Final Blog

In the beginning, I was not looking forward to this class because I took environmental health as an undergraduate for my major and I did not find it interesting at all. I think it was mostly the lecturer was not very good at lecturing and made the topics seem boring. On the other hand, I think Dr. Sattler is a great lecturer and she's very good at storytelling which made the topics very interesting. I think she did a very good job at emphasizing and explaining the public health impacts and implications of the environmental health issues. This definitely helped me make more connections to environmental issues with public health and the overall understanding of environmental health. The small group blogging was a great learning exercise because I get to read my group members' opinions, ideas, and learnings, which then leads me to learn something new as well. My only feedback is that I wish we could've used canvas as our platform to blog. I feel like it will be organized if each module has its own discussion board so all blog entries will be in the same place, which makes replying easier.

M12.9 Climate Change

What I personally find troubling about climate change is that humans are setting up themselves for extinction, but they are not doing anything progressive to address the issue. The government tells us to use less water by taking shorter showers and don't water your lawn, and take public transportation. However, I think these actions are too small to significantly address climate change. As a public health professional, I think we need to push for using renewable energy and decreasing animal livestock. It will be a challenge to convince the public to eat less meat and that eating meat is what greatly contributes to climate change. If I were to define and describe climate change to someone, I would say that it is extreme changes of the weather we normally see throughout the year, for example, warmer regions are experiencing higher rises in temperature, and colder regions are experiencing much lower temperatures than that usually would. Additionally, natural disasters are more extreme and catastrophic. I would also say that human health is also affected because homes are being destroyed, therefore facing displacement, and crops are also destroyed or aren't growing due to extreme weather changes, therefore depletion of food sources. Not only is it just physical health, but the stress and trauma that comes with experiencing natural disasters affect mental health as well.

M11.5 Zero Waste Life

Like the young woman said in her Ted talk, quitting plastic is not an easy thing to do. The past two years I've switched to living a more minimalistic lifestyle and through that, I discovered about zero waste life. As I learned how people live a zero waste life and compared their way of life to my lifestyle, I realized how it can be difficult. Like the speaker mentioned, you have to do a lot of research to build a zero waste lifestyle. Although I cannot see myself living a zero waste lifestyle, I try my best to not produce that much waste. Similar to the speaker, I also get frustrated when people get take-away food and the plastic that comes with it that will be eventually be thrown away in the next hour or so. I always meal-prep and bring my own lunch to work so I don't have to take-away food. I always use a reusable water bottle. Recently, with Starbucks slowly phasing out straws in their stores, had got me to consider using a reusable straw. I rarely buy drinks but on those occasions I do, I don't want to use a plastic straw. I always carry reusable bags with me whenever I go grocery shopping. One thing I want to improve on is to not shop so much on Amazon because of all the plastic it produces from its packaging.