Eliminating Sanitary Sewer Overflows in New England, United States.

 Eliminating Sanitary Sewer Overflows in New England, United States

 Sangwook Alex Ahn

There are numerous reasons for water contamination and sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) are one of them. Sanitary sewer overflows are releases of untreated sewage into the environment. They occur when there is an overflow, spill, or release of raw sewage from a sanitary sewer collection system before it reaches a sewage treatment plant. Such releases contaminate the nation's waters, degrade water quality, and expose humans to viruses and other pathogens that can cause serious illnesses.

 

Sanitary sewer overflows occur due to root, grease, and debris blockages, structural, mechanical, and electrical failures, and extraneous flows that enter separate sanitary sewer systems due to inadequate maintenance. An aging sewer infrastructure also increases the occurrence of the SSOs. Sewer systems in some communities in New England are over 100 years old. As SSOs are a serious problem to public health and the environment, it is an enforcement priority nationwide to identify and eliminate raw sewage discharges. These enforcement actions have resulted in the elimination of millions of gallons of raw sewage discharges and the assessment of significant penalties.

 

The untreated sewage from overflows can contaminate the waters, causing serious water quality problems and therefore must be controlled. Communities across the United States are working to find cost-effective, long-term approaches to managing their aging wastewater infrastructure and preventing the problems that lead to sanitary sewer overflows.

Fundraiser for World Water Day

Fundraiser for World Water Day

Written by Seojin David Lee

The majority of us reading this article most likely enjoy the privilege of having access to drinkable water at any moment. Although it may seem normal for us to possess what we believe is a fundamental right to any human being in the 21st century, the harsh reality is that a significant portion of the population worldwide is deprived of the ability to simply drink clean water. This is especially true for the people in the Daknong and Ninh Thuan provinces in Vietnam. 

In light of the annually celebrated World Water Day, the Ecosave club, in collaboration with OpenHands, held a fundraiser on March 20th of 2022 and collected around 600,000 won for the installation of water filtration kits in the Vietnamese provinces by selling colorful Ecosave bracelets and other goods. These water filtration kits are specially designed by OpenHands and go by the name of “WaterKit.” Through our fundraiser, we were able to raise enough money to install around 300 WaterKits and plan the installation to take place in the near future. 

We deeply appreciate the kind hearts who participated in our fundraiser!

 Environmental Sustainability and Online Education

Sangwook Alex Ahn

Due to the COVID pandemic, online education is prevalent all around the world. Has this online education helped environmental sustainability? In what ways has it helped?

 

Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015 (The Paris Agreement) European nations have committed themselves to keep global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. For the Netherlands, this means improving energy efficiency by 30% and using energy sources with fewer carbon emissions.

 

One of these emission sources is student and staff travel. A good strategy to reduce student travel emissions is the use of online education. However, most online education professionals are not aware of the fact that online course delivery can lead to a reduction in the carbon footprint. In addition, there are the challenges that online education puts on the students, such as non-committal behavior of students, underachievement, the ineffectiveness of online communications to learn, and social skills such as presenting, discussion, and collaboration.

 

Therefore, in order to successfully implement online education as a means to reduce carbon emissions, blended education (blending of online and offline courses) is considered. This demands leadership of professionals, technical and pedagogical support of service departments, development of lecturers, adaptive design of curricula, and an active learning attitude of students. Hopefully, this can be realized to help reduce carbon emissions and contribute to environmental sustainability.

Environmental effects of bitcoin

 

What are the environmental effects of mining Bitcoin?

Written by Sungjoon Choo

As the price of both Bitcoin skyrocketed in the past decade, the question of how these digital currencies are mined is a question that is often asked.

Status Quo

Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency that started the revolution of blockchain. The word blockchain is highlighted as a key tool in future affairs in the current status quo. This would never have happened if bitcoin was never created. For more than a decade, bitcoin has proven to support the universally applauded security system of blockchain. It has not once been attacked since the creation of the coin in 2008. Due to this factor, bitcoin has risen in value by over 12 thousand per cent since 2017.

Mining process

To create bitcoin and sell it to investors, someone must mine them and create the cryptocurrency. In order to do this, the miners go through a process called Proof of Work. This is when supercomputers all compete to solve complex problems in order to get the most information about the block. When person A gives a block to person B, the answers to those problems confirm the transaction and therefore the transaction is successfully passed. The problem is the mining phase of Proof of Work. The miner with more supercomputers gets the advantage of mining the block since the calculations will be solved faster. In other words, the miner to use more energy mines more blocks. Because this competition is so competitive, people stack rows and columns of computers to do computing all day. Generally, this mining process is far outdated compared to Proof of Stake. This mining process is highly advocated since almost all Alt Coin uses this. Even Ethereum is planning to move away from Proof of Work as Ethereum 2.0 is created.

Environmental Impacts

This, unfortunately, leads to environmental impacts such as loads of energy Bitcoin mining sucks up. It approximately uses 91 terawatt-hours of electric energy manually; that is more than the annual electric energy usage of Finland as a whole, which consists of about 5.5 million people. E-waste is perilous to the environment since it causes severe air pollution. This can lead to other macro-environmental pollution such as soil or water. Some reuse the excess energy for their plants. They use the energy from the mine to power the greenhouse, which grows plants.