Investigating the environemtal impacts from plastic bags Research Paper

Investigating the environemtal impacts from plastic bags - Research Paper Example The Case Against Plastic Bags The manufacturing process requires 12 million barrels of oil per year, creating over 100 billion plastic shopping bags (Gamerman). With only about a 5% recycling rate (inspiration green), the landfills will overflow with bags that are not recycled or reused. A number of wildlife groups report discarded plastic bags are eaten by a variety of land and sea creatures with fatal effects. These concerns and other create the larger argument for environmental stewardship: The Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin, 1968) and TANSTAAFL (Dolan, 1971). Both of these writings warn of the economic â€Å"free rider† problem that is the bane of environmental stewardship The free rider problem refers to the polluting or overuse of the natural resources since no tax or fee is associated with dumping. The tragedy of the commons is the overuse and overgrazing of the common land. Since each herdsman wanted to maximize profits, they exploited the free grazing land by adding m ore and more cattle. Soon, the grazing land was destroyed, unable to recover and nobody could feed their cattle. The herdsmen who believed in proper stewardship either went broke or joined the others in selfish overuse. Pollution and contamination work the same way. Traditionally, industry would dump waste into rivers, bury toxins on site and spew horrid smoke into the air because the water, land and air were considered a common good; and companies could dump waste at â€Å"no cost†. With the Environmental Protection Agency and State environmental departments cracking down on polluters with fines and criminal penalties, this practice has abated, but does continue to a lesser extent. The neo-tragedy argument includes recycling and the after-effects of environmentally resilient products. TANSTAAFL (Dolan) originated in science fiction by Heinlein; the acronym means â€Å"there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch†. Dolan adopted the acronym in order to present his economic argument that pollution rights should be sold as an economic good. A calculation of the maximum mass of each pollutant potentially and immediately sorbed into the environment would lead to an inventory of polluting rights. These rights would be sold at auction to industries with a waste disposal problem. Other constituents would have to design non-polluting mechanisms to compete. Obviously, the cost of pollution would be set by the market. (Dolan) The money raised through the auction plus fines on pollution cheaters would pay for remediation. The plastic bag opponents take this argument one step further and assign responsibility for individual litter and recycling to the manufacturer. As much as 4% of trash in landfills consists of plastic bags. (DOE) As consumers use more and more plastic bags, even to contain trash, the landfills will take longer to naturally reclaim the natural resource of land. In an interesting study, small communal group, the Hutterites, were observed . (Hardin, 3) The finding was that when the colony size approaches 150, individuals begin to under-contribute and over-demand. Smaller groups manage by shame; however, larger groups lose that capacity. The commonistic approach of the Hutterites loses manageability in larger

Personal reflection on design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Personal reflection on design - Essay Example ve teaching design to pass information across to the target group will aid in the learning process as pupils will be able to grab much of what they are being told (Agostinho, 2006). Moreover, teachers will be able to pursue their careers with much ease as they provide quality education without investing a lot of time. The core purpose of a teacher is to offer quality education to his/her students. This can only be measured through the outcomes of an assessment exercise (McAndrew, Goodyear and Dalziel, 2006, p. 216). I believe that a concerned teacher will offer an assessment exercise to her/his pupils after a lesson to assess how much the pupils have understood what has been presented. Consequently, the teacher’s satisfaction will be attained if only he/she will find out that the pupils have extensively comprehended what was taught. Waters and Gibbons (2004, p. 57) state that a teaching design can be conducted in order to: illustrate the tasks assigned to the pupils, the resources available to the students to assist them in carrying out those tasks and how as their teacher, you are going to offer them support. As a primary teacher I have had to go through a lot of challenges in my teaching career. While in college we were taught on how to prepare prior to conducting lessons (Goodyear, 2005, p. 85). Among the things you have to do before undertaking a lesson is to prepare a simple lesson plan. A lesson plan is to give a teacher a guideline on the sequence of events during the lesson and what he/she has to accomplish at the end of a lesson. During the early years of my teaching career I had problems with preparing a lesson plan because I considered it to be time wasting. With five years of practice in the teaching field, I understand only too well the essential role of a lesson plan (Waters and Gibbons, 2004, p. 61). Dealing with a young mind I have to be very careful with what I do or say. According to Goodyear (2005, p. 101) children in primary schools