Month: November 2019

Rebecca Hearn

YouTube creator MrBeast, from North Carolina, started a sustainability campaign. #TeamTrees has the goal to plant 20 million trees by 2020. I have been a long-time viewer of MrBeast, and his content is always over the top. His videos involve large amounts of money and usually some type of giveaway or crazy challenge to win a car. The premise of his channel is simple and unique. He produces entertaining content on a large scale. When he posted his video titled “Planting 20,000,000 Trees, My Biggest Project Ever!” I was shocked. There is a lot of talk about how young people have to take control of the future and become environmental activists to save the planet. There is limited discourse or variety on how youth can actually participate in climate action. Creating a lack of hope in youth leads to less political activism. I have become aware of this by living in the Greenbelt and in the way that we approach climate change because of how different it is from negativity seen elsewhere.

MrBeast, on the other hand, is anything but negative. He goes through the nasty statistics but, the majority of his video is about him, his friends, and the community he brought together having a really good time planting trees. He also incorporated the correct planting habits into his video. A few weeks ago, the Greenbelt class planted two trees on campus as part of our Arbor Day celebration. A big part of this planting project was a focus on planting the trees correctly. Our instructor, Kyle Stackis, from Trees Upstate explained proper planting procedure and how people don’t know the proper procedure. In the video you can see MrBeast and his friends put into practice the proper planting procedures that we had just learned about on campus. Not only were they having a good time, but they were demonstrating the effective and correct ways to go about this particular activism.

It was fascinating to see a huge social media star, with over 25 million subscribers, use his platform to spread an environmental campaign . Because he acted, a whole new group of people have been exposed and educated on environmental issues and been provided with a positive way to act.

So, what is happening as a result of this? MrBeast used the video to announce his #TeamTrees campaign. A campaign, in association with the Arbor Day Foundation, to plant 20 million trees by 2020. It has a simple approach: 1 dollar = 1 tree. As of today, November 7^th, 2019, the donation count is at 14,224,186 trees. If you go to teamtrees.org you can see the live count. If you scroll farther down, they are offering merch, additional resources, and a donation feed. If you go to the “most trees” tab you can see the top donations. It becomes clear that this is much larger than YouTube. The top donor with 1,000,001 trees is Tobi Lutke, the CEO of Shopify. The second top donor is Elon Musk, technology entrepreneur and CEO of Telsa, SpaceX, and more. These big names are able to show their support for environmental action and it builds MrBeast reputation as a “larger than the platform” YouTuber.

Mark Rober also shows up in the video. He seems like a normal everyday guy, and then he explains that he is a former NASA engineer who helped put the Curiosity rover on Mars. Wow. He made an informative video for the #TeamTrees campaign that helped explain why we should even be planting trees. He explains the topic in a fun, approachable, and consumable way. I didn’t even have an answer for “why trees?”. Sure, more oxygen?? But I really didn’t know why. You can watch the video for a more eloquent and visual explanation, but the short version is that trees store carbon. We plant more trees and we have more carbon storage. Trees are our carbon sink. If we plant trees and focus on doing it correctly, we get big, healthy trees. The bigger the tree, the more carbon they can store. A big issue of climate change is the amount of carbon in our atmosphere. More trees, less carbon.

I wanted to talk about the #TeamTrees campaign for a couple of reason. First, because of the Greenbelt. We just spent a whole class planting trees. It feels like effective activism, even though our trees are small now. There is a sense that we planted the trees together, had a good time, and did it correctly. There is this sense of planting something that will be around for a long  time, maybe even longer than you will be. It felt like I was a part of #TeamTrees, that I was creating long lasting change, and walking the talk, and creating my own form of personal empowerment. The second reason I wanted to talk about this was because of my fascination with culture, specifically micro cultures like social media and YouTube. I tried my best to explain the background and the significance of what this meant for YouTube culture. As a viewer and someone interested in environmentalism, I was inspired to see this community, specifically MrBeast, do something bigger than any of them individually. They used their platform for good. Most of the time when I see people do this, they don’t make it true to their content or to themselves and the “call to action” fails. That wasn’t the case with MrBeast, the video was interesting, fun, lighthearted, informative, and, ultimately, effective. So many big names have come together and made a real effect to educate people or show their support through videos and donations. The campaign ultimately gives me a hope, hope for activism, hope for YouTube, and hope for our future.

 

Sources:

MrBeast’s Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPJKxAhLw5I&t=260s

Mark Rober’s Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7nJBFjKqAY&t=672s

#TeamTrees: https://teamtrees.org/

Trees Upstate: https://www.treesupstate.org/

more sources:

Nowak, D. J., & Crane, D. E. (2002). Carbon storage and sequestration by urban trees in the USA. Environmental Pollution, 116(3), 381-389.

O’Brien, K., Selboe, E., & Hayward, B. M. (2018). Exploring youth activism on climate change: Dutiful, disruptive, and dangerous dissent. Ecology and Society, 23(3), 42.

Addison Smith

I find it astounding that according to the World Health Organization, 4.2 million people die every year as a result of unsafe air pollution, and 91% of people live in places where air quality exceeds the World Health’s safety standards. I find it even more astounding that there 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. The worst part about these astonishing statistics: they are completely preventable.

We have created a culture of convenience and one time usage; it is killing our world. For example, we use plastic water bottles, plastic straws, and plastic bags one time. First, the production of these items release harmful pollutants in the air that create smog and cause lung disease such as asthma, emphysema, and even cancer. After we use these items, they end up in our rivers, lakes, streams, and oceans, which cause detrimental health effects in humans, animals, and ecosystems.

While our circumstances look quite grim, there are new, promising innovations that are drastically decreasing these harmful air pollutants. For example, Daan Roosegaarde created the Smog Free Tower in 2015. This tower is much like a vacuum cleaner: it takes in unclean air, and through an ionization process, it then releases clean air back into the environment. “It can clean 30,000 cubic meters of air every hour, and it can suck in up to 70% of PM10, which are tiny pollutants that lodge in our lungs,” according to ENS Clean Air. These towers stand around 23 feet tall, and cost $54,000. They are meant to clean small spaces, like public parks and other public spaces. I believe that these vacuum towers are the keys to the future of clean air, as they have been extremely successful in large cities like Beijing and Tianjin. Now, it is time for our government to prioritize clean air and create incentives for businesses and other institutions to invest in these towers.

In the ocean, the situation seems even more grim. However, Ocean Cleanup, an organization dedicated to cleaning our water sources, has created a passive cleaning system. It is considered a passive system because it does not rely on any external forces. In fact, it relies on natural forces such as solar, wind, and current powers. These natural forces along with an anchor collect large amounts of pollutants and concentrate them in one physical location. Then, a vessel goes into the system and removes the trash, much like a typical garbage truck. According to Ocean Cleanup, this system has the capacity to remove up to 50% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in just five years!

These innovations are promising, and I am beyond thankful for these wonderful inventors because they very well might save us. However, as consumers, we cannot simply rely on the next innovation to save us. As previously mentioned, we have the capacity to prevent much of our water and air pollutants. It is time to create a culture that prioritizes our world over mere convenience.

Sources:

“Air Pollution.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 24 Sept. 2019, www.who.int/airpollution/en/.

“New Positive Results for the Smog Free Tower.” ENS Clean Air, 6 Aug. 2018, www.ens-cleanair.com/en/new-positive-results-for-the-smog-free-tower/.

“Oceans.” The Ocean Cleanup, 2016, theoceancleanup.com/oceans/.

Staff, Ng. “Ocean Trash: 5.25 Trillion Pieces and Counting, but Big Questions Remain.” National Geographic, 29 Nov. 2017, www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/1/150109-oceans-plastic-sea-trash-science-marine-debris/.

 

 

Ethan Gallagher

Often when thinking about protein in our daily diets, the first things that come to mind are chicken and beef. While these are the traditional ways that we often get our protein, it comes with a big environmental cost that has a much better alternative.

That alternative is crickets! While you may be thinking that there is no way that this could be a potential supplement for protein and that it would be gross to eat, let me explain.

To start, crickets have double the protein then beef does, it contains more calcium than milk, and it has more vitamin B12 than salmon or beef. On a sustainable side, crickets grow 13 times faster than do cows, they require 2000 times less land than livestock and require 2000 times less water than cows do. To put that in perspective, it takes 2000 gallons of water for a cow to produce 1 pound of beef. For crickets, it only takes them 1 gallon of water to produce the same amount of protein as 1 pound of beef. Also, cows give off around 100 times more greenhouse gas then crickets do, and also cows require 10 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of beef, whereas crickets only require 1.7 pounds. Not to mention, only 40% of a cow is used as consumed meat, whereas 100% of the crickets are used by being dried and ground up, leaving around 80% of its original body weight. There is no waste!

This form of obtaining protein is relatively new in the past few years and hasn’t really been able to develop for many years. With this industry still developing, there is still much room for how crickets are harvested and how this process can be done as cost-efficiently as possible.

There are various companies taking advantage of this emerging food trend, such as Crik and Chirps. Chirps was a company started by three college students that discovered the value of cricket protein and began making products such as cricket protein powders, baked good mixes, and there most popular, cricket chips. Chirps have been featured on Shark Tank, successfully making a deal with Mark Cuban, and also is on Forbes 30 under 30.

While this industry is still in its beginning stages, there has been much progress made, and surely there should be a larger future market for this source of protein as it is more sustainable, nutritious, and delicious!

 

Sources:

“Chips Made with Cricket Flour – As Seen on Shark Tank.” Chirps Chips, eatchirps.com/.

Knapp, Alex. “Farming The Next Big Food Source: Crickets.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 30 Jan. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2018/01/30/farming-the-next-big-food-source-crickets/#355910fa1168.

“Why Cricket Protein?” CRIK Nutrition, criknutrition.com/pages/why-cricket-protein-powder.