Posts by mashafomitchova
The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round… Unless You’re In a Wheelchair
First – let’s address the obvious. Clearly, this isn’t a photo of NYC that I took – although I did screenshot it while within New York City’s borders. I stumbled upon this image after stumbling, and very much falling, down the black hole of Reddit on a chilly Wednesday evening last week. I will not deny that I saw my own habitual reaction portrayed here, but I didn’t think much of this mediocre-quality meme until the next morning when, while riding the M23 to Baruch, I felt the bus stop and begin to emit an all-too familiar series of repetitive high-pitched beeps as it slowly tilted slightly to one side. The “Ladies and Gentlemen” of the bus, all of whom would momentarily be asked to clear the area reserved for people with disabilities, let out a collective groan and pulled out their phones to fire off a quick message: “Will be late. Buses Suck.” MTA, amirite?
Curiously, the marvelous mess that we call our city’s public transportation system actually touts itself as being “the first public agency in the world to have a bus fleet 100 percent accessible to customers who use wheelchairs.” Considering that a 2015 MTA study found that 11.2 percent of passengers who ride the city’s buses on an average weekday are senior or disabled, it certainly appears that the accessibility of public buses is critical for a significant portion of our city’s residents – especially if one takes into account that the number of New Yorkers over 65 is rising steadily as a result of population aging. And yet, numerous studies and interview series performed in the past decades have demonstrated that wheelchair users and other physically impaired individuals face a number of challenges when it comes to taking public buses, including bus operators untrained in using their wheelchair equipment, and a lack of enforcement against cars blocking bus stops, (thus preventing drivers from being able pull up to the curb so disabled riders can board and exit safely.) Both individuals organizing studies of public transportation and MTA officials themselves point to inefficient handling of wheelchair-ridden passengers as a factor leading to the drastic decline in public bus ridership (14% since 2007); if buses have to stop for upwards of ten minutes to safely board and secure a wheelchair passenger, it is of no surprise that individuals with tight schedules will abandon the rickety bus system and seek the commute havens provided by Uber and Via.
And, it’s not as if disabled New Yorkers have many feasible alternatives for getting around the city: fewer than 25 percent of subway stations have functioning elevators, and on average, each subway elevator breaks down 53 times a year. A 2017 report from TransitCenter found that, out of the 472 subway stations throughout the city, only 110 are wheelchair accessible. In a city where 56 percent of residents use public transportation to get to and from work, ensuring the disabled community can navigate the city efficiently and independently is crucial to their success in the workplace. As of 2011, the employment gap between disabled New Yorkers and their able-bodied counterparts was 41.3 percent, almost two points higher than the national employment gap. Many advocates attribute this disparity (and the high rate of poverty among the disabled,) to the city’s inaccessible infrastructure. Lastly, it’s important to remember that the repercussions of the struggle of the city’s physically disabled to succeed professionally affect us all, since a significant portion of New York City’s population is essentially barred from contributing to our city’s economy.
The current “solution” intended to bear the weight of the disabled commuters not served by the buses and subways is Access-A-Ride. You know, that program we’re all vaguely aware of, occasionally see notices for, but know very little about. A very superficial description of the A.D.A-mandated program makes the service sound pretty appealing: commuters can book rides to various destinations around the city for $2.75 -the cost of a ride on public transportation. While at first glance, it’s easy to picture Access-A-Ride as some sort of magical inexpensive taxi service, customers say the program (which the MTA expects will cost $521 million in 2018,) is plagued with issues ranging from dangerous behaviour by drivers and malfunctioning vehicles to rides that are perpetually late – or don’t arrive at all. Access-A-Ride currently boasts a whopping 2-Star rating on Yelp (shockingly, ranking somehow lower than that sketchy C-Rated Buffet we all have in our neighborhood.) After accounting for inefficient routing, missed rides, inefficient fuel use, and other systematic issues, Access-A-Ride leads to an estimated loss of over 100 million dollars a year.
Clearly, truly universal access to public transportation is beneficial not only from a socioeconomic perspective, but from an environmental one too. Individual cars and taxis taken by wheelchair passengers who have given up on the MTA getting them to their destination undoubtedly cause unnecessary pollution – and the clunky, dated, and inefficient Access-A-Ride vehicles are not much of a step up. A lawsuit against the transit agency, recently joined by the Justice Department, described New York’s subway system as one of the least accessible in the country. It said that all the stations in the Washington Metro and on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system are accessible to passengers in wheelchairs, as are 74 percent of the stations in Boston, 68 percent in Philadelphia and 67 percent in Chicago. As a city that claims to be future-centric and open to those from all walks (and rides) of life, New York City clearly needs to do better.
NYC’s Problem With…Fat: Can We Get Our Sewer System a FitBit?
At this point, we’ve all attended more than enough high school health classes and seen a At this point, we’ve all attended more than enough high school health classes and seen a sufficient number of Netflix nutrition documentaries to know that America – New York City included – has gotten more than a little fatter. We’ve also all witnessed the effects of our leaders’ attempts to raise awareness and action regarding our national belt-busting program – motions ranging from new federal requirements for clearer Nutrition Facts labels to our city’s mayor’s attempt at a Soda Tax, which succeeded only in earning him the nickname Nanny Bloomberg. And, lastly, we haven’t been able to escape the growing number of public-health oriented notices in public places and around mass transit stations. Over the course of a few years, these efforts appear to have made somewhat of a difference – statistics point to slowly declining rates of obesity in many segments of the US population. But, we’re far from finished fighting our battles with mass accumulation and, well, fat. After all, as our adoring foreign friends would say, we couldn’t be a city of this nation until we’ve effectively doubled our land mass through literal trash. ‘Merica, right?
According to the DEP, the word ‘fatberg’ combines the words ‘fat’ and ‘iceberg’ to describe the masses of congealed grease and personal hygiene products that have been found lingering in sewers around the world. While this may sound like the subject of a dramatic article one would find in National Geographic (accompanied by a series of hard-hitting photos, of course,) our city and the lifestyle we associate with it is in no way immune to the destructive effects of these unappetizing masses of waste. The DEP puts it very simply – “Fatbergs are HUGE, DISGUSTING, DESTRUCTIVE, and COSTLY.” (Shockingly, the All-Caps comes from the Department’s official statement. ) Although “Huge, Disgusting, Destructive, and Costly” sounds more like part of a rant coming from some overly-aggressive weight-loss coach we’d see on daytime television, it’s time for us to realize that the fat in our cities sewers is as serious a concern as the fat in our arteries. And, because it results from what goes down our toilets, our Fatbergs are very much our problem.
A few moments after I saw this public-health campaign notice, I entered this very subway station to find another large billboard – this one plastered with a giant ad for flushable makeup wipes. Apparently, as New Yorkers who can’t possibly have five minutes before bed to wash our faces (or thirty seconds to walk to the trashcans in our kitchens,) we all need to go out and buy a pack right now. Fatbergs are mainly a result of wet wipes—yes, even the ones that say “flushable,”- condoms, feminine products, paper towels (and all the other stuff) that we flush down our toilets entering our sewer system and mixing with the grease that we’ve have poured down our sinks. And yet, all of the above products are aggressively marketed, and the companies that produce them are in a never-ending race to make them more “convenient” and easy to dispose of.
When our city attempted to tackle our previous “fat problem,” public officials and health organizations took steps to minimize the promotion and accessibility of products that clearly exacerbated the obesity crisis; policies were put in place to control the amounts of calories and sodium in fast food, and policies were proposed and implemented concerning sales of soda and the clarity of nutrition labels on foods in super markets. However, as we begin to address our Fatberg problem, residents of New York City are bombarded with conflicting messages regarding environmentally problematic goods. In the span of one block, we can be told to both avoid disposable wet wipes at all costs, and also to buy a box immediately if we want our babies’ bottoms to be as smooth as, well, babies’ bottoms are apparently supposed to be. Consumers undeniably have a massive amount of power, and the decisions of consumers greatly affect the amounts of problematic products entering our bodies and our urban ecosystems. If we want to shrink our Fatbergs as much as the NIH tells us we’ve successfully shrunk our waistlines, our next public policies may be aimed at Maybelline, and not Mountain Dew.
Haute Couture, Hot Planets, and The Downside of Our “Decluttering” Obsession
So, I know we’re two months into 2019 already, but maybe having to turn your calendar to “March” has made you think a little bit about putting some more work towards (or, honestly, getting a start on) some of our New Year’s resolutions. Maybe I can even predict a few of them – something about minimizing, maybe? Decluttering? Clarifying. Cutting the crap out of our lives. Simplicity. Rediscovering our style. New Year, New You – right? Granted, I’m just rattling off a list of Winter 2019 marketing Buzzwords, but I’m sure some of them hit the spot. There’s a reason our mailboxes are full of post-holiday sales promos from Forever 21, and there’s also a reason for Marie Kondo’s “Tidying Up” becoming a hit show on Netflix. Be it shopping for new clothes or throwing out old clothes, let’s go with I’ll bet I know how some of you spent part of the weekend.
And, why not? We’re pretty great at both! The annual US consumption for 2016 works out to every American on average buying more than five garments a month. And, since the “What goes in must come out” principle applies to our closets as much as it applies to our digestive systems (although maybe don’t mention that as a real estate agent,) it also means that Americans discard about 75 pounds of textiles per person per year – most of which ends up in landfills. Essentially, we’re great at turning Gucci into greenhouse gases.
Fast fashion is a largely a 21st century phenomenon, originally driven by international chains like H&M, Zara and Topshop, which usually takes the latest design trends and creates cheap pieces in those designs for quick mass consumption – a short production cycle that can take as little as a week. This lower-cost clothing is made to last only around one season, and the high turnover means customers are enticed to come back frequently to those stores to buy new clothes. Research collated by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation suggests that global clothing production has doubled in the past 15 years, with garments on average being worn much less and discarded quicker than ever before; the average lifespan of a garment of clothing is now estimated to only be around 1.5 years.
A 2016 study found that the 15 million tons of textiles thrown away per year by the US alone accounts for over 9 percent of our country’s total unrecycled waste. Whether garments go directly into a landfill, as it is in these cases, or are processed by a problematic recycling program, the crisis is only getting worse as the population increases and demand soars. Worse still is that our knowledge of the waste is incomplete, as much of it is hidden along supply chains.
While textile waste is a worldwide issue, cities like Dhaka in Bangladesh see the worst of it. Factories in Dhaka produce clothing for many high street brands like H&M, Zara, Gap, and even Walmart. In turn, these areas have the worst air pollution in the world and are surrounded by water that can’t possibly sustain life. Clothing made from polyester, which is essentially a plastic, takes up to 200 years to breakdown in landfill. While natural fibres like cotton or wool can theoretically biodegrade and compost (although current production levels far surpass sustainable biodegradability), landfills are still not suitable conditions for the disposal of natural fabrics. Wool, for example, leaks a type of ammonia when it becomes landfill.
As New York Fashion Week drew to a close last week, the industry’s editors, designers, representatives, and influencers will flock to London, Milan, and Paris to continue the festivities of a month of fashion. However, our dedication to haute couture may very well leave us with a very hot planet – and one more distressed than any 400 dollar pair of designer jeans.
New York City – a metropolis famous for its influence in the fashion world- has taken some measures to diminish the negative environmental impacts of an industry our city is so well-known for supporting. Many innovative ways to encourage sustainable production and disposal of clothing have been developed. These range from sponsoring and providing tax breaks to sustainable fashion brands and designers, to programs such as ReFashion NYC, which is a city-sponsored free and convenient clothing donation and recycling service.
The recent New York Fashion Week has given me a chance to witness, or at least an inability to hide from noticing, the environmental impact of both the production and disposal of the creative, beautiful, and bizarre fashion that we all associate with the city we live in – be it sock-like Balenciagas in streetwear or Oscars-worthy ballgowns. I’d love to do a project focused on how the city that’s largely considered the fashion capital of the world can implement measures to ensure that the clothing we love to buy, take selfies in, and then “minimize” (and then post pictures of our new “decluttered” spaces….) does less damage in pollution and wasted energy. I’d also really love to partner with one of NYC’s many textile-recycling branches to perhaps organize a class, or Macaulay, or Baruch-wide clothing-recycling drive? It might be a good way for us to see some a bit of the “instant” result of the positive environmental impact on our city that this course is meant to instigate.
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/downloads/pdf/promotional-materials/re-fashionyc-brochure-re-fa-f.pdf
http://www.greenstrategy.se/sustainable-fashion/what-is-sustainable-fashion/
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/dec/06/landfill-becomes-the-latest-fashion-victim-in-australias-throwaway-clothes-culture
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44968561
What IS Climate Change Weather Anyway?
Now, I’m from Russia, so my answer to the above question is very simple – if it’s above freezing, I’m down for swimsuits and sundaes. But, I’m actually here to talk a bit about a question neither I, nor many people around the world, seem to have a confident answer for: “What “weather” exemplifies and confirms global warming?
Picture this- it’s mid summer, and you’re standing on the subway platform, waiting for a train that claimed to be “approaching the station” eight minutes ago. The underground subway station is, unsurprisingly, not air conditioned, and you can all but feel the sweat stains forming under the straps of your bag. The body heat of dozens of other grouchy commuters only adds to the problem. If you wanted a steam-room treatment, you would have visited the overpriced “holistic healing spa” down the block from your apartment. On days like today, it’s easy to glare at the people holding plastic Poland Spring bottles and carrying masses of plastic bags. You swear that, with each breath, you can feel yourself inhaling greenhouse gases (along with the pheromones and frustration of the co-riders that surround you.) You swear that, the moment you exit the station at your destination, you’ll start doing your part to save the planet. Recycle that cereal box. Volunteer to clean up garbage. Bring your own bag to the store. Of course global warming is real – there’s no way your feet are always this sweaty. Those scientists were right all along.
Now let’s fast forward a few months. It’s a Monday in February, and you’re on your way to work. You’re waiting on an above-ground subway platform, and it’s pretty freaking cold out. You slept through your alarm and had to rush to leave the house so, today of all days, you forgot your gloves. You want to pull out your phone to see how many angry text messages your boss has sent you, but you refuse to remove your hands from the pockets of your coat, which are offering at least a small bit of comfort. Not happening. Way too cold. It’s days like today that cause the planet-saving motivation we stocked up on in the summer to vanish. Before heading into the office, you’ll pick up a paper cup of coffee, which you already know will be served with a three-inch stack of napkins. More of us will say “Oh hell no.” to our beloved clunky, yet eco-conscious public transportation and take gas-guzzling Ubers to get home. Our president might drop in on Twitter with some ever-inspired words along the lines of: “Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!”
And the weather wars will continue. As the line dividing climate change activists and deniers gets harder and the question of global warming becomes an increasingly loaded one, both sides of this ecology debate are increasingly using bouts of extreme weather as a weapon to try to win people to their side. And this isn’t surprising; weather is one of the easiest things for people to bond over or complain about, and is a staple of small talk and shared experience in many societies – all factors that can make weather a simple but powerful opportunity to discuss global warming. Our urge to interpret weather as a potent message about the true nature of climate change may have to do with our psychology – Climate science itself is often complex and abstract. It can be tough to feel, on a gut level, the implications of a chart showing global temperatures ticking up over time, or a graph predicting future rising sea-levels. We don’t experience slow changes in average temperature – at least not strongly enough to rely on them for a steady source of motivation to invest our time, money, and energy into sustainable living practices and ecological research. Current weather events are effective for spurring conversation about climate change, but it is important to note that scientists – who have long tried to distinguish between short-term weather fluctuations and long-term climate shifts – are urging us to go beyond ranting about the daily forecast, and to continue the global warming conversation draw out and discuss the links between the inclement weather and life-threatening climate change.
A City Scared and Safe
I took both of the photos on the same day- in fact, they were taken within thirty minutes of one another, each at a stop on my commute to Baruch. In each situation, the words photographed create a rather specific mood, and paint the city in a certain light. The words of the notice in the first photo are written in tone that’s grave, somber, and almost disgustingly matter-of-fact. The city that one pictures while reading them is a bleak, heartless one, where people can never truly let their guard down, and where it appears that every man is out for himself. The faded, colourful words of the second photo show a softer, caring side of the population that rides the city’s subways and boards its buses. If people like the writer of those chalky words do, indeed, dwell here, then perhaps we’re all a bit more cared for and looked-after than we expect.
The headlines we see in newspapers and in articles online make it easy for us to endlessly swap the light in which we see our city. From the time we pass a news kiosk in the morning to the time we scroll through Twitter in the evening, we may have bounced a thousand times between viewing New York City as either a moral cesspool or as a big caring community. In the same way that philosophers have spent centuries debating whether humans nature is innately good or evil, we can spend our lives chasing the most recent headlines alerting us of horrifying or heartwarming events, in hopes that we’ll come to a conclusive image of the moral character of New York. And yet, the truth seems to be that the character of our city is, well, messy – much like the tracks of the subway system both of the notices pictured were found within. NYC will continue to be a setting for both killings and kindness, and the MTA will alternate between telling us to keep our belongings in sight and all times, and reminding us that courtesy is contagious. Just like New York City’s sidewalks, buildings, streets, and (somehow,) cinematic blockbusters, I guess our city’s moral character isn’t black or white, but instead a multitude of shades of grey.
An Excuse For Being Late to Class…and Being Environmentally Unconscious
Shockingly, I’m not posting a photo of this newspaper headline in an attempt to immortalize the moment when every New Yorker’s beloved excuse to being late for work, for class, (or for those mutually unwanted, yet obligatory, plans to “grab drinks” we made with an old acquaintance,) became legitimized. Although seeing this statistic in print is a new experience, I have a strong suspicion that this citywide issue has crossed the mind of anyone who’s swiped a Metrocard at a turnstile recently.
Public transportation is among the aspects of urban infrastructure that most affects a city’s carbon footprint. Modern transportation relies heavily on petroleum; passenger cars and light-duty trucks (i.e. sport vehicles, pickup trucks and minivans) contribute half of the carbon dioxide emissions from the U.S. transportation sector. Burning one gallon of gasoline creates about 20 pounds of CO2—which means the average vehicle creates roughly 6 to 9 tons of CO2 each year.If your commute is 20-miles round trip (or the equivalent of a round trip up and down Manhattan,) the switch to public transportation could lower your carbon footprint by 4,800 pounds annually. American households that produce the least amount of carbon emissions are located near a bus or rail line. The people in those households drive an average of 4,400 fewer miles annually compared to similar households with no access to public transit. And, in addition to the benefits for the public and for the planet, individuals can save more than $9,738 per year by taking public transportation instead of driving.
It would seem that there are few things New Yorkers love more than demonstrating the city’s superiority to suburban America, publicizing their deep concern for the state of the environment, and saving money that can go to paying rent for our future dream apartments in Dumbo. And yet, New Yorkers’ use of public transportation has declined rapidly over the past several years. In recent years, the number of subway riders on weekdays has fallen from as many as 6 million to an average of 5.6 million as many people abandon the failing system for Uber and other ride-hailing services. Subway and bus ridership in 2019 is projected to be 236 million rides lower than the MTA projected three years ago, which could result in a cumulative revenue loss of $822 million from 2016 through 2019.The three-year decline in subway ridership has had a significant impact on the MTA’s operating budget – making it even more difficult for repairs and updates to the transit system to be made.
Ride hail apps first overtook taxis in February 2017 at more than 10 million rides a month, and drivers for Uber, Via, Lyft, and Juno now complete over 80% more rides than the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. Concerns have risen over the unsustainability of the rapid growth of ride-hailing services, as traffic is already reaching new heights, and New York City’s streets are becoming more congested than ever.
The more New Yorkers flee our failing subway and bus system for app-hailed cars, the less eco-friendly our city will become – no matter how many photos of reusable water bottles we post on our Instagrams. And, the MTA relies the money generated from riders’ fares to improve and upgrade subway tracks and cars. However, considering that a 92% lateness rate is not tolerated by any employer or professor I’ve ever met, it’s not hard to understand which transit option, unfortunately, wins the cost-benefit analysis for many NYC commuters.
Masha’s Bio!
Good morning! My name is Masha Fomitchova! I’m from Russia, but I’ve lived in NYC for most of my life and love the city in every way, from the adrenaline of urban exploring to the simple pleasure of painting on my fire escape. I’m a fashion model and am interested in fashion, but I’m also really passionate about art and art history, so I spend a ridiculous amount of time in museums, especially the Met. I also really enjoy going to art galleries all around the city whenever I can, and am always in search of unique ways to express ideas and show creativity.
I am a firm supporter of the “due tomorrow means do tomorrow” model of thinking, so I’m up very late a majority of the time, but I care deeply about academics. I have a horrific habit of being able to rant about absolutely useless theories about human behaviour and economics, since I probably read too much and CERTAINLY think too much, so I’m terribly sorry if you have to experience that! I’ve been a Yogi since I was a young child and, besides modeling, I really enjoy my job as a Yoga teacher. I am an admitted abuser of coffee and blonde jokes. Lastly, I’m a really avid writer, and maintain a pretty active blog at https://www.sleeplessinnewyork.nyc/ (Not a shameless plug! Just have had to deal with TurnItIn accusing me of plagiarizing from myself once too many times!) . This post is getting longer than my hair and I ought to stop. But, as someone who cares deeply about the environment and who has goals about preserving the natural wonders of the world in addition actually being able to see them all (can’t really do one without the other, right?) I’d love to learn more about what has led to the unfortunate current state of our ecosystems, and about the measures we can implement to improve it. I greatly look forward to being in your class!
Comments by mashafomitchova
"Your photo, and the post you wrote about it, made me recall our class discussion about the surprising number of very critical problems that are affecting the benefits from - and even the possibility of- "recycling" as we know it in the United States today. After several decades of campaigns to raise public awareness of the perilous state of the environment, we've certainly come a long way from the time in which recycling was only a habit among overeager second graders who just joined their school's "Green Club," and only entered the minds of the general public on the days when the Department of Sanitation sent out their annual newsletter, accompanied by a recycling guide printed on a low-quality fridge magnet. I'm pretty sure the only use I ever got out of mine was to attach field trip permission slips somewhere I wouldn't forget about them.
Now, nearly all public spaces - including airports, malls, schools, and office buildings - have the now-familiar duo of green and blue recycling bins. Some communities take it a step further, by providing separate containers for the recycling of fabric, technical gadgets, and large household items; other communities have public compost-collection containers. It is not uncommon for inspectors to be hired to ensure that people are properly cooperating with recycling efforts, and individuals and business who refuse to do so can face fairly steep fines. We're certainly trying. But, here's the uncomfortable question: are we actually getting anywhere?
As we discussed in class, the United States has a long-established practice of sending the majority of its recycling to China to be sorted and properly processed. Yet, after China restricted imports of many common recyclables (including paper, junk mail, cardboard, and most plastics,) accompanied by a statement that there is no longer a market for these materials in their country, municipalities all over America were faced with a choice: they could agree to pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or simply throw it all away. I'm sure most people wouldn't need to take even Econ101 to predict the most commonly chosen path. The increased price of maintaining long-established recycling programs is not some mildly frustrating, yet soon-to-be-forgotten price raise. Broadway, Virginia, had a recycling program for 22 years but was forced to abandon it after Waste Management told the town that prices would increase by 63 percent. In Franklin, New Hampshire, public recycling soared when city officials agreed to put paper and plastic recycling bins on street corners, knowing that they would be able to break even on recycling by selling collected materials for $6 million a ton. However, when China's new policy led the transfer station to begin charging Franklin town $125 a ton to recycle, or $68 a ton to incinerate, the hard choice had to be made; in a town where over 20% of the population lives below the poverty line, asking residents to pay the city government to recycle was not feasible.
In cities where recycling programs were regretfully suspended, masses of trash that city officials still hope to somehow recycle start to pile up. In the vast majority of cases, counties are forced to grit their teeth and take the dreaded trip to bring tons of accumulated recyclable materials to a landfill for incineration. This is often done without notifying county residents in hopes of preventing public outrage. Some nonprofits, such as Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful, have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid caving into current financial pressures to sabotage sustainable practices; in Illinois, 400,000 tons of collected plastic currently sits near a plastic-collection facility, desperately awaiting a turnaround of the market.
For a long time, Americans have had little incentive to consume less. It’s inexpensive to buy products, and it’s even cheaper to throw them away at the end of their short lives. In 2015 (the most recent year for which national data are available, America generated 262.4 million tons of waste, up 4.5 percent from 2010 and 60 percent from 1985.) New York City collected 934 tons of metal, plastic, and glass a day from residents last year, a 33 percent increase from 2013. The ease of recycling has long eased the minds of slightly concerned consumers - after all, if we recycle our disposable items, it's like we never even used them, right? Throwing a Poland Spring bottle in a blue bin is the equivalent of planting a tree as far as most people's "good deeds of the day" go.
But the costs of all this garbage are growing, especially now that bottles and papers that were once recycled are now ending up in the trash. We don't need to be told that this has an environmental cost - organic waste that sits in landfills decomposes and emits methane, which is bad for the climat. We can tell ourselves that burning plastic creates some energy, but it the process is mostly responsible for producing carbon emissions. And, while many incineration facilities bill themselves as “waste to energy” plants, studies have found that they release more harmful chemicals, such as mercury and lead, into the air per unit of energy than do coal plants.
However, if well-honed money-saving mindsets are the main reason China and India's new import policies are leading many communities to abandon recycling programs, a discussion of the financial consequences of overproduction of consumer waste may have more impact than yet another (albeit well-intentioned) "Save The Penguins" PowerPoint. The United States still has a fair amount of landfill space left, but it’s getting expensive to ship waste hundreds of miles to those landfills. Some dumps are raising costs in reaction to the increased waste resulting from cities forced to surrender their sustainability sending their recyclable materials to incineration. According to one estimate, along the West Coast, landfill fees increased by $8 a ton from 2017 to 2018. Some of these costs are already being passed on to consumers, but most haven’t—yet. However, if we're going to admit that our urge to save a penny can be stronger than our desired to save the polar bears, we need to consider that our decision to begrudgingly duck "recycling fees" may very well lead to us getting stabbed in the back by even less appealing "landfill transportation" fees instead."
--( posted on Mar 29, 2019, commenting on the post
recyclable trash )
"After spending a solid thirty seconds being very jealous of your current view of Miami Beach (admittedly, the fact that I read this post while standing on a G-train platform and watching a rat nibbling on a stale Cheeto definitely played a part in that,) I realized that the issue you brought up reminded me of the New York Times article we discussed last class: "Climate Change’s Giant Impact on the Economy: 4 Key Issues."
In his article, Neil Irwin invites readers to look past the now well-known environmental risks posed by climate change, and shifts the spotlight onto the less-discussed, yet equally critical, effects that climate change may have on the global economy. Although few people make a connection between rising temperatures and falling bank-account balances, a failure on our part to take proper care of our planet could result in our GDP taking a significant hit.
Curiously, (although not shockingly,) gorgeous beach views like the one you had in Miami Beach - you know, the ones that look fantastic on travel brochures and wannabe Travel Bloggers' Instagrams alike - may soon be in as much danger of being wiped out by climate change as are polar bears and hundreds of species of rainforest beetles that I won't pretend to know the names of. We may be putting ourselves through school and dragging ourselves to work in hopes of someday having enough green in our savings accounts to jet off somewhere with sandy beaches, turquoise waters, and very photogenic scenery, but it is crucial that we take a moment to divert our eyes from our to-do lists and work emails, and instead take a good, hard look at the undeniable, escalating impact of rising sea levels. Otherwise, we run a very real risk of opening Trip Advisor after payday, and realizing that all our dream destinations have disappeared or disintegrated. They've sunk- just like our hopes of taking that perfect #wanderlust photo.
Some of the places we may have on our "Bucket Lists" that we may very well need to bail out with actual buckets include:
The Great Barrier Reef, Australia: Rising ocean temperatures have caused coral bleaching in vast portions—a condition in which the coral turns white and is prone to mass die-offs. Following back-to-back bleaching incidents in 2016 and 2017, scientists report coral mortality rates in the range of 50 percent, meaning half the living corals have died from bleaching.
Venice, Italy: The presence of the Adriatic Sea coursing through the canals of Venice no doubt contributes to the European city's romantic charm, but as ocean levels rise, Venice inches toward more serious inundation - including the destruction of many of its historical buildings and public spaces, which would leave the city's long-admired unified facade of historical architecture unsalvageable.
The Maldives: Clustered in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives is made up of a series of atolls—ring-shaped islands formed from coral. The area has year-round temperatures that range from 81–84 degrees Fahrenheit, making it an ideal destinations for those who want to show off their bikini bodies and achieve "beach hair" without buying a 7-dollar spray from Duane Reade. Yet, rising sea levels pose a serious risk not only to those hoping to indulge their inner beach bum; The Maldives is the lowest-lying country in the world (sitting an average of only 1.3 meters above sea level), and rising sea levels put it in danger of vanishing entirely - climbing tides are already displacing locals.
Sources:
https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/10-places-to-visit-before-theyre-lost-to-climate-change
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/upshot/how-to-think-about-the-costs-of-climate-change.html"
--( posted on Mar 17, 2019, commenting on the post
A different future )
"The memories I most strongly associate with these little community gardens are the weekly garden volunteering outings that my elementary school included in its curriculum for all students after third grade. Every Friday, the students of all the various classes in my school would line up, two-by-two, and march over to one of several nearby community gardens to spend roughly two hours doing anything from planting daffodils to weeding to laying down decorative ceramic tiles. At least, that's what we were meant to do - whether or not the efforts of a large group of nine-year-old's resulted in much more than a couple lumpy flowerbeds and a massive amount of laundry for our parents, I will never know.
However, I remember reading recently that a lot of our city's community gardens are in danger of disappearing to make way for affordable housing - a result of Mayor Bill De Blasio's extensive plan to address the city’s housing shortage. In addition, private development and a massive uptick in construction that has occurred over the past several years (something difficult not to have noticed, considering the current appearance of Hudson Yards and of much of Midtown,) is putting more community gardens at risk of becoming a thing of the past. As the amount of available land decreases and real estate prices continue to climb, some gardens have been targeted by the city, while others are being eyed by developers. Some developers are saying that these community green spaces are becoming prime targets in real-estate battles, and are quickly becoming some of the most vulnerable places in the city. Granted, it's hard to argue that both affordable housing and the construction of beautiful public spaces don't have their own benefits, but we need to weigh the potential gains resulting from real-estate development against the losses many communities will experience if they are stripped of their treasured green spaces: our city's real-life versions of secret gardens."
--( posted on Mar 14, 2019, commenting on the post
NYC’s “little gardens” (3/19/19) )
"The way you wrote this post caught my eye, because it brought to mind a small pattern I noticed a few years ago: it seems that every single article that dons a clickbait-esque title along the lines of "45 Things You Need To Stop Spending On So You Can Buy Yeezys and Afford Spotify Premium," seems to be accompanied by a stock photo of a latte in a paper cup. You can't utter the words "personal finance" without someone going on an over-eager rant about the life-changing power of considering the cost of stopping by a deli or cafe to pick up a cup of coffee on our way to work.
We're in Baruch, so it's not necessary to insert a reminder of how many monthly app subscriptions we could afford if we stop doling out 5 bucks every morning for our caffeine-fix - and we're not even going to get into the heresy that is spending hard-earned money on decaf.
The biggest "cost " of our coffee-buying habits may not be the one that shrinks our checkings accounts - and is certainly not one that is the subject of a plethora of Buzzfeed articles. If an individual purchases a disposable cup every day, this creates about 23 pounds of waste per year - more weight than we'll lose if we forego the double-chocolate-chip Frappucinos. Though they are made largely of paper, disposable coffee cups are lined with plastic polyethylene, which is tightly bonded to the paper making the cups waterproof and therefore able to contain liquid. And, because coffee cups are tainted with beverages, they cannot be accepted by a majority of paper recycling plants.
According to a study by Starbucks, each paper cup manufactured is responsible for 0.24 pounds of CO2 emissions, and yet less than 1% of customers bring their own reusable cups to buy beverages at the coffee chain - despite the incentive of a 10% discount. While we certainly oughtn't forget the impact our daily doses of caffeine have on our bank accounts, more of us ought to look beyond personal finance, and consider that the most damage caused by our cappuccinos might be the thinning stacks of bills in our wallets, but instead the thinning ozone layer of our atmosphere."
--( posted on Mar 1, 2019, commenting on the post
The Environmental Cost of a Cuppa – Caitlin Cacciatore )
"Your photo reminded me of an action taken by the MTA about two years ago.
https://nypost.com/2017/02/14/removing-subway-trash-cans-has-resulted-in-more-track-fires-litter-dinapoli/
In an effort to reduce the amount of litter within our subway stations, the MTA decided to engage in a sort of bizarre Pavlovian conditioning of New Yorkers. Essentially, transit system officials figured that if people who brought trash into a subway system realized that there were no trash receptacles underground, New Yorkers would eventually stop associating subway stations with a place where trash can be disposed of, and would make note to throw away any potential trash before descending the subway stairs. This motion led to the removal of all trash cans from more than 40 subway stations, at stations such as Eighth Street on the R line in Manhattan, Flushing-Main Street on the No. 7 line in Queens and all of the J, M and Z stops that are above ground in Brooklyn and Queens.
So, what came of this? Turns out, removing easy-to-access trash cans massively exacerbates preexisting litter problems. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a statement: “Removing trash cans appears to have resulted in more track fires and garbage at a number of stations.” Riders interviewed for articles about the results of the tactic have complained that the removal of trash cans has not only not reduced the amount of trash or number of rats seen in stations, but has in fact had the opposite effect, and turned several stations into "pigsties." People who bring cups of coffee, breakfast sandwiches, tissues, or bottles of water onto the subway realize they have to choose between littering or toting their trash all day, and it's not exactly surprising which option appeals more to tired morning commuters. From your photo, it seems the transit system still has some work to do to come up with a way to reduce litter on the trains, subways, and buses we all share."
--( posted on Feb 22, 2019, commenting on the post
A Trashy Commute )
"Hugh, I found what you wrote about this photograph to honestly be very moving. In an odd way, it relates to several thoughts that the events of the past week have brought to my mind, and it's genuinely relieving to see that someone else I know has thought along similar lines.
As some people in our class probably know, the past week was Fashion Week in New York City. A couple of my friends who live in nearby New Jersey and Pennsylvania came to the city to spectate, and a brief walk through downtown with them proved to be very revealing - and a bit unsettling for me. We were walking through Alphabet City, and were in a bit of a hurry. I attempted to shuffle them along and encouraged them to pick up their pace a few times, but after a few blocks one of them stopped me and said, almost angrily: "You do realize we've passed four or five homeless people in the past few minutes, right? You didn't give any of them money - you didn't even look at them! How can you do that so easily? Do you just...not care?"
In the few minutes we had before the event we were going to began, I tried to scrap together an explanation of how many cities discourage giving money to panhandlers, and how contributing to charitable organizations has a greater net impact, but I could see that my out-of-town friends weren't convinced. A few hours later, as I walked down a runway wearing an outfit that costs more than most colleges' tuition, I felt a bitter taste in my mouth from the earlier incident. In theory, being there was supposed to be a step towards a New York City dream coming true - but had I lost sight of the dreams, no, needs, of NYC neighbours? Has keeping my eyes on the "prize" - be it a finance degree, a successful career, a bigger paycheck, or another contract - narrowed my vision so much that I can't see what's really happening on the streets and subways of the city I, and millions of other dreamers, call home?"
--( posted on Feb 16, 2019, commenting on the post
one man’s trash, another man’s… inconvenience of seeing it everywhere he steps )
