ECOSPIRED

  During my first year as an Environmental Engineering student, I took a course called "Earth Engineering." It was mainly about soil mechanics, yet the first lesson discussed the natural resources left on this earth, and how humans use them everyday. The most surprising fact was the amount of freshwater on our planet, which is barely anything!! As the years go by, experts keep warning us about the arising water scarcity problem. We have already heard many horror stories like the Flint water crisis, and there are many more to come. To learn more about our current situation, I wrote about the present water issues and their unknown future. As the planet continues to warm and the world population endlessly grows, the need for water is increasing at a dangerous pace. Majority of the planet is water, however fresh water is the main source of drinking water for humans, and it only constitutes about 1/10,000th of one percent of the total water; of this minute amount, 68.7% is loc...

  The year 2020 has brought many unexpected turns, the most dramatic being COVID-19. There’s no doubt that it had a pivotal effect on the economy and society as a whole, but I wanted to talk about its impact on the environment. As I was researching, I came upon hundreds of articles, some which argued that C OVID -19 had a positive impact on the environment, others which said it created more problems. As the end of the year is upon us, I wanted to write about the influence C OVID -19 had on the earth. There are several topics to discuss, but I chose to focus on the more common environmental factors.   “We have therefore made the assessment COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic”, this news was announced on March 11th by Dr Tedros from the World Health Organization (WHO). From this point onwards, the world shut down. Businesses had to close, schools transferred to remote learning and above all, everyone went into isolation. It was a vital adjustment for everyone, there w...

When working on redundant projects I like to listen to podcasts, it allows the time to go by and inspires me to write. This past month I’ve been listening to “ Overheard at National Geographic ” , an episode about the Towers of Ladakh got me interested in how often humans have to create solutions due to nature’s cycle. It got me thinking that though nature can be unexpectedly hindering, it also has provided us with many answers. In this post, I compare two situations where nature has been an inconvenience and where it has assisted.  The first story takes place in Ladakh , a region located in northern and eastern Kashmir and is one of the highest regions in the world. It is filled with beautiful high plains, deep valleys, brackish lakes and glaciers. The climate is very dry and cold due to its high altitude and has only about 80mm of precipitation every year. Ladakh sits on a mountain range that neighbours the Himalayas, these mountains block most of the rain clouds leaving Ladakh ...

Unfortunately, the wildfires have become a norm for California residents which do not only affect the forests of the state but also the quality of living. I became more aware of the fires when my brother recently moved to California. As I listened to him recount his day of finding ways to avoid going outside into the smog and the several precautions he had to take to simply go out on a grocery run, I realized how it wasn’t only an environmental issue, but a societal one as well. As I did research on the Californian fires, I found an article about why we should stop blaming Climate Change for them. This captivated my interest as climate change has become a non-debatable issue in the world of science. I wrote this article to understand both sides of the argument and was pleased to find experts debating each side. In the end, I was able to have a well-rounded perception of the topic, and I hope you as the reader do too. The year of 2020 has brought a lot of environmental and societal dam...

This is a report I wrote for my speech communications class in my first year at the University of Waterloo back in November 2019. It was meant to be a persuasive paper on why Ontario should invest in vertical farming, however in the end I believe it is more of a research paper. This was one of the longest and most detailed reports I have written, it required a lot of specific research as I needed the facts to be valid for Ontario. Since writing this paper, I have seen vertical farming being used in several countries, I do hope that it becomes more prominent in the future, as it has several benefits which you will read in this report. The Issues Caused by Agriculture in Ontario The current agricultural practices have a major negative impact on the environment as they involve harmful chemicals and cause soil degradation. (Wanza, 2018) Firstly, fertilizers and pesticides are widely used in the farming industry to increase the quality of the cultivation and its growth rate. The most common...