ASSIGNMENT 2
Introduction
In
the "Story of Stuff"(2007) video, Annie Leonard talks about the
materials economy, the system of this planet to extract all the necessary materials for the industry is not any fair for all. We use energy for the addition of chemicals toxins to the natural resources that results in health problems and pollution. Also, this means to participate in the distribution with some companies at a low cost to keep prices down to the calibration costs. Some governments have tended to use the political commercials to make the citizens shop a lot. You should face the problem of accumulated waste
material produced so you should recycle and use less stuff in general. For
example, replacement of old, for new engines.
ASSIGNMENT 2
In our days , having such a great and easy life means having more
facilities by using different kinds of stuff which basically means new products
and goods , whether these things were natural or manmade stuff. Many new
inventions and products came up within the last century's; these things didn’t
come from nowhere! These all are from nature and man reproduce them by adding
things together to come up with them. Several steps the sources of nature have
been gone through to extract new useful products that serve humans in these
days. The steps are: extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal.
Extraction of natural resources in
our planet means cutting all of the trees to use the wood, digging the
mountains for different kind of material, using water and killing animals for
their skin and teeth and whatever is useful for human. Doing all such things
will make our planet lose the balance, which already is been effected due to
all of the extraction works. Forests are affected, a desert was polluted, water
was polluted too and animal got killed. We are losing our recourse.
"An ore is any naturally-occurring source of a metal that you can
economically extract the metal from. Aluminum, for example, is the most common
metal in the Earth's crust, occurring in all sorts of minerals. However, it
isn't economically worthwhile to extract it from most of these minerals.
Instead, the usual ore of aluminum is bauxite - which contains from 50 - 70% of
aluminum oxide" (Clark 2005).
After all these natural recourse
have been extracted they are moved to production. The word production by itself
means to reproduce the natural sources by adding chemicals to it. These
chemical most of the times are considered to be very toxic and harmful to
human. So what production basically means is adding toxics to materials to
produce toxic which we use are daily basis.
This production step will pollute the air, the sea water too. This means
raising the pollution level in our planet.
"The
U.S. could add nearly 1.5 million jobs if it adopted a 75% national recycling
rate. Wow, that’s a lot of jobs! Instead of propping up the dinosaur economy
highlighted in The Story of Broke, we can be investing in more jobs and a
healthier future by keeping the stuff we use in our economy, instead of dumping
or burning it" (, Cook, 2011)
What happens after the production step ,
is that these new material needs to sell out to consumers which means
distributing all the materials with a
cheap price to keep people buying all the time as quickly as possible. This
will definitely create greater environmental impact, and more energy will be
used to transport these goods to the consumers.
These goods and materials are now
being consumed by people, as more people consume materials and goods more trash
is there, everything man uses is turning to trash. As the stuff get newer
version, people keep buying more and more. This is a way that the producer uses
to sell more and keep people buying more. Advertisements has a great rule in
making people buy all the time, the media rule is one of the reasons behind
making people go shopping to consume more.
"For holidays tainted by commercialism, Valentine’s Day gives
Christmas a run for the money – big money. The National Retail
Federation estimates Americans will spend $17.6 billion on Valentine’s gifts this year, including $4.1
billion on jewelry, $1.8 billion on flowers and $1.5 billion on candy. But for
consumers with a conscience, the very things Madison Avenue markets as
expressions of love are some of the worst stuff you can buy" ( in Cook,2012)
After consuming, much waste and trash
are created, man can’t keep the trash in his house, that is why there is this
step after consumption which is called disposal, In disposal all the trash is
being burned or buried under ground or thrown to the sea to get rid of them, All
of these ways are causing harm to the plant, to the air, water we drink and
food we eat and climate.
The United Arab Emirates is now
considered to be a high-level economic country with various production, which
means that we produce materials and goods. Dubal is one of largest companies in
Dubai which produces aluminum, to produce these huge amount of aluminum it
passes through all the previous steps mentioned before, starting with the
extraction of the metals from the mountains, and then to the factories which
needs lots and lots of energy to melt the aluminum to shape it for consumers
and then to disposal or recycling.
"From time immemorial, waste
disposable has been a problem, and after industrialization the problem has only
compounded. In the past, trash was carried to the outskirts of cities and discarded
in the open, but now that can no longer be done. Over time, various waste
disposal methods have been devised, like compost, burning, landfill, biological
reprocessing, etc. However, before going to these details, we need to
understand the different kinds of wastes. There are basically three types of
wastes generated - solid waste, liquid waste and sludge. They are classified as
per their chemical, biological and physical characteristics" (Bhattacharyya, in Cook, 2012)
This cycle is harmful to the
environment it causes high levels of pollution, greenhouses gases which effects
the global warming and the ozone. That is why people and governments need to
take care of these issues rapidly.
Here in UAE the government is trying
to reduce the harms of pollution in the environment by putting some
restrictions for factories, and prohibiting people from throwing the garbage in
the sea in order not to affect the sea life since the UAE population depends on
the sea as numbers one of our natural sources. And now they have started to use
renewable energy sources to reduce greenhouse gasses to reduce this problem.
Planet earth natural sources doesn’t
belong to us only, it belongs to all living creature whether they were animals
or plants, we should respect this, and keep the balance in the environment, we
should not play with it, because any change in the balance will finally affect
us because we all live in a big chain we all are related so the harm will end
up coming to us.
AHMED ABDELAZIZ ALZAROONI
200206816
CIQ
Word: 1060
References
Consumerism -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2012, May 3). Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia. Retrieved May 6, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumerism
Cook, A., & Shade,
R. (2012, May 5). Story of Stuff The
Story of Stuff Project. The Story of
Stuff Project. Retrieved May 6, 2012, from http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/
Clark, C. (2012, May 4). extraction of
metals - introduction. chemguide:
helping you to understand Chemistry - Main Menu. Retrieved May 6,
2012, from http://www.chemguide.co.uk/inorganic/extraction/introduction.html
Gray, I. (2008, April
1). Pollution Effects รข€¢ Environmental Pollution. Rainforest Animals,
Tropical Rainforests, And Other Environmental Issues. Retrieved May 6,
2012, from http://www.tropical-rainforest-animals.com/pollution-effects.html
Material - Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia. (2012, May 2). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Retrieved May 6, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material
APA
formatting by BibMe.org.
