The Horse 2020/21

Environment & Technology

Research - Coral Reefs

A city tree, in our example a full-grown oak tree, absorbs 5-6 tons of carbon dioxide per year and produces about 4 tons of oxygen through photosynthesis. This is the amount of oxygen absorbed by 4 people in a year.

We are still thinking about how we can compare this data with corals, as they are different in size from trees.

What we do know is that all the coral reefs produce more oxygen than all trees. The Reefs produce up to 70% of the oxygen on earth.

 

But what exactly is a Coral?

The coral is a unique and complex creature. It belongs to the family of jellyfish and anemones.

 

Reefs in general

Now I want to talk about the reefs in general. But first how did we proceed with our research? First of all, we visited many different websites. We looked for as much information about coral reefs as possible. After that we collected all the information we could find and decided on the most important one to mention quickly in our presentation. Above all we wanted to show what the problems are and how we can change them.

Now to the found information:

  • Why are Coral reefs so important?

70% of the oxygen you breathe comes from the ocean. Reefs are the foundation of ocean health and without them, marine life would stop to exist. No coral reefs, means no oxygen from the ocean. And you can think about what that would lead us to…

  • How are we destroying coral reefs?

Threats are caused by human activity, including pollution, sedimentation, unsustainable fishing methods, single-use plastic, chemicals in sunscreens and climate change. All those factors increase the ocean temperatures and leads to ocean acidification. Many of these threats can stress corals, resulting in coral bleaching and possible death, while others cause physical damage to these sensitive ecosystems.

Corals can recover from bleaching events when conditions improve before they die, although it can take many years for ecosystems to heal completely.

  • How can we help the reefs?

There are already charities that dedicate their lives to saving the reefs. You can donate directly to them or volunteer and help to save the reefs.

Support renewable energy, eliminate all one-way plastics, switch to reef safe sun protection and don't buy pesticides for your grass!

Ultimately, as consumers, we must stop supporting companies that produce harmful products or chemicals that contribute to the death of our reefs. There are healthy alternatives to all things.

Attached you can also find a video of how the world would look like in 50 years if we dont change anything right now. 

A city tree, in our example a full-grown oak tree, absorbs 5-6 tons of carbon dioxide per year and produces about 4 tons of oxygen through photosynthesis. This is the amount of oxygen absorbed by 4 people in a year.

We are still thinking about how we can compare this data with corals, as they are different in size from trees.

What we do know is that all the coral reefs produce more oxygen than all trees. The Reefs produce up to 70% of the oxygen on earth.

 

But what exactly is a Coral?

The coral is a unique and complex creature. It belongs to the family of jellyfish and anemones.

Reefs in general

Now I want to talk about the reefs in general. But first how did we proceed with our research? First of all, we visited many different websites. We looked for as much information about coral reefs as possible. After that we collected all the information we could find and decided on the most important one to mention quickly in our presentation. Above all we wanted to show what the problems are and how we can change them.

Now to the found information:

  • Why are Coral reefs so important?

70% of the oxygen you breathe comes from the ocean. Reefs are the foundation of ocean health and without them, marine life would stop to exist. No coral reefs, means no oxygen from the ocean. And you can think about what that would lead us to…

  • How are we destroying coral reefs?

Threats are caused by human activity, including pollution, sedimentation, unsustainable fishing methods, single-use plastic, chemicals in sunscreens and climate change. All those factors increase the ocean temperatures and leads to ocean acidification. Many of these threats can stress corals, resulting in coral bleaching and possible death, while others cause physical damage to these sensitive ecosystems.

Corals can recover from bleaching events when conditions improve before they die, although it can take many years for ecosystems to heal completely.

  • How can we help the reefs?

There are already charities that dedicate their lives to saving the reefs. You can donate directly to them or volunteer and help to save the reefs.

Support renewable energy, eliminate all one-way plastics, switch to reef safe sun protection and don't buy pesticides for your grass!

Ultimately, as consumers, we must stop supporting companies that produce harmful products or chemicals that contribute to the death of our reefs. There are healthy alternatives to all things.

Attached you can find a video that shows how the world would look like if we don't change anything right now. 

Step 2: Research & Step 4: Shape and Create / Answers to our interviews

We have compiled some interview questions and sent them to four companies. From three, we received an answer.
Enclosed you will find the answers in German and English:

Schweizerische Fachvereinigung Gebäudebegrünung
Interview Schweizerische Fachvereinigung Gebäudebegrünung - German.pdf
Interview Schweizerische Fachvereinigung Gebäudebegrünung - English.pdf (58,34 kb)

Grüne Dächer GmbH

More...

Goals and achievements of today

 

Goals

Today we have an interview with Mister Nagel. We hope that he can answer all our questions, so we can use them for our project.
An other goal is that we find other informations, which we can use, from researches on the internet.
At the end of the lesson we are going to summarize what we did and achieved.

Achievements

Our interview was very successful. Mr. Nagel answered our questions detailed, so we can use every single question and answer.
We also did some researches.

In conclusion we achieved our goals for today!

 

Sandra, Joelle and Anabel

 

Sep 2: Research

A couple of interesting links on combating CO2 in cities. These I found. They are very interesting to read and contain a lot of important information. 

CO2 development Zurich

 Text about a diesel ban

Also very interesting is the report from the city of Zurich "Stadtverkehr 2025" (City traffic 2025) where you can find important statistics and starting points all around the topic of traffic in the city of Zurich. 

Report "Stadtverkehr 2025" 

Food for the future research

My research question was “Why did the project “food for the future” choose the products: Andean crops, pulses and seaweed. Are these sustainable?”.

 

The project itself

  • Unique project
  • Feed growing global population -> sustainable way
  • Three sustainable food chains products from the South
    • low environmental impact
    • offer farmers producing products new opportunitiesMore...

Project: City Animals

11. November 2020

Today we contacted Mr Ueli Nagel to do an interview with us. He is an expert in this field and hopefully he will agree to talk to us.
Also, we started to prepare a survey and the questions for our interview with Mr Nagel.

 

18. November 2020

We will finish preparing our interview questions and will send them to Mr Nagel. He responded to our request for an interview yesterday and we are thrilled to be able to get answers to our questions from an expert. Also we will email him back and ask him for time and date for our interview meeting via Zoom.

Anabel & Joelle & Sandra

[in progress]

Sustainable food: make it a habit

I've made my own top 10 on how you can make your meal more sustainable. Now, I'm going to apply this on my pasta.

1. This is easy, just look on your packages if it comes from your country or go buy product by your local farmer (if there is one ofcourse).

2. Go buy your supplies in your local fair trade shop, every city has one these days.

3. "Food's true cost" is actually almost the same as buying fair trade.

4. Try new food's, new product -> your local product, you probably have never bought products at the farm.

5. Of course is wasting less hard, but just insert a "leftovers day".

6. This will probably be hard at first, you'll have to do research on the certified stadards and then figure out which are credible.

7. If you buy at your local farm, or if you have your own little garden, you have no chose but seasonal products -> https://www.wikihow.com/Season-Pasta

8. Your own little garden, it takes time and you have to learn about it, but this "corona-season" is perfect to start your own little garden.

9. You might think this is stupid, but if you ask for the "ugly" fruits and veggies, there will be less waste in the shops.

10. This one is easy, just bring your own pouches for fruit and veggies and buy full crops.

Step 2: Research - Tiny House Living

First we asked ourselves if tiny House Living exists in Switzerland.

And to our surprise the answer was yes!
We Found two companies in Switzerland that specialize in tiny house living. Check out their websites:  

We're planing on getting in contact with them to ask them some questions about their point of view in the tiny house movment. (Interview)  More...

City trees in ZH - Research

Areas in Zurich: 
9032 hectares (2018) --> 90.32 square kilometres
- Agricultural area               9.5%
- Forest area                    26.4%
- Traffic area                     14.6%
- Settlement area              47.7%
- Area of water bodies        1.2%
- Unproductive area            0.6%More...