Posts

From Plant to Product

Image
Recently there has been a ton of talk about our environment and how the products we use affect it. Switches from plastic to cardboard straws, plastic to paper bags are just a few examples of ways people are trying to fight back. And this is what most people think when they hear the word "bio-product", a crappy alternative to a traditionally useful product. But let's be honest here, no one would rather eat ice cream with a wooden spoon rather than the plastic option, but it makes us feel better when we do. So, what do we do? can we have our cake and eat it too? But the term bioproduct is much wider definition than most of us think, for starters, many plastics can be "Bio-products" known as bio-plastics. How does this work though? IT all starts with the plant, all plant life has carbon within them in the form of cellulose and hemicellulose, which are long chains of enzymes that are broken into fermentable sugars such as glucose and xylose through processes ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wood: the Pluses, the Minuses, and the Neutrals

Image
   Wood: The Pluses, the Minuses, and the Neutrals From the forest floor to the framework of our homes, wood has molded the path of human development since the beginning. In Unit 3 , we explored how this renewable material moves from living trees to lumber, to paper, and various different things we interact with every day. But how “good” is wood, really? Let’s take a look at the pluses, minuses, and neutrals of wood. The Pluses: Renewable, Strong, and Surprisingly Modern Wood is the most  widely used biorenewable material  on Earth. Unlike steel or concrete, trees are renewable, they regrow, they capture carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, locking it away. ( Lesson 17)  This natural carbon storage helps offset emissions from harvesting, processing, and transportation. Lesson 17 New designs like  cross-laminated timber (CLT)  and  glulam beams  are changing construction for the better. CLT panels can rival steel’s strength at a fraction ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Agriculture Usage: How We Use Land, and Resources to Fuel Our Development

Image
     Its easy to go about our day to day lives without thinking about all of the factors that go into living the lavish lifestyle that we do. Land, resources, the good of the nevironment, are all things that we as a society deem worthy of sacrafise so that we may live the way that we do. But just how bad is it? Lets take a look at some examples of resource, and land usage that is required to live the wat we do. When people think of resources consumed to live our lifestyle they think of a selsect few things such as land use and deforestation. While deforestation is a renewable way to collect resources, the time it takes to regrow the trees lost due to production makes it controversial. There are many different kinds of forests, and they exist on a spectrum, but on either end you have Plantation forests, and Natural forests, and both of them have costs and benefits that makes deciding which one is "better" hard. This photo above explains the difference well, while na...
Post a Comment
Read more

Consumption, resources, and the environment: What you need to know.

Image
 My blog is geared towards my family and friends  Hey everyone, In my bio-renewable resources class, I have learned a lot about the resources we use on a day to day basis, and how these resources affect the bigger picture of our world, the environments in it, and how these environment sustain themselves. When we think about natural resources, a lot of the discussion revolves around "running out." One thing that I have learned is that this term can be very misleading when we are talking about resources consumption. When talking about extraction of ores for example, our current technology may only allow use to mine to a certain depth for say copper, without the cost exceeding the reward. This however does not mean that we are running out of copper, just that new technology may be required to obtain more. (Lesson 2) Lesson 2 Our Resources, Our Consumption, BBE 1002, UMN This mining, however, is growing more and more controversial. Every year we see different news stories where a...
Post a Comment
Read more