Over the past series of labs we looked at the capitalocene. This is a way of looking at the world through a lense of human altercation. The capitalocene places human interaction and altercation upon the idea of the economy fueling those decisions. Because of this the Kuznets Curve is one way to hypothesis the impact that this has on the economy. According to the theory, countries that are going through development will become less environmentally efficient until they are developed then they will start becoming more environmentally friendly again. In our newest set of labs we have split into teams that are sorted by country. Our country is Chile. Chile is the only country in South America that is considered developed. The development is dependent on its GDP as well as its life expectancy and quality of life. Chile also has a specific environmental problem it has encountered, solid waste. Because of the growth as a nation the cities are also going. Santiago alone makes up 40% of Chile's population. Before the growth sprouted in the country there was not a waste problem in urban areas. Since then there has become issues. Using the Kuznets Curve it may be interesting to see if the waste issues are improving while the country becomes more developed. For this reason we have created the Wasteocene as our next topic for lab. In a situated context this is going to be looking at humans impact on waste as a nation, in this case Chile becomes more industrialized. From our research so far one of the issues that may be occurring is the issue of recycling. This applies to both food, plastics, cardboards, etc. This type of waste should have a fairly easy way to fix itself. This could be done through education, laws, or even just awareness possibly. The landfill waste may be harder to come by. Something such as food waste may also be a new issue for a developing country since many poorer countries do not have excess food. Perhaps issues such as these will get better with time (although it is an issue still in a country like the United States). The other solid waste gets sent to landfills for sure. One way to deal with this is waste to energy systems. This take the waste converting them into energy. While this is a good energy source there may be microplastic released polluting the air quality. This too may not be a good trade off. Information from ENVS 160 would lead me to suggest a top down solution to the waste management issues these countries face. Many authors suggest that people will abuse the gaps in the laws and continue harming the environment until laws are put into place and upheld. This could also be part of the reason why pollution goes up in a time of economic growth such as the Kuznets Curve may suggest. Continuing into the next section of labs, my group will be looking further into how such problems have been handled in other places and how Chile should proceed forward.
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December 2018
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