Part 1:
What are the most effective ways students in Coquitlam can do to reduce climate change?
A large population of students at Riverside come from Port Coquitlam, but I live in Coquitlam so I wanted to know what I can do to reduce climate change in my area. While researching this question, I had to come up with some other ones too. Some of the questions I came up with are:
-How much pollution comes from students?
-What are some ways to reduce global warming in Coquitlam?
-How do teens affect climate change?
-How can people cut simple plastics out of day-to-day life?
While researching these questions, it lead me to others. I kept thinking of new questions I wanted to be answered, a few examples include:
-How does pollution affect our community?
-How does plastic cause climate change?
-How will climate change affect our future?
Finally, I had a conclusion to my original question.
Polluted water in a Coquitlam creek killed more than 80% of the fish population. 18 billion pounds of plastic flow into the ocean from coastal regions, every year. Almost 1 million plastic bottles are bought around the world, every minute. By the end of 2015, 8.3bn metric tonnes of plastic had been produced and of which two-thirds (5.53bn metric tonnes), had been released into the environment and remains there. These plastics are creating incredible amounts of greenhouse gasses and emissions. Though plastic is not the only cause of climate change, it is a big part. cutting out simple plastics and single-use plastics like grocery bags, snack/sandwich bags, plastic bottles, straws etc. can make a huge difference in Earth’s future.
Other pollutants come from transportation, fossil fuels, large companies, fertilizers etc. Shopping locally sourced foods and products, walking, biking, taking a bus, and carpooling can cut out some air pollutants from transportation. Some simple ways of cutting greenhouse gasses are recycling and composting. Recycling makes new things and re-uses plastics, metals, papers. Composting allows airflow between the layers of organic matter to decompose properly, whereas organic material that is stuck under non-breathable materials like plastics and metals will create methane gas.
Simple things like these can save our planet. In Coquitlam, we rely on others and others rely on us to keep our city clean and relatively unpolluted.
Part 2:
- ( Copied from above)-How much pollution comes from students?-What are some ways to reduce global warming in Coquitlam?-How do teens affect climate change?-How can people cut simple plastics out of day-to-day life?
-How does pollution affect our community?
-How does plastic cause climate change?
-How will climate change affect our future?
- I tried to evaluate the sources I used, and use more trustworthy sites. I analyzed the information and tried to pull out the key facts to put into my work. I did use a lot of Google though.
- During this project, I tried to follow steps instead of trying to come up with an answer to my question. I went more in-depth and tried to come up with a complicated and full answer rather than something straight forward that could have just been Googled. I went through my questions and as I started getting answers, I also got more questions.
- At the bottom of this page, I linked all the sites I used with context with what the page is about.
- I am very happy with how this turned out. I wish I had more time so I could go deeper into this topic and have more time to work on the blog. I have definitely learned a lot from this and I am proud of the work I have done. If I could re-do this project, I would try to spend my time more wisely. I had a hard time because I had no time over the weekend to do anything so I tried to cram a bit more than I should have into the last two days. I did try to finish a good chunk before the weekend so I had some prompts to help me and it did work with getting my brain going and helping in the last few days.
1. The Guardian – Single-use plastics:
2. Tricity news – Polluted creek:
https://www.tricitynews.com/news/toxic-wat
er-kills-hundreds-of-fish-in-coquitlam-creek-1.23839533
3. Our World In Data – Air Pollution:
https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution
4. The Guardian – Reducing carbon emissions in schools:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/jul/16/schools.uk4
5. National Geographic – Plastic Waste:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/05/plastics-facts-infographics-ocean-pollution/#close
6. Recycling Council of Ontario – Canada Recycles Only 9%:
https://rco.on.ca/canada-recycles-just-9-per-cent-of-its-plastics/
7. The World Ocean Network – Pollution Facts:
8. State of Global Air – Charts and Data:
Thanks for your post regarding what students in Coquitlam can do to reduce climate change. One thing to think about is to look at Coquitlam specifically. I see see that your research lead you to a couple Tri-City news articles and I think that your solutions could be more specific to that. Could there be a Coquitlam campaign to stop people from pouring chlorinated water down storm drains? What are other ways that we can prevent future local calamities that kill fish in the Coquitlam river?
Thank you for the feedback. I did have a hard time finding specific articles surrounding the Coquitlam area, and I think refining my search down to specific examples like you stated would have helped and made my post better. Thanks again, I appreciate the information and comment on how I could have made it better.
Morgan, great job on finding information on what students in Coquitlam can do to reduce climate change. I enjoyed the information you displayed, but one thing for next time would be to go into a little bit more specificity with your answers. Maybe try to look at Coquitlam a bit more in depth? Maybe instead of recycling, reusing, and reducing, try finding other ways to limit plastic waste, and pollution in Coquitlam specifically. Good work!
Ally