How to Contextualize our Effects on the Environment

  “How Much Wood Could A WoodChuck Chuck If A WoodChuck Could Chuck Wood?” One of the most important renewable resources on this planet is wood. Wood and trees do a lot for the environment such as making oxygen and sequestration of carbon as well as providing structure to our houses and being the foundation of many day-to-day products. But a lot goes into determining what woods we use, how we use them, and their sustainability.  First, we can talk about the most important wood product, paper, and how sustainable it is. Since wood comes from trees this raises a lot of questions about deforestation as well as the removal of our natural air filters. According to The World Counts, “It takes between 2 and 13 liters of water to produce a single A4-sheet of paper” which is disproportionate for the amount of paper it ultimately produces raising concerns about water use as well. In the process of making paper two things take place called pulping and bleaching which both have toxic runo...

“Forests and How We Can Protect Them” Wood is essential to human life; it provides structure to our houses and paper for our education. Most wood we use does come from forests, learning about these forests can help us better understand how the wood we use is grown, processed, and how its harvest affects the environment. There are three types of forests; natural forests, semi-natural forests, and plantation forests. Each of these have their benefits and drawbacks that determine their efficiency, the basic explanations of these forests can be seen in the following image (Lesson 8). Short rotation cropping is another huge part of forest harvesting as it is an efficient way to grow genetically superior trees and harvest them. What separates this method from the others is that these trees are grown to produce and other energy sources. The sustainability of short rotation crops is much higher in comparison but can be hard to maintain due to a variety of factors (Zalesny).  Plantation for...

 In our day to day life we often don't think too hard about the things we use and what happens to them after we are done using them. To use we are simply just completing our tasks and going about our lives, but there is always so much more to it. The resources used to create the things we use from start to finish of their usage can fall into three categories. Non renewable resources which are more of a one and done situation some do not reform on the earth or it can take a very long time for this to happen. Renewable resources renew quickly and can be used over and over again. Lastly is bio renewable resources which are living in organisms that also renew themselves through various processes (Lesson 1). My hope is that this blog post can help you, citizens of Minnesota, open your eyes about many tough consumer situations we face today and how we can make mindful decisions going into the future.  Global consumption of metals and other resources is often something that we imagin...