Darshil Patel's Blog - Posts Tagged "2018"

About me
Hello, I am new to Goodreads and I am a 19-year-old inventor and innovator. I wrote some books on electronics. But now I am writing books on various environmental issues.

Talking about environmental issues how can we forget 2018?

2018, a fantastic year for global climate change experts and scientists as the bell has been rung and if anyone asks them "is this climate change?" They can very confidently answer "Yes, it is!". We experienced major disasters and climate change events in 2018 which are sirens to us that our kingdom is going to fall soon. This is typically good news, this is the only way public is going to take climate change seriously. "Venice is going underwater!" This is not going to have an impact on people, floods in India and Bangladesh, not gonna work. Tsunami? Yeah, now we need that big slap on our face to wake up. This is what it takes to make people understand about their own world that it is dying and that kind of attention is obviously bad stuff and we should be ashamed that alarms are ringing and we are just snoozing it.

Climate change has obviously changed weathers of almost all places on earth in 2018. Many people thought that it is wrong to use weather as evidence of climate change. But we shall not forget that it's weather that affects us, we feel it and live with it.

Well it's not at all difficult to notice climate change and if I describe some of the events, I will be just filling up lines and so here is a quick glance at some of them:


1. Flooding in Japan
2. Heat waves
3. Typhoon (Super Typhoon) at the Philippines
4. Wildfires at many places
5. Hurricanes at the USA
6. Flooding in India

Now, what should an individual do about this? We all know what we can do and it's not a big job or like dying or killing for this. You just have to control yourself from being a polluting guy. Everyone knows it now.

So what will the conditions be in 2019?
2019 is going to be far noisier if we do not control increasingly manmade particles in the air. USA's federal policy is making companies easier to pollute according to The New York Times. The corrupted officials who just want to make money never gonna stop and thus no doubt 2019 is also going to be a bumpy ride and prepare yourself for an apocalypse in some decades if things are not gonna change.

Plastic recycling is the process of converting waste plastic into materials that can produce useful products. Since plastic is not biodegradable, recycling is an effort that is used to reduce plastic in landfills or waste streams. There's a lot of plastic on Earth. Almost 90% of the waste collected is plastic. And so recycled plastic gives birth to new products. This helps the plastic industry as well as in making the environment cleaner. Recycling of plastic reduces the landfill space and makes room for our new daily trash. Plastic recycling also helps petroleum and others help us saving petroleum and other natural resources. Thus this process conserves energy and natural resources.

Plastic recycling is but a challenging task because of low density. There are various obstacles in this process. The process includes many different stages. First of all, before recycling, plastic is sorted according to its types and make. Then the sorted plastic is washed because there are many impurities on it. Also, there are labels on it which need to be removed. Then washed plastic is shredded by shredders and they are teared up in small pellets. Then comes extruding, here shredded plastic is melted and is then ready to be recycled.

Plastic recycling is done by various methods and the most popular is heat compression. This method has the ability to recycle almost all types of plastic. Here all types of plastic are mixed with cleaned plastic waste in huge tumblers. Another method is a monomer. Here, plastic is purified and cleaned to create a new polymer. This method can overcome major challenges in plastic recycling.

So far what we have understood about plastic recycling is the bright side of this effort but where there is plastic, there is always pollution and toxication. Each piece of plastic recycled offers pollution and threat to the environment. In the process of melting down, plastic produces harmful and toxic fumes that can harm plants and animals near the recycling plant. For melting, heat is needed which also generates carbon and thus adds to global warming. The fumes from plant and can lead to many health problems for workers and many other people around the plant. Another disadvantage of plastic recycling is that once the piece of plastic is recycled, it is unfit for further recycling. Thus that ultimately ends up in landfills. Also, not all types of plastic can be recycled because many impurities are added to some plastic according to applications.

Plastic recycling promotes proper utilization of plastic waste and also have the vision to conserve the environment but it is not the complete truth. Maybe its time to rethink regarding the process. Reusing is far more energy saving and overall a better solution to plastic pollution and it should be heavily promoted.

If you like this post, also follow me on Goodreads. I am writing a new book on the plastic problem. You will get updates when I launch my book! Click on the link to follow me.

Electronics waste or e-waste is the waste of discarded electrical or electronic devices. Some of the e-waste products are discarded computers, mobiles, laptops, etc. E-waste is a big problem because of its adverse effects on the environment. Electronic wastes are very helpful if they can be reused. Due to advancement in technology at high speeds, the destiny of used phones is landfill after a few years of use. Some computer parts can be reused in new computer products and some other parts can be reduced to metals that can be reused in several other applications like construction and jewellery. Some of the mostly found e-waste materials are resins, fibreglass, PCBs, PVC, thermosetting plastics, lead, tin, aluminium, etc.



E-waste has a great impact on our environment because of its quantity and also because of what is been done to them. Even if nothing is done to them like burning, this waste is very harmful. Electronics components like CPU contain harmful elements such as lead (used for soldering), cadmium, beryllium or brominated flame retardants. These harmful materials pollute our soil and water. According to a study in Ghana, because of e-waste presence of lead in soil was as high as 18,125 ppm. Lead is a very harmful element for plants and animals. However, Ghana is the place where most of the e-waste in the world is sent to be burned. E-waste landfills burn electronic components and due to this activity, toxic chemicals like lead dioxins and furans are released in the atmosphere. This also affects the health of employees who work in the plant.


E-waste in Nigeria

In countries like Ghana, the employees are children who are suffering from poverty. They have no other option but to burn the waste to get money. They don't know how harmful burning of e-waste can affect their health. They work there for money spoiling their whole life.



We can do many good things with e-waste. We can reuse and benefit poor people by giving them this low-cost technology who can't afford to buy a brand new gadget. We can give them access to this low-cost electronics so that they get the benefit and we save a lot of energy which is used to recycle them and also stop releasing harmful chemicals in the air. We can also give chance to repairing industries so that they can also grow and create employment in that field.



The problem of e-waste is huge and is getting bigger every day. More than 100 million computers are thrown away in the USA and less than 20% of this waste is recycled and as a result why 60 million metric tons of e-waste enters the landfill every year. So, the problem of e-waste is a rising threat to our environment. It also impacts innocent children and workers from poor countries who are forced to practice things like plastic burning to earn. So as a consumer this is our responsibility to reuse our gadgets as long as we can and repair them as long as it is possible.

Hello everyone, great to see you here. I have read somewhere that to be alive is a miracle! We are alive in our beautiful, delicate and lucky planet Earth. We are at just the right place from the sun so that we don't freeze or burn, we have the right air proportions, we have life interrelated to each other. And we are one of the 8.7 million species living on Earth. We are Homo Sapiens meaning 'Wise man'. We are here for almost 300000 years.

In the last century, we invented something revolutionary we know today as plastic. In 1907, Leo Hendrik invented the first plastic. And from that time, we are using an uncontrollable amount of plastic. We call ourselves 'Wise Man' but where's wisdom in this? Where's the wisdom in using a huge plastic amount in useless packaging? Where's wisdom when we don't listen to our Mother's nature screams? This is not wisdom. Wisdom knows that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Recently New York Times published news about polar bears in a village in Siberia, Russia. The polar bears in the group came there in search of food where they found trash of that village and they were feasting on garbage. I have written many times about how polar bears are having a tough time.



In this image, one thing that hurts most is that most of the waste they are feasting on is plastic!

These type of news on climate change are becoming more common now. This is bad news that a wise species are harming each and every 8.7 million other species on Earth. In the end, I would like to add that, try to go zero waste as much as you can. YOU can make the difference!

That's it. Thanks for reading.