We Are Scientists #02

    In my last post I was talking about capturing carbon. As I was researching that topic, I came across something related that I think is pretty interesting. Re-using carbon! I didn’t know that this was really possible, at all! Carbon can be converted into hydrocarbon, and this can be stored and used as fuel, or [...]

How is it possible to capture carbon? I know plants do it, but they use it for photosynthesis. So, we remove the carbon from the air by getting it from large sources, like fossil fuel power plants. We can also catch it in the regular air, but that’s trickier because of the other gases in [...]

    I just remembered a project that I took part in my art class last year. My art teacher decided to collect plastic caps, like from water bottles, soda bottles, juice bottles, etc. She put a basket outside her class and let people drop off all there old caps. Turns out that when you send the bottles [...]

I am going deeper into the downcycling topic because of some comments I received on my last downcycling post. One of the questions I got was, “How long do things that are downcycled take to break down and decay in a landfill?” I, unfortunately, couldn’t find an answer for this. Every different phrase I used [...]

    In my TerraCycle post, I talked about how TerraCycle uses usual trash items to upcycle. However, there is something on the opposite of the spectrum called downcycling. While upcycling is taking waste products and turning it into a new product of higher quality, downcycling is taking waste products and turning it into a lower quality [...]

I’m going off-topic in this post and not discussing my usual “carbon neutral” topic. So, a couple days ago, I was eating cookies-Keebler cookies-and I saw a little picture of a leaf on container saying, “Turn this wrapper into a good cause!” It goes on to tell me that Keebler and TerraCycle are partnering together, “…to [...]

My fellow classmates have brought up BP, the oil company, because of the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I too am now going to talk about BP, but not for their oil spill but with a little subject called greenwashing. I had someone comment on my post about carbon neutral being a [...]

    Would you like to calculate your carbon footprint? At this site that I’ve provided, you can figure out your carbon footprint for your home energy, driving and flying, food and diet, and recycling and waste. Then it will tell you how it calculated your personal carbon footprint! It’s really quite interesting and informative. The general [...]

    In my last post, I discussed how some companies scam you with fake carbon offset hopes. Now, I will go into how some environmentalists are against this whole carbon neutral theory. Some activists don’t believe in the principle of carbon offsets, comparing them to the papal indulgences from the middle ages; as in a way [...]

A lot of people think that this carbon neutral thing is a great idea, like getting rid of your carbon footprint, sign me up! However, everything is not as it seems and some people think it’s not worth the time or the money. You can purchase carbon offsets but these are not always as innocent and [...]