Environmental Biology

Out of three categories(indoor, outdoor, and virtual), my largest was virtual. Followed by outdoor and then indoor being barely anything. Below I have the results of my water use, based on www.watercalculator.org. A day, for just my indoor water use and based on the results from my water footprint, I spend .39 cents. All together, it would cost me $11.30 a day for my indoor, outdoor, and virtual water use. Amounting to about $339 a month! Thankfully, I only pay an average of $30 a month for my water bill; which is about $1 a day. I would love to be spending only .39 cents a day for water, however I will stick my current water bill over $11.30 a day. Is this financially worth it for me? No. The reason I say that is because I think that the survey was somewhat flawed when it asked if you ate meat or not(with it being my largest amount of calculated water use). My main meat is chicken, and a large portion of my diet consists of chicken and rice. I would assume that chickens ...

The calculator itself was very thorough in what it asked for to determine the carbon footprint of my household. It was a little difficult when asked if we could change certain utilities within our home since we live in an apartment and are restricted from changing most things, but in my mind I said yes. Was it accurate? I had to guestimate the transportation portion of the calculator to the best of my abilities, but I believe it is pretty accurate. If anything, the miles traveled per week is wrong. At work we do not recycle anything other than cardboard(which I am a little surprised with how much we use paper) and that is something that was not on this calculator. The fact that we do not recycle our paper at work nor turn off all of the lights(which we have no control over) would have to be my two things that would make my footprint higher. Two thing that might make my carbon footprint lower would have to be my lightbulbs used within the household and our recent purchase in new bl...

I was very pleased with the results of the Indoor Air Quality Assessment Checklist. Lauren and I do not have any health symptoms both described within the first part of the assessment, nor anything that we could think of that was not listed. The only areas that pointed some concern was section B: Tight Home Syndrome. We live in a small apartment and I have noticed that there is a lot of condensation that builds up around the windows that stimulates mold growth. I am sure it is nothing major, and thankfully we will be moving soon to a newer apartment with updated appliances and ventilation systems, however if we were to stay here longer I imagine I would pose a problem to our health. Also, there has always been a leak in the pipes of the sink ever since we got here. This is a problem that I am sure the owners of the apartment complex are aware of as there is a bucket that sits below the pipe with the leak, but I have to regularly keep an eye on how much it fills and dump/clean it out to...