1st 20 Time Blog Post
20 Time
The 20 time is a project created to spark creativity and innovation. Everyone is extremely busy potentially from work, school, or just managing daily responsibilities and chores. 20 Time is a program where people are given 20% of their free time to work on a project of their choosing. Projects typically are different ways to help the community or the world with its multitude of issues.
Essential Question
Our planet produces an immense amount waste. With our landfills piling up, we might one day run out of space for people. Is it possible to find a way to get rid of the wastes, instead of just burning?
Project
My choice for my 20 time project is to help the world with converting its landfills into usable energy. Every year, the world's total amount of waste piles up to a massive 2.12 billion tons. To put things into perspective, if this waste was put on trucks, the trucks would go around the world 24 times. However, Sweden has invented a new way to reduce the size of our increasing landfills. Their method has been working so well that they are asking other countries for their trash because they simply don't have enough. Sweden's incineration plans have been converting trash into usable energy. The 32 plants in Sweden today produce enough heat for 810,000 households and electricity for 250.000 private houses. In addition to providing usable energy, Sweden's metal emissions have reduced by 99% since 1985, even thought Sweden emits 3 times more waste today.
My choice for my 20 time project is to help the world with converting its landfills into usable energy. Every year, the world's total amount of waste piles up to a massive 2.12 billion tons. To put things into perspective, if this waste was put on trucks, the trucks would go around the world 24 times. However, Sweden has invented a new way to reduce the size of our increasing landfills. Their method has been working so well that they are asking other countries for their trash because they simply don't have enough. Sweden's incineration plans have been converting trash into usable energy. The 32 plants in Sweden today produce enough heat for 810,000 households and electricity for 250.000 private houses. In addition to providing usable energy, Sweden's metal emissions have reduced by 99% since 1985, even thought Sweden emits 3 times more waste today.
Goals
The reason Sweden is able to so successfully turn their waste into energy, is because they are able to successfully separate their wastes from paper, metal, plastic, and compost. Sweden is able to successfully separate their waste due to their citizens. Sweden's citizens play a major role proper by disposing of their trash into proper containers. Swedens allows easier waste disposal by enforcing trash cans to be in a 300 meters range of any residential area.
Success Measurement
One way we can measure the success and progress of our waste to energy conversation can be the decrease of in the size landfills. Our first step in this project is organizing wastes into paper, metal, plastic, and compost. From then on, materials like paper, plastic, and metal can by recycled and reused, and compost can become soil. With the more reuse of our waste, our landfills' size increase should be greatly slowing down.
Plan
To start building incineration plants is a huge goal and likely not to be achieved in the near future. However, we can start simpler and smaller. We can do that can help promote the reuse of waste and shrinking of landfills, by putting out more trash cans in the to public. Instead of just plopping more trash cans everywhere, we should implement trash cans that sort out the wastes from paper, metal, plastic, and compost. One reason people don't recycle is because they are not aware of what material goes in which trash can. To resolve this, we can educate the public with promotional videos or other forms of advertisement to both alert them about the increasing size of landfills, how they can help, and what materials fall under what waste container.
Voice
My voice will be used to ask people to put in effort to try their best to recycle and put wastes into the certain bins they belong in. But if we want people to separate trash correctly, we need to provide the different bins, since many places do not separate all the waste materials. I will use my voice to ask both local governments to provide different trash cans in all trash can locations. I will also ask citizens to help set up new trash cans.
The reason Sweden is able to so successfully turn their waste into energy, is because they are able to successfully separate their wastes from paper, metal, plastic, and compost. Sweden is able to successfully separate their waste due to their citizens. Sweden's citizens play a major role proper by disposing of their trash into proper containers. Swedens allows easier waste disposal by enforcing trash cans to be in a 300 meters range of any residential area.
Success Measurement
One way we can measure the success and progress of our waste to energy conversation can be the decrease of in the size landfills. Our first step in this project is organizing wastes into paper, metal, plastic, and compost. From then on, materials like paper, plastic, and metal can by recycled and reused, and compost can become soil. With the more reuse of our waste, our landfills' size increase should be greatly slowing down.
Plan
To start building incineration plants is a huge goal and likely not to be achieved in the near future. However, we can start simpler and smaller. We can do that can help promote the reuse of waste and shrinking of landfills, by putting out more trash cans in the to public. Instead of just plopping more trash cans everywhere, we should implement trash cans that sort out the wastes from paper, metal, plastic, and compost. One reason people don't recycle is because they are not aware of what material goes in which trash can. To resolve this, we can educate the public with promotional videos or other forms of advertisement to both alert them about the increasing size of landfills, how they can help, and what materials fall under what waste container.
Voice
My voice will be used to ask people to put in effort to try their best to recycle and put wastes into the certain bins they belong in. But if we want people to separate trash correctly, we need to provide the different bins, since many places do not separate all the waste materials. I will use my voice to ask both local governments to provide different trash cans in all trash can locations. I will also ask citizens to help set up new trash cans.
http://www.theworldcounts.com/counters/shocking_environmental_facts_and_statistics/world_waste_facts
https://sweden.se/nature/the-swedish-recycling-revolution/
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