How familiar are you with your local environment?
We often talk about the environment in abstract terms, using phrases like "good for the environment", "bad for the environment", "environmental problems", and so on. Obviously there is a place for this, but I think it also serves to abstract what is a very immediate and concrete thing that we interact with each day — our local environment.
So I wanted to ask, how familiar are you all with your local environment?
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Do you recognize (or even identify) different plant and animal species in your area? Do you know which are native and which might be invasive?
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Do you notice changes in your environment throughout the year? Do you know why these changes happen?
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Thinking longer term, if you have lived in one location long enough, have you noticed changes over the years? If so, what?
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Do you know what the most pressing local environmental issues are?
I'm hoping this can be a thread for people to talk about their local environments, but also to share tips on how to be more tuned in to your local nature.
I myself would not say I am very familiar with the flora and fauna of where I live, but I have been trying to get better. I use the app Seek (which is similar to iNaturalist for those who might be familiar, but with better recognition capabilities in my experience) to identify plants around where I live, and I'm slowly trying to get better at recognizing them. The process of stopping to take a photo has really helped me slow down and pay attention to things around me — I notice a lot more garbage, roadkill near the big crossings, etc. In addition, seeing pictures of some of these plants online have made me realize just how water deprived a lot of the ones around me are, which is no doubt an effect of the drought my area has been experiencing. This has lead me to be more intentional with seeking out news regarding water laws and rights and trying to be more tuned in to these issues.
Edit
Some great additional questions from this comment of @skybrian's:
- Do you know where your water comes from?
- Do you know where sewage goes?
- Where is the landfill that your garbage goes to?
- How is recycling done?
Fascinating topic, since our very lives depend on the health of our local environment. And yet ...
The short answer: I'm better than I was, but I still could be soooo much better.
We've had some local and regional issues with ground water contamination that have helped a lot of the previously oblivious come to better understand and hopefully accept their responsibilities as caretakers. A couple invasive species (insects) have threatened highly-valued old-growth forest stands and mobilized many locals into action. And wildlife diversity seems to be declining (the Monarch butterfly population in my area has very visibly crashed within the past several years, for example, as have two tree species because of pest infestations).
edit: I have no doubt these changes are driven by climate change. Farmers are having to walk the fields very early spring to check for pests because typical deep winter freezes just aren't happening now - no winter pest kills. Their crops won't germinate properly if they don't identify and treat the soil for specific pests early spring now. Didn't used to have to do that. Livestock is also more at risk from ticks that don't get killed by deep frost (FYI ticks can actually kill a full-grown 1,500 lb. bull if there's enough of them). Climate change isn't just coral bleaching and hurricanes...
And while I can do my small part, my frustrations multiply because the heavy lifting must be done by corporations and governments and they're just not stepping up - to address my local issues, to national issues, to the Paris Climate Accord, to pretty much anything that seems to matter to assure a future that's liveable for humans on planet earth.
Why hasn't plastic been banned globally?
what do you mean exactly? plastic is essential to modern society, banning it would be a literal catastrophe since there aren’t many viable alternatives to it
(Will be slightly off topic)
Absolutely agree, especially in medicine we really should absolutely not give up on plastic’s use.
But at the same time I believe we could do so much better with strong regulations, like do we really have to produce a new plastic bottle for every drink? Why not sell them in glass bottles and make it reusable? All the yoghurts, milks etc could have a standard container format, and should be sold only in that. Similarly to how people used to bring their iron containers to the market to get it filled.
I’m sure we have the tech to make it feasible.
To piggyback off this, there is room to change how medicine is delivered and administered. For example, it's completely feasible to put fluids like lactated ringers or normal saline in glass vials instead of their plastic bags. On the other hand, it's currently not feasible to use anything besides plastics for IV tubes.
Furthermore, it's not feasible for medicine to lead in plastic self-regulation because the largest cause of microplastics in our environment are from tires. Anything we do individually and personally does not change how the larger industry works and how everyone else buys it. Regulations would help and advancements can be made to make something new, and heck maybe we can find a way to remove or degrade plastic globally, but you can bet your toenails that big tire's going to lobby against it.
yes i agree, there could be a lot less plastic usage, but "just ban plastics" is a rather naive thing to say
In Germany, while there is also milk in Tetra Pak (Plastic/Paper carton) and Jogurt in Plastic, all of that is also available in glass bottles. Water, beer and soft drinks, juices and much more drinks are sold with a deposit in reusable bottles.
We tried refill stations for milk in the supermarket in the 90s but it didn’t work out.
Additionally, many people start using reusable bags instead of throwaway plastic bags for buying fruits and vegetables and also to take to the bakery.
Microplastics have been found everywhere on earth: from the deepest part of the sediments of the Marianna Trench to human breast milk. They are now linked to estrogen disruptors in multiple species leading to infertility (biodiversity has declined by nearly 70% since 1970 leading many to speculate we are already in a Sixth Mass Extinction). We have no way to get rid of plastics (there are huge Garbage Patches of the stuff in all our oceans and, to date, recycling plastic is virtually impossible)
Plastic is, simply, poisoning the planet.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9471315/
https://www.ft.com/content/5c8c2aa5-8735-4123-8092-aca3fcda37a4
https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/info/patch.html
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1131131088/recycling-plastic-is-practically-impossible-and-the-problem-is-getting-worse
i understand but we can't just ban plastics. that is simply not something that can happen. plastics are used everywhere. banning them is like going back to the 1920s technologically. we could potentially ban some specific usages of plastic though, like certain types of bottles, straws, and bags, and there has been movement in various countries (like mine) around that stuff, but banning all plastic is simply unworkable and will probably never happen
I do appreciate your position. But the science is becoming clearer and more compelling that plastics are really really bad for life. How do we give up some convenience for the sake of survival? What steps - by whom - and when - are necessary to begin this crucial journey away from this addiction? I don't have the answers btw but a discussion is certainly warranted and soon.
I believe the point that @emmanuelle (don’t mean to speak for them, I could be wrong) is that plastics are so integrated into society and have used far beyond (for example) single use packaging that it’s not feasible practically and politically to ban them. I think we might all agree that we use too much plastic in places that don’t need it, and this could absolutely be better regulated. But there are other uses for plastics, for example in industrial and medical applications, where they are not the main contributor to environmental concerns and perhaps not so easily replaced.
https://www.ft.com/content/f14ab282-1dd3-46bf-be02-a59aff3a90ed
Interesting read on plastics contribution to global reduction in sperm count.
Some other good questions for awareness of environmental impact:
Great questions
#1: I'm having words with anybody that says Nestlé... (We have a well and a septic system.)
#2: Did an honors project on our county sewage treatment processing. My friends thought I was insane but I learned so much.
#3: Lived in Switzerland for awhile and they don't do this: nobody has any trash to speak of (hefty fines if you break very strict rules for what can be thrown away). Recycling everything, composting everything, consumer goods at point of sale are not ridiculously overpackaged so you can actually live almost responsibly. In the US? Yeah, not so much...
#4: Pretty compelling evidence it's not. Plastics in particular...
I do recognize different plant and animal species. Some 3 years ago we had a burst of quaker parrots (invasive species) make a home in a nearby tree. They had a family as big as 24 hanging out at a certain point and I've seen them be standoffish with the local grackles. They used to be quite loud too, though they've spread out since.
I do notice changes. We've been experiencing more mosquitos due to more flooding and stagnant water. It got so bad that we had mosquitos into December last year. That's never happened before. So I took the initiative to buy an automatic submersible pump, a 3/4" industrial strength hose, and drain out sitting water in my neighbors' yards that I can reach. It's a labor for sure, since in my neighborhood we have the type of drainage systems that haven't kept up with the rapidly progressing phenomenon that is climate change. Every time it rains, it floods. Three to four feet under any part of Texas you got caliche, which doesn't absorb water. So there's plenty of flooding if the city doesn't do anything about it. I periodically seek out flooded spots in my neighborhood and offer to drain it for free because it helps everyone to quash the chance for mosquitos to breed.
I've noticed more flooding over time. Straight and simple. It's climate change and our city isn't keeping up with it in the older neighborhoods. I suspect that is by design, since the city is actively expanding and not managing our issues.
I live in London and have a bit of an affinity for nature.
My local park has a community group that does a lot of work there to ensure there's a variety of native flora going on. There's problems with parents letting their kids pick said plants though...
The UK is in a really bad place with its biodiversity. We've got something like 2% of our overall landmass still 'wild' compared to somewhere like the USA. It's something we need to work on, but I doubt it'll be on anyones radar until it's all a bit too late.
I don't, by choice.
I live in a super urban area. The only plants we have are non-native trees and whatever coked out weeds grow through cracks in the cement and revel in the smog. I grew up in a rural area and am working my way back out of this concrete hellhole as fast as I can manage.
There's some native trees and brush that are native in less urban areas, but I live in a major urban agglomeration in a place that would have been mostly scrub brush and grasses, and all of that has been wiped away. There's a few native flowers that have become effective weeds, but most plantings aren't native, even the ones that are environmentally conscious in other ways, like being drought tolerant.
Yes, absolutely. For all that people joke about California and the Bay Area not having seasons, there's distinct changes even if they don't line up with the classical seasons. Winters are rainy or at least used to be, before we spent two decades in a drought), springs are mild, summers are foggy due to hotter inland weather drawing the ocean's humidity to the shore, autumn is the warmest, as the inland temperatures drop enough to cease drawing the air in and up quite as much.
When I was younger, it would always rain before the end of October. Two decades of drought put an end to that. There's been a couple of rainy winters recently, but people aren't addressing the elephant in the room regarding future water need.
Oh man, I could talk for hours on this one, but in short: water shortages due to drought, topsoil degradation due to unsustainable farming practices, groundwater depletion due to unsustainable pumping for unsustainable agricultural practices, increasing forest fires as things dry out due to the drought, increasing forest fires due to forest die-offs due to invasive beetles, snow pack depletion due to climate change leading to water shortages in the fall (most year long water reserves for the state aren't in lakes, but frozen in the Sierras.) Can you tell that water and fire are major concerns?
Hundreds of miles away, from snow melt piped down from a distant mountain range.
Into a wastewater treatment plant, and from there into the SF Bay.
About 25 miles away, to a town that's (for now) outside the urban agglomeration.
This varies city by city, and I don't want to give my specific details, but in general in the area there's a degree of wash & pre-sort of plastics, glass, and paper (with varying degrees of pre-sort by town,) compost into another bin, and trash for the landfill into a third.
However, many things marked as recyclable will be thrown away. If it includes food waste? Trash. If the compost has trash in it, it all goes to the trash. That public bin marked as recycling? Probably going to the trash, because people throw things in the wrong bin. It's a huge challenge.
I would say pretty familiar. I used to work for the EPA in my state, so I dealt with lots of environmental issues. Most people are very curious when I tell them what I do and never have any idea about our infrastructure or local environment.
I think as a society we need to take these large events (wildfires in canada (air pollution), east Palestine in Ohio (haz waste pollution)) to educate the public with something that hopefully sticks. An educated populace on these issues would help our society.
I have some idea about plants and trees and which are native or not. There's a problem of younger people losing this knowledge. The Lost Words book tries to celebrate these words. Weirdly, words like "otter" is being lost, even though otters are doing much better now than they have been for many years.
Where I grew up I was in the native bush (forest) surrounded by trees, plants, etc and we got our water from a stream, so I think I'm probably pretty familiar with the native ecology since those were our "neighbourhood". I may not know the name for everyone but I know their habits. It has also meant that I tend to pay a lot of attention to living things wherever I am even if non native (eg. rats, grasses).
Seeing the many changes over the years to weather patterns, fish dying out, frost lines moving, invasive species moving in, the sun becoming cancerous, etc is probably one of the things that made me environmentally aware growing up, along with environmental threats the area faced.
I think I know what the environmental issues are in my area.
For the surplus questions, yes, I know where all the things are. I go up to my city's main water reservoir and stare at the water every now and again. It's reassuring.
As a gardener with native plant and pollinator obsessions, yes. I love learning about soil health and improving my patch of land with compost and leaf litter. We’re having a drought (mid Atlantic US), and soil health is critical to retaining water, cutting down the need to irrigate. If only the farming industry could implement this…
The concept of environment has, unfortunately, been reduced to nature-"made" kingdoms. That is a naturalistic position that is not able to tackle what most humans face today, which is an environment dictated by urbanization, profitability, commuting, and scheduled work and school time.
Most pressing issues so far are global warming (a world wide problem with huge local impact), light and noise pollution, traffic, indoor air pollution, workplace air pollution, commercial crime, police brutality and other crimes, hate based politics and policies (I am sure I missed some). The effects are on our health and our relationships.
We humans have built an unhealthy environment, far from the natural and much worse than even the damaged "natural" environment we call park and town trees and animals.
If somebody has a local environment that is still recognizable as natural, that person is rich.