Footprint progress 2

I have started to turn the tap off when I am brushing my teeth, which is the second part of my carbon footprint progress.

Footprint progress 1

It's me, reporting on my carbon footprint progress. I have started to have shorter hot showers. It would be better if i had cold showers, but it is winter so doing something like that is a bit foolish.

How much food do we have?

Me and Mystery Man have been engulfed in a math project to find out how much of the earth we have to grow food. Two Waikato University students from SIFE (students in free enterprise) came in and said we only had 1/32 of the earth's surface to grow our crop. So we set out to prove if this was true. First we got the Earths land and sea surface area and converted it to rough fractions. Using my talent i determined that there were:
surface area: 510 065 600 km²
land area: 148 330 000 km²
sea area: 361 740 000 km²
using my further talent i determined that this meant that:
15/51 surface area is land.
36/51 surface area is ocean.
This instantly eliminated 36/51 from our equasion.
with the 15/51 we had left, we had to take out the mountanious, desert, forest, and urban (buildings) land.
In the end we had about 1.5/51(something like that) left to grow food. We then found out this was roughly equivelant to 1/33( includes permanent crop and arable land). So, in conclusion, we have about 1/33 of the earths surface area to grow food. So the two university students were incorrect by just a tiny bit.
This is important because we have to be sustainable, and be careful about what we do with the tiny bit of land we have for growing food.

Eco footprint diary - Thursday 18 June 2009. (Winged Hussar)

This is a diary of my thoughts, about what I can do to help the environment. The smallest things do count, so I am going to start small.

1. I will turn the tap off when I am brushing my teeth.
2. I will have shorter hot showers
3. I will try to avoid using the dryer to dry my clothes and substitute it by hanging my washing on a clothesline or
   
4. I will turn electrical appliances off when i am not using them
   

Sustainable Architecture

On Wednesday 3rd June 2009 Kris Wilson, an Architect from Design house (www.designhouse.co.nz) came in and made a presentation about sustainable architecture. He pointed out that sustainable doesn't just mean eco friendly. He said that a sustainable house must be able to live and interact with the environment and keeping it healthy and happy at the same time. Kris mentioned that you don't have to be an architect to contribute to sustainable architecture. You could be a builder, a plumber, etc. There are three key aspects to Sustainable architecture.
energy Efficiency
High level of insulation
passive solar power
effiecent heating
ventilation
eco friendly light bulbs
thermal mass (concrete absorbing and releasing heat)
Waste Management
Weather resistant cladding
dRecycling while building
Grey water systems ( re usable water)
low flow/ low pressure water taps and shower heads
Building Materials
sRenewable
Non Toxic
Locally made
recycled

Sustainability

On Tuesday 2nd July 2009 Jo and Clement from Waikato University, in association with S.I.F.E (Students In Free Enterprise), Came in to our class and did a presentation about Sustainibility, being eco friendly and worm farming. They mebtioned some common sense things such as the three R's. Reuse, Recycle, reduce. They told us that we only have 1/32 of the earths surface area to grow all the food the world consumes. at the end they talked about worm farming, And how it reduces your rubbish, (half of it in my case). you can also sell the worm juice and keep some for yourself because it works as a brilliant fertiliser. one important thing they talked to us about is the amount of rubbish we produce, and how it is bad that we throw recycable materials away like paper in tin cans, into a hole in the ground which then gets covered over. In New Zealand, there are only 60 open landfills, and 1000 closed landfills.