The Horse 2021/22

Following our small Audio-visual presentation about our collaboration project with Izmir, Turkey. The topic is our survey and that we want to plant trees. If you're interested click on the following link:

Audio-visual presentation

We hope you like our project.

Embodied Energy

In today's world, we try to reuse as many as possible, but this consumes large amounts of energy, which is not very good for the environment.

Embodied energy is energy that is created when we try to recycle certain things. So, for example, if a company wants to make pet bottles reusable, it needs machines for that, which also use electricity and energy, which are not very good for our environment.
Of course, they emit less Co2 than the recycled product, but isn't there another, more environmentally friendly solution?

Quizquestion

Name 2 things that use a lot of energy to recycle

1.

2.

Technical Terms

• Embodied Energy = Energie, welche beim recyceln von Material entsteht
• reusable = Wiederverwendbar, wiedergebrauchbar
• environment = Umwelt

Nicola & Simon

"The new iPhone has been released, I no longer need my old one!"

This days, too many goods are simply thrown away, even though they are still in perfect condition. Just because it's no longer the latest thing, people don't want it and don't consider the ecological consequences. This is called a linear economy. Raw materials are mined/collected/produced, a product is made from it, then it is packaged, sold, used and finally ends up in the rubbish.

The idea of a circular economy is becoming more and more lucrative. The idea is to reuse existing products and not simply dispose of them. For example, with maintenance, repairs or recycling.

The figure below shows the linear economy (red) and the goal of the circular economy (green).

Vocabulary:

circular economy -> Kreislaufwirtschaft
recycle -> rezyklieren
remanufacture -> wiederherstellen
refurbish -> restaurieren
redistribute -> umverteilen
reuse -> wiederverwenden
maintain -> instand halten
discard -> wegwerfen
landfill -> Deponie

Eco Design has a lot to do with this topic also look at that post :)

Kreislaufwirtschaft 

"Das neue iPhone wurde released, mein altes benötige ich nicht mehr!"  

In der heutigen Zeit werden noch zu viele Güter einfach weggeworfen, obwohl sie noch einwandfrei sind. Nur weil es nicht mehr das Neuste ist will man es nicht mehr und beachtet die ökologischen Folgen nicht. Dies nennt man Lineare Wirtschaft. Rohstoffe werden abgebaut/gesammelt/erstellt, daraus fabriziert man ein Produkt, anschliessend wird es verpackt, verkauft, benutzt und landet zum Schluss im Müll.  

Die Idee von einer Kreislaufwirtschaft wird immer lukrativer. Die Idee ist, die bereits bestehenden Produkte wiederzuverwenden und nicht einfach zu entsorgen. Zum Beispiel mit Instandhaltung, Reparaturen oder Rezyklieren. 

Die Obige Abbildung zeigt die Linearwirtschaft (rot) und das Ziel der Kreislaufwirtschaft (grün).  

Teaser:

Like any product, an eco-design product has to be attractive in order to be manufactured and appeal to consumers. Designers therefore need to meet a variety of requierements. 

Quiz: What products do you think are made to last very long? (Answer in the comments)

Vocabulary: ...

Teamwork: With Florian

Resources such as minerals are getting degraded and depleted by us very quick. What can we do against it? The things we throw away still can be used.

Solutions:
Recycle: Make out of your old products new ones!
Remanufacturing: To refurbish your products is better than manufacturing something new!
Redistribute: Reuse those products that are in a usable condition!
Maintain: With a good maintenance you can extend the life of your products! 

Quiz question:
1. What do you do with a car that has broken brakes?
a) throw it away
b) recycle
c) maintain

2. What should you do with a ripped shirt?
a) remanufacure
b) throw it away
c) throw it in the ocean

Vocabulary:
depleted - aufgebraucht
degraded - degradieren (herabwürdigen)

hazardous waste landfill

Team: Sarina und Jasmin Schmid

Teaser: In a hazardous waste landfill are products gone to, which are dangerous for our health and the environment. The hazardous waste landfills have to be particularly guarded, because it is really delicate to store these special materials. This process is very bad for nature, because toxic substances can get in touch with the ground water.

Question: Why are hazardous waste landfills dangerous?

Vocabulary:
hazardous waste = Sondermüll
landfill = Deponie
guarded = bewacht
ground water = Grundwasser
solvent = Lösungsmittel

Teaser:

Plastic is very resistant and difficult to dispose of. Usually it takes 450 years until it has decomposed into partially toxic chemicals. These get into the water and so into the entire food chain. Every year, 300 million tonnes of plastic are produced.

For example, the fish eats the plastic and later we eat these fish.

Quiz question:

How many percent of the plastic produced each year ends up directly in the ocean?

Vocabulary:

toxic chemicals - giftige Chemikalien

decomposed - zersetzt 

Team: Brian & Lara

Our topic is about transport. There are many ways of transport. The most important one is the transport by sea, it covers up almost 50% of crude oil and 80% of global merchandise. As a result there are also many problems such as pollutants and noise.

How can you get rid of these problems and are they opportunities to improve transport overall to make it more eco-friendly?

Our previous posts, where we defined our questions, ideas and goals, are the base of our project and therefore we are going to build on these.

The best option for us is to create a survey. Through surveys you can reach way more people to share their experience with us than through interviews, where in most cases only a few people are interviewed. Surveys are quick, easy and accessible to anyone, even internationally if it is circulating properly.

We are currently working on our survey, all questions we want to include in it are written down now. But there is a challenge coming up for us: Our relatives, who are part of our project, do not speak german nor english, so we have to translate it to croatian and albanian, so they can answer them accurately. 

We really hope that our upcoming survey is going to give us a collection of new impressions and insights to our project topic.

See here the link to my Mural:

Mural link

We are planning on meeting our collaboration partners via WhatsApp-call sometime next week. Sadly it is not possible for us to do a group-call because our collaboration partners (aka relatives) don't speak the same language, so they aren't able to exchange their experiences revolving around plastic waste in the country they live in among eachother. It surely would have been interesting, but always having to translate what each party says, is too demanding and would probably end up in a chaos. The consequence from this for us both, Liranda and Angela, is that we have to contact/call them separately. But thanks to that, it shouldn't be too hard for us to fix an appointment.

For now, we've decided on meeting them once. It is not necessary to contact them weekly, but maybe monthly. We'll just decide spontaneously, depending on how the situation is.