Environ 201 Exam 2

Entropy

amount of disorder in a system

• in order to combat entropy, must add energy to a system

Methane

CH4; green house gas thats widely used for fuel and energy

Leachate

toxic liquid created when water percolates through waste in a landfill

Landfill

disposal site where garbage is buried under layer of earth to isolate it from the environment

What are the first and second laws of thermodynamics?

First Law: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, mass cannot be created nor destroyed

Second law: all systems tend toward disorder

How has waste generation changed in the last 50 years?

• Waste generation has increased 2.8 times

• per capita waste generation increased 67% (especially plastics)

• Introduction of recycling and composting: 82 million tons composted or recycled (33.8%)

Why is source reduction the preferred approach to waste management?

• because it eliminates waste before it is created, preventing pollution and conserving natural resources

• source reduction is in the design and manufacturing (less materials, using recycled materials)

How are landfills and dumps different? What do landfills control for?

landfills are engineered to limit methane gas release and leachate from contaminating groundwater

• after they’re filled, grounds usually turned into parks, etc.

What is the “not in my backyard problem” when it comes to waste management?

residents oppose landfills due to smell and generate traffic

Why are there no landfills in nature?

• because ecosystems operate on a zero-waste, circular system where the waste of one organism becomes nutrients for another (decomposition)

• ecosystems must obey the same thermodynamic laws

Why do we have such a high percentage of car batteries recycled?

consumer incentives to recycle them

What do “bottle bills” like Michigan’s 10 cents a can deposit do to state recycling programs?

increases recycling rate significantly

What are the benefits and drawbacks of single-stream recycling?

benefits: higher overall recycling rates

drawbacks: produces lower quality recycling streams

overall: tradeoff between getting a “clean” recycling stream and consumer participation/compliance

Can you recycle an empty glass bottle of olives? What about a pizza box? Where can you take an old, non-working cell phone? (Using Ann Arbor’s system) What about AA batteries?

Empty glass bottle of olives: Yes

Pizza Box: Depends on if it’s greasy or not

Non-working cell phone: Yes

AA Batteries: Yes

What is the difference between community composting facilities and a compost bin in your backyard?

Backyard Composting: avoid animal meats/products because of potential pathogens, also avoid compostable bioplastics

Community composting: can do above things

• What are the costs and benefits of trash incineration?

Costs: huge efforts to limit pollutants (scrubber and baghouse), similar costs to a coal fired plant (toxic ash, CO2 emissions, toxic particulates)- lar

Benefits: reduces pressure on landfills, much better than historical open-air burning

What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and what material is it made of predominately?

• a large vortex/gyre of trash in the Pacific

• estimated to be twice the size of Texas

• composed almost entirely of plastic/microplastics

Haber-Bosch Process

prior to this, most nitrogen not usable by crops, but abundant in atmosphere (78% of air)

creates synthetic fertilizer (ammonia and nitrates) from atmospheric N2

greatly improved yields and rates of plant growth

human population greatly increased

process also important in industry and making explosives

monoculture

CAFO

Pesticide treadmill

What happens to food consumption as nations become wealthier?

higher consumption of animal proteins, dairy, and processed items

What are some costs and benefits of the Green Revolution?

Benefits: major advancements in synthetic fertilizers, chemical pesticides, irrigation, machinery, high-yield crops like wheat, rice, corn

Costs: requires high energy input, drives smaller farmers out of business/lower wages because

How do pests develop resistance to pesticides? This is a good example to answer using the principles of Natural Selection.

What are some human health consequences of pesticide use?

What are the dirty dozen and clean fifteen? What is the general trend? What are the pros and cons of this system? You do not need to know all the fruits and vegetables on the lists but be able to answer the questions above.

What are some ways biodiversity enhances food security?

How have energy inputs changed in terms of raising cattle from the 1940s to today?

Which animal-based foods require the most food (and water)? Which takes the least?

How has our consumption of meat changed in the US in the 20^th century?

What are some costs and benefits of CAFOs?

Two major sources of algal blooms are the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus that come from agriculture runoff and overflowing CAFO waste lagoons.

How do excess nutrients create dead zones in lakes and oceans? What is the process?