The Horse 2020/21

Environment & Technology

Step 5: Reflection

At first we didn't have a good project idea, but later we quickly found a topic (tree diseases and neophytes).

We searched up a lot of information and made pictures. Kevin had even conducted an interview and I created a survey for the teams from abroad.
Unfortunately, no one filled out the survey and it was a little difficult for the people from our class to understand.

We realized before our IDAF presentation that our topic was too big. We then limited ourselves to the neophytes because the topic is very current.
I then came across the topic of guerrilla gardeners and we then conducted an interview with one of the first guerrilla gardeners in Switzerland.

We learned a lot about neophytes and we hope that our contribution on DWME will bring the topic closer to others.


Kevin and Tamara

Reflection - Coral Reefs

We have chosen the topic coral Reefs. This because corals are an important part of our lives and almost nobody knows that they are dying out. Our goal for this project is to create awareness. We all need oxygen to live, but most of us don't even know where we get our clean air from, not to mention how to keep up this standard of living. So, what we want to do is inform. So that afterwards we know how to keep our air clean.

At first, we wanted to calculate how much oxygen is produced by the coral reefs and how much by a normal tree to do a comparison. However, this has proven to be quite difficult. 

In the beginning Naomi and Me had difficulties to divide the work, in order to make faster progress. But in the last weeks we have improved more and more.

Altogether on a scale from 1 to 10 we would say that we are on a 7.

But we think next time it would be helpful to organize everything more properly in the beginning.

Survey on climate-changing measures - Reflection

At the beginning we had some difficulties to decide which topic we're going to choose. However, we decided on the topic of climate-changing measures because it was the only thing that we all agreed on.

Unfortunately, no one wanted to coorperate with us. But we also think, that it would have been much more complicated to do a collaboration, because our project is based on a survey.

We didn't have any struggles to decide who's going to do what. It was also very interesting to do such a project in English. 

A bit sad was, that we didn't get as much answers from our survey as we expected to. Even though we spread it in many different ways.

Although everything worked out, we couldn't get much knowledge out of our project and would choose something different next time.

But in the end, we're happy with our final result.

Lukas, Julian, Livia

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. 

Experience, Survey - Coral Reefs

We did a short survey where we asked 86 people some questions about coral reefs. 

  1. The first question was about whether you have ever seen a coral reef with real eyes. With this question we wanted to find out how many people know how impressive a coral reef can be. From 41 people 15 answered with YES and 26 with NO.
  2. The second question was what comes to mind first when you think of a coral reef. As you can see here most of them answered with snorkelling. But many also thought of fish in the sea or the Great Barrier Reef.
  3. In the third question we asked the participants if they know what benefits corals have for us. From 41 people 18 answered here they do not know. 12 mentioned oxygen productions and the remaining 11 mentioned other things like the habitat.
  4. The 4th question was: Do you know of any organizations that work to protect coral reefs? In this question 24 people answered YES, which is almost 60%. Personally, I was surprised, because I always thought that many people do not know about the extinction of coral reefs
  5. Our 5. Question was: which of the following organizations do you know. It was very surprising for us that so many of the interviewers knew the organizations. We did not expect that more than 10 people know the OCEANA and Great Barrier Reef Legacy.
  6. The next question was: What do you think, how much oxygen is produced by Coral Reefs. All respondents have chosen a value greater than 0. This is certainly due to our question, where it was clear that corals produce oxygen.
  7. Next, we asked when they think, coral reefs will be extinct. Most of the people are have the same opinion here. 85% have chosen 30 years, which also agrees with the truth. Only five think that it will still take 60 years and 1 thinks 90 years.

Attached you can also find the results of our survey in a pdf file where you can find some diagrams.

1_Powerpoint Coralreefs.pdf (565.26 kb)

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%

Motor vehicle fleet:
- Passenger cars:         134'713
- Motorbikes:                23'581

Drive type:
- petrol engine:            63.7%
- diesel engine:            31.5%
- hybrid:                       3.2%
- electric motor:             1.1%
- other:                         0.5%

Electricity origin Zurich:
- Refuse and wood           1.65%
- Photovoltaics / Wind      1.27% 
- Hydropower                 24.9 %
- Nuclear power               6.69% 
- Electricity mix                9.11%
- Paraffin                        10.98% 
- Diesel                            8.83%
- Petrol                            3.79%
- Wood, biogas & environmental heat and solar collectors 2.64%
- District heating               3.3%
- Natural gas                   17.75% 
- Fuel oil                           9.09%

CO2 emissions:
CO2 emissions per capita 1.31 tonnes per year
City of Zurich Population: 415,467
= 544,261.77 tonnes of emissions caused by persons
CO2 emissions of companies in Zurich: 355738.23
Number of companies in Zurich: 6,037
= 58.93 tonnes on average per company
900,000 tonnes of CO2 per year in the city of Zurich

400 planes per day (June 2019)
134713 cars + 23581 motorbikes (June 2019)
10991 trains on Swiss tracks --> thereof in Zurich 1100

https://www.zuerich-co2.ch/ 

Trees:

80 trees for 1 ton of CO2 per year
Beech and chestnut trees convert twice as much on average
23,681,619 M2 forest area in Zurich
1 tree per M2
=23'681'619 trees in the forest

 

City trees in ZH - Experience

Review and evaluation of what has been done and what remains to be done

We have drawn up a plan to realise everything we want to achieve

All in all, we hardly had any problems. The only thing that can be a thorn in our side is the coronary gland, which makes the survey and interview difficult.

We try to stick to the plan and work through everything step by step.

This week we will contact Andrea Gion Saluz to organize an interview. Maybe this will help us enormously in the other things

Laurice & Michael

Results of the interview with Mr. Peter Hofmann

On a thursday afternoon I've done an interview with Mr. Peter Hofmann. He works in the environmental department in Zurich as project manager, his task is to check the environmental impact of vehicles.

When I asked him how realistic he thinks it is to have only electric cars in the city of Zurich, he said that this is a difficult question.

Today it is not possible to let no diesel vehicles or only electric vehicles into the city of Zurich, because there is no legal basis.

On the national and cantonal level as well as in the city of Zurich there are many efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is also in order to comply with the climate agreement of Paris. In order to achieve this, measures have to be taken, which can be quite specific, such as so-called low emission zones, as far as it is legally possible. There is still a lot to do to reach the goals and it is not easy but he is in a very positive mood. He sees the significance of electric cars in the city of Zurich as divided. On the one hand, he sees a continuous increase in the number of first redeemed electric vehicles, while on the other hand this figure is still in the single-digit percentage range. One reason for the rising numbers is most likely the good prices that are now prevailing.

 

During our conversation I also asked him about his city of the future.

He said that his city of the future is quite similar to the transport policy of the city of Zurich. This policy states that people will mainly travel to the city by public transport and will0 continue to use public transport or bicycles once they arrive in the city. This way the air is spared and the valuable space is not filled by private vehicles.

Basically he is of the opinion to use public transport as often as possible and if this is not possible, then a car with a small environmental impact.

When I asked what other points the transport policy contains, he said that there is a guideline with the following three points:

1. try to avoid traffic altogether and if possible to cover all shifts on foot.

2. use public transport such as bus and streetcar

3. use a clean vehicle

Another aspect of the city of Zurich is to make it easier to change to public transport or bicycle. For example, bicycle paths are to be extended or separate lanes for public transport are to be built.

At the end of our interview I wanted to know what his opinion on electric cars is and if he owns one himself.

Since he lives in the middle of the city, he does not need an own car. He often used his bicycle or public transport for longer distances. If he still needs to transport larger things, he uses the services of Mobility.

The knowledge he has about electro mobility he acquired himself during his own study at the beginning of this year. We have also received this study and will look at it in more detail. We have not been able to do this yet because the study is very extensive.

As far as electric vehicles are concerned, he is still split. The production of these cars, especially the battery, is a big thorn in his side. Because the many metals and materials used for the batteries have a big impact on the environment during extraction and production.

He also said that he thought that Zurich was using electric cars at the expense of East Asian countries.

In his last sentence he said that a small electric car powered by green electricity is a step in the right direction, but does not solve the problem completely.