Hana Abdelaal
Life Changing Experience
If you would have asked me about the environment and/or environmental science last year, my response would’ve shown how much I did not care about the subject. The subject didn’t really matter to me because I was never taught about the environment or how individuals are able to make a change. I was never told that I’m supposed to be careful with how much I harm the environment or how to conserve resources. The culture I live in is a major factor in why I haven’t learned about the subject since it was never really a topic that was brought up a lot or discussed; even most decision-makers in Egypt don’t really focus on bettering the environment. The problem Egypt is facing, environmental-wise, is that the government does not put a lot of effort into supporting the ecosystems we have. This creates many negative impacts on the whole environment. I also believe that another reason is that there are no laws prohibiting major CO2 emissions or overuse of water etc.
Then I started taking the class and learning about the environment and how each and every individual has a hand in starting to change their lifestyle to make fewer negative impacts on the environment. The ecological footprint lab was the first to help me realize that I was living a poor lifestyle with too many unsustainable habits. We first had to calculate our ecological footprint by answer a few questions about our daily lifestyle and then the result shows how many planets we would need if every person on the planet had the same lifestyle. After the calculations were made, the result showed that if everyone lived like me, we would need 5.8 Earths. Then it occurred to me that this is not what i’m supposed to be doing to the environment after all what it has given me, and that resources are limited. Looking at my ecological footprint, helped me point out the activities I do that damage the environment, such as using more energy than needed, eating too much meat, leaving water on for too long, using a personal car a lot etc. In my first blog post I stated that I will change the way I live and that I will start by carpooling more often, eating less processed meat, and switch to more efficient energy sources;and looking at my life since then, I did accomplish these goals (Abdelaal, 2017). This is what Alexandria’s National Zoo looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha_w-xJsHAY and this is what it’s supposed to look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRxp2Xm8x4Y
The energy use audit and water use audit also made me realize how much I waste energy and water. Before tracking how much energy I use, I didn’t even know that there’s such thing as phantom power. So I found out that I waste a large amount of energy because of leaving my laptop and phone charger in the socket, even if it’s not charging anything. And for this reason I started removing all chargers from the sockets if I’m not using them. Moreover, I became conscious with how much energy is wasted from light bulbs. Fun Fact: Only 10% of energy in a light bulb is used to create light, and 90% of its energy creates heat (Lehnardt, 2017). However, LED light bulbs are a lot more efficient and that’s why we switched almost all light bulbs to LED. After keeping track of how much water I use and waste, using the water use audit, I stopped leaving the water on while brushing my teeth, stopped flushing the toilet only for tissue, and shortened the time it took me to shower from one hour to twenty minutes. I also learned that the amount of available freshwater is less than 1% of the world’s water, which made realize that we can’t afford to waste water. Egypt is facing a water crisis because of uneven distribution, unsustainable usage, and inefficient irrigation methods; “Egypt has only 20 cubic meters per person of internal renewable freshwater resources, and as a result the country relies heavily on the Nile River for its main source of water.” (Dakkak, 2017)
Later during the year we took a field trip to Montaza so we can connect with the ecosystems we have in Alexandria, and whether they’re healthy or not. Unfortunately, what we found was devastating. There were many different ecosystems and habitats, but they were all polluted and mistreated. This made me think of a project that I want to start after graduating from college; I want to develop some sort of organization that helps better the ecosystems we have here in Egypt, starting with the National Zoo of Alexandria. My main goal, which I am determined to accomplish, is turning the zoo into being more of a home to the animals than a prison by making sure each animal has the right habitat and good healthcare. The organization’s purpose would be to give a healthy habitat that should be provided for all living organisms.
Taking AP Environmental Science had a major effect on me that it changed my mind about what I want to major in university. Ever since I was young I wanted to learn psychology in college; but after taking this class I want to go into industrial design. Why do I want to go into this major? Industrial design teaches a person to recycle and reuse. Furthermore, industrial design is all about taking something that people don’t use really use anymore and using it’s material to turn it into something everyone would want/use. By learning this in college I would be able to develop my dad’s factory into a more sustainable process, and use unused products or materials to create a new product that all people would want to buy.
In conclusion, this class has taught me a lot and has vastly changed my perspective on many different subjects. It has changed me as a person a lot; and I’m actually very grateful for that, because now I know what I want to do with my life in the future, and now I have a more sustainable and a healthier lifestyle. So I believe that this class changed the way I view environmentalism a 180 o in a positive direction.
Refrences:
Abdelaal, H. (2017, August 30). Blog. Retrieved May 21, 2018, from https://apeshana19.weebly.com/
Dakkak, A. (2018, February 24). Egypt's Water Crisis – Recipe for Disaster. Retrieved May 21, 2018, from https://www.ecomena.org/egypt-water/
Lehnardt, K. (2017, June 30). 53 Interesting Facts about Energy. Retrieved May 21, 2018, from https://www.factretriever.com/energy-facts
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