Tree by the bay

We saw several Black Mangroves but none of those pictures turned out. Here is an example of one taken from http://www.finexpeditions.com

A White Mangrove

Our Lovely Historian, who grew up in the area and has lived a large part of her life at Fort Myers Beach

A small Cuban Anole Lizard. The only animal we saw on the trip

A Cabbage Palm

Next Trip!

We are all excited for the future aquatic trip! At our last field trip, we saw a video about manatees and we recently found this video which ties our future trip to the ocean and the movie about manatees together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVr2G5enWiQ

First Field Trip

On this first field trip we went to the Calusa Nature Center. Here we saw a short film in the planetarium about Manatee in Lee County along with several animals from the area on display in a museum.
On the trail we ran into several of the local plants and wildlife.
















Some Beauty Berries
















The Calousa resident Bald Eagle.















A Monarch Butterfly in the butterfly house.

A sleeping Possum.

This Bobcat was rescued after being kept as an illegal pet.

Brazilian Pepper

Quill Airplant

Cypress Knee

Poison Ivy.




















Slash Pine




















Here is a Red Maple Tree.
















Here is one of the two American Alligators in their alligator pond.





















Some Saw Palmetto.

First post!

This week we learned about nature deprivation. It is an interesting idea because of our extensive time indoors, we have higher rates of child obesity, higher blood pressure and more instances of ADHD. Through unstructured time outdoors, we can help reverse this, as well as create a greater appreciation for the outdoors and a greater feeling of responsibility when it comes to stewardship of our planet.

Some activities that the National Wildlife Federation suggested to combat this don't limit themselves to nature hikes, but also outdoor scavenger hunts and astronomy, which opens children up to a whole new experience!

These ideas and more were found at:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/battling_nature.php

It is interesting that in recent years, attendance to national parks has risen in recent history, according to the story http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2010-03-01-national-parks-attendance_N.htm