Sustainable Solutions

Going Electric

As we have learned, the energy and fuel industry is really bad for the environment and it has many negative impacts on the environment, for things such as carbon emissions and the fact that they are a non-renewable resource. A major way that fossil fuels are used is for cars and transportation vehicles. There are about 250 million gas cars in America, and this has a huge effect on the environment, because of how much fossil fuels it uses and the carbon emissions.

One way to solve this is with electric cars! Electric cars have a significantly less of an impact on the environment. On top of all of the environmental effects, going electric can be cheaper depending on how long you intend to keep the car for. To summarize, going electric can be beneficial for the environment, and your wallet!

Solar Energy

For Solar Energy, this is an obvious change that you should make. It makes energy cheaper, and the government lets you get 30% of the cost back when you do your taxes. They on average cost 22,000 dollars to buy and install. The actual cost of the solar panel is about 1,000 dollars. That would give you about a 300 dollar subsidy, and it would save you about 138 dollars every month. For the average savings from solar panels for how long they are usually used for, it can save up to 80,000 dollars!

Renewable Energy

Right now, a lot of people use fossil fuels for energy. But that's not great for the environment. There are completely different options that we can use. We can use renewable energy. We can use different solar energy, wind energy, hydropower, and more. Solar panels are a great way to go. Solar panels use solar energy from the sun, and convert it into regular energy. We can also use windmills. Windmills use wind energy to produce energy.

Saving Energy at Home

A simple act of turning off your lights can make a huge impact. If you keep you lights on, than that just wastes energy. You can also try to reduce the use of vampire energy. Vampire energy is energy coming from electronics or appliances that are always plugged in. By unplugging devices that you don't need to be plugged, that can help fight the energy crisis.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

1.) Reduce Vampire Energy. Vampire energy is the effect of leaving plugs in for too long while they harvest energy and add on to your electric bill. You can help advocate against these energy vampires by getting a power strip (As shown above). These make it easy to stop energy vampires because all you have to do is unplug one single plug, and then you are done.

2.) Take low emission forms of transportation such as a bike or walking. More examples include carpooling as well as public transportation. Riding with more people is much better for the environment. The reason for that is if there is 20-50 people on a bus, it means that it erased the effects of 20-50 cars.

3.) Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, while these may be well known, many do not take the time out of their day to do it. This is really important as many materials, such as plastic, metal and wood can be re-used for people that make products with recycled materials. and if you are walking down the street and you see litter or something else, pick it up.

This is a duck that was found helpless in crude oil.

And this is that same duck after being helped and cleaned

In addition, if you, or anyone else wants to learn more, scan the QR code above! It will take you too a website called un.org. This article will provide a much more in depth description about how you can help reduce carbon emissions.

What Students Say...

We interviewed many middle school students on what they think about this crisis. Out of what students said, all of them said that they think that the crisis is bad and that they think that it is important to act against these major effects on our wonderful environment. One way that you can do that is spreading the word about solar panels and how bad this industry is for our environment.

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