The Horse 2020/21

Florian and I have chosen the theme of transportation. Transport seems to us to be an extremely important factor for our economy.  

Almost everything is transported by ship. Over nine billion tonnes of global sea freight per year can be felt not only under the sea but also on the surface: high pollutant measurements of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) in the atmosphere correlate with busy shipping routes. The volume of NO₂ from ship exhaust gases is now almost equal to those caused by road traffic. Ozone levels in coastal areas are rising sharply. 

Texte 18/2009: Strategie für einen nachhaltigen Güterverkehr (umweltbundesamt.de) 

Exemple Germany: "Der zunehmende Güterverkehr hatte in den letzten Jahren wenig damit zu tun, dass aufgrund des Wirtschaftswachstums die Zahl oder das Gewicht der transportierten Güter angewachsen wären. Vielmehr sind andere Ursachen zu suchen. Der Güterverkehrsaufwand5 wuchs – gemessen in Tonnenkilometern (tkm) – wesentlich stärker als das Transportaufkommen. Seit 1960 hat er sich vervierfacht. Das Wachstum beschleunigte sich deutlich in den 1990er Jahren und setzte sich – bei stagnierendem Transportaufkommen – auch nach der Jahrtausendwende fort. 

Grund dafür sind zunehmende Transportweiten. So stieg die mittlere Weite eines Lkw-Transportes im gewerblichen Güterverkehr zwischen 1997 und 2005 um 32% von 98 km auf 129 km pro Fahrt. Bei der Bahn stiegen die mittleren Transportweiten im selben Zeitraum um 31% von 230 km auf 301 km. 

The journey of a laptop (vimeo.com) 

In order for all the transportation in our world economy to run smoothly, many means of transportation are used, one is airplanes, ships, cars, trucks and so on. They make sure that the product gets from A to B without suffering any damage. Was sehr spannend an diesem ganzen ist, ist  der Wasserweg. Es werden 50% des Rohöls per Tanker und ganze 80% aller Güter über Flüsse und Meere transportiert. 

Vocabulary

surface = Oberfläche

shipping routes = Schifffahrtswege

pollutant measurements = Schadstoffmessungen

transportation = Transport

road traffic = Straßenverkehr

coastal areas = Küstengebiete

rising sharply = Starker Anstieg

Bild: https://www.limbiq.com/de/2020/11/11/transportmittel-vergleich/ 

https://www.wasserstoffostschweiz.ch/fahrzeuge/emissionen/  

We have come to an end with our research concerning circular economy. 

It has been a very interesting and informative journey but it was worth it. We learned what circular and linear economy is, what it does, what de consequences are and how we can prevent the litter production with our own efforts. We tried to keep you on track with our research by posting a lot of content through these weeks. 

Attached you find all of our research in a file. Since we do not want to make one huge post that takes up space on The Horse, we welcome and encourage you to have a look into this file. 

Circular Economy.docx (626,01 kb)

Following the file, we have a little quiz prepared for you in order to test your improvement concerning circular economy. To do the quiz you must have some knowledge about circular economy. Either you read all of our posts or you read the file and get all the facts you need. 

Circular Economy Quiz!

(MS Forms)

Thank you very much for your attention and your interest in our research. Do not forget how important our environment is. So do not hold back on getting as much information about it as possible. Circular Economy is our past our present and especially our future and it will only get better if we all becoma a part of it. 

Sincerely 

Chiara & Tonia

Today we read through some posts on dontwastemy.energy, to get some ideas on how we should write our own content. Our goal is to publish our work and ideas on the website and receive some positive feedback. Furthermore we want to bring all our research on one page and make it as understandable as possible. 

Apart from that there will not be an informative post today, since we did not really do anymore research on our topic. Nevertheless we will continue our research next week and hopefully be able to publish some new facts, figures and diagramms. 

Sincerely

Chiara & Tonia

In this post we've finished this Assignment: 

ASSIGNMENT:

• Find two examples of businesses that are “going circular”.
• Give a one-sentence description, and indicate which part of the butterfly diagram they belong to.
• Provide a link to a website or video if possible

We decided to write about the Cosmetic companys Lush and The Bodyshop.

1. Lush, UK cosmetic company. All the bottles are made by 100% recycled plastic and after you use the product you give them back the bottle to be recycle again and you can also get some discount doing this. I'm sure that it circular process (recycle stage of the diagram) really happen.

2. The body shop: Buys plastic from Hasiru Dala to give an income to the local trash collectors.

   using more plant-based and recycled plastic (rather than oil-based plastics) and helping people around the world to reuse, repurpose and recycle. currently more than 68% of their Bottles can be recycled. Also you can

   return all your empty tubs, tubes, jars and pots in store for them to recycle and repurpose. S it aswell belongs to the recycle stage of the diagram.

   ( Sustainable Packaging | The Body Shop®)

Tonia&Chiara

The linear Economy

In this post we are not really going into circular economy. We are focusing on the opposite of circualr economy, the linear economy. 

The main goal of circular economy is to reuse and recycle the materials of a product, whereas linear economy does not take care of the environment like that. Linear economy simply produces products with certain materials and does not resue them. 

How resources are increasingly difficult to extract / linear economy

With mining and digging we are able to collect important materials and goods from way underground. The goal is to make good use of these, so to make good and practical materials with a lucrative price out of them. But what is the problem with linear economy like this?

A linear Economy relies on cheap energy, cheap materials and cheap credit to get the throughput. Which means, that the companies can make ends meet with their costs of production and people who work in these companies. Sadly, the environment which we extract the materials from, is not being taken care of.

We need an economic system that does help the environment. September 2008 taught us things, when the financial system was collapsing. This crisis turned the economy upside down.

The Linear Economy is not working very well. There are three reasons for this:

• Resources like fossil fuels, food and water are increasingly hard to get.
• Biodiversity is in decline worldwide. Yet ecological services provided by the natural world seem to be taken for granted.
• The financial system almost crashed the entire economy.

   

   

Why is it difficult for companies to be innovative

The competition is so high and intense, that it has become more and more difficult for companies to sell their products. It has become critical for companies to male good profits or even survive. The other side is that customers cant be easily persuaded to buy a certain product that offer fair trade or other environmental friendly.

• Real wages have been stagnant or falling for several decades.
• This has resulted in intense competition among companies selling products and services, and in an unfavorable market position for environmentally or socially benign products (these often cost more).
• The 3 billion new customers entering the market in the next 20 to 30 years will put an enormous pressure on the resource base if we continue along our current, linear ways.

So this is what we got so far concerning linear economy. We hope that we would show the difference between circular economy and linear economy in a simple way. We are happy to read your comments. :) 

Sincerely 

Chiara & Tonia 

It is week two of our research concerning circular Economy. We would like to share our newest information and facts.

What is circular economy?

The Circular Economy System Diagram, also known as the 'Butterfly Diagram', represents flows of products and materials in the Circular Economy.

The diagram starts from the current Linear Economy, depicted as the central, downwards flow from materials extraction and manufacturing at the top to incineration and landfill at the bottom. In the Circular Economy, resources are used, but not used up.

Why we need circular Economy

To limit the extraction of raw materials and reduce the production of waste

In the post war era, we could have things and pay later which lead to a massive boom. The fact, that this system is not there anymore is proof, that we change economy.

By applying suitable strategies to products, components and materials during use and after the end of a lifecycle, resources are kept in the system.

Cycles in Circular Economy

In a circular system, technical and biological nutrients, or materials, are retained in continuous loops. The circular flow of these nutrients is represented by the loops on either side: green for biological and blue for technical nutrients.

Biological materials can be safely returned to the biosphere and add value to the environment, once they have gone through one or more use cycles. These materials include food, natural fibres and bio-based materials, such as wood.

Technical materials cannot be returned to the biosphere. These materials should continuously cycle through the system so that their value can be (re)captured. These materials include plastics, metals and synthetic chemicals.

Scroll through the slides below to explore the Butterfly Diagram in detail. The Butterfly Diagram is the backbone of this course. In the coming episodes, you'll be introduced in more detail to the different loops.

Industrial Ecology

• Industrial Ecology is concerned with the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems.
• Industrial Ecology and the Circular Economy share similar goals and principles.

This is our latest research. We would also like to make futher investigations concerning the linear economy. Thank you for showing interest in our research. We hope you could learn something useful. 

Sincerely

Chiara & Tonia

Our project is slowly taking shape.

we are currently working through the introduction programme on EDX, a platform where lots of universities show their studies. 

Further steps are to finish the introduction programme whilst making notes and creating a factsheet about the most important informations. After the introduction programme there is a a bit more enhanced [programme which we will have to work through as well. But for now all we do is make progress work step by step. 

So far we have learned about Circular Economy and its four principles, as well as examples for each principle.

• Waste = food 
• Build resilience through diversity
• Work with energy from renewable sources (such as the sun)
• We need to think in systems! (only if we think in systems we can enhance society, environment and economy)

Examples of the four principlesMore...