Aylin's Sustainability Blog

Have you ever heard of hydroponics? It's a sub category of hydroculture and it means growing plants without soil, using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. Is hydroponics a sustainable alternative to soil gardening? There are different opinions about that. I checked a couple of sources to find some pros and cons and I will summarize the most important aspects. First of all, hydroponics uses 90% less water than traditional soil gardening. The reason is that the water can be reused by adding more solutions to it which is amazing. Also, it takes less time to grow more vegetables and herbs by hydroponics. There is no need for harsh chemicals to fertilize soil, there is no dependence on the climate or season and it requires less human labour since it can be fully controlled remotely. Moreover, hydroponic farms take less space and it can be built vertically! (it's almost too good to be true, right?) Here is a photo of a vertical hydroponic garden The green produc...

When it comes to energy conservation, passive houses are a great method of contribution on the household level. What is a passive house? It is a voluntary standard of efficiency in a building, that aims to reduce the energy consumption to cool and heat the building and decreasing the ecological footprint. The city council wants Vancouver to be the greenest city in the world by 2020. In order to do so, the passive houses should increase drastically. Here is a diagram that the professor showed us in my environmental management class. It outlines how passive houses conserve the energy by maintaining the inner temperature with less energy consumption. A passive design can decrease significantly or even eliminate the energy needed to keep a comfortable temperature in the house year round, no matter what season it is. And good news, it is also considered to be the most affordable way of constructing a building. Only downside is that walls and windows of a passive house is more expensive...

I was talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago about Tesla right after they launched electric semi trucks. He said he did a presentation about why we shouldn't buy electric cars and why they are bad for the environment. My initial reaction was "hahah don't be ridiculous". Then he started to tell me about his research. You know in the world of sustainability, we see Elon Musk as a big leader so the information I got was so new to me. I wanted to share a couple of points that he made. Let's see if it gives you a different perspective or not. Manufacturing process of a traditional car releases 16,000 lbs of CO2 to the atmosphere, on the other hand our eco-friendly EV’s release 25,000 lbs of CO2. This is mostly because of the lithium element that is used in the batteries. Lithium mining and their transportation to manufacturing plant add up to carbon emission of manufacturing process. That was only the manufacturing process. You may think that traditional cars e...

Have you heard of the tv show Shark Tank? It's like Dragons' Den, basically a group of self made investors look for new businesses to invest in and then business owners come and present their products or services to convince the investors to get them to invest. I love watching Shark Tank, I love the investors and how they became so successful. I watched a lot of episodes and most of the businesses do not prioritize sustainability or they don't even mention about it while pitching. However there was this one company that claimed to be sustainable and it's Eco Flower. On her pitch, the owner of Eco Flower presented the company as being very sustainable, they offer flowers made from recycled materials and they are so pretty. She talked about how people are sick and tired of receiving and buying flowers that go to the garbage for every occasion so she wanted to create flowers from recycled plastic. That's awesome, good for her. But after she pitched her business,...

I'm addicted to Amazon . I'm not proud of it, but almost everyday, I find myself checking Amazon even if I don't need anything and I keep buying random things like slime or dog treats for my dogs that are currently in Turkey?! Like last night, I ordered a squatty potty.  Did I need a squatty potty? Probably not. Was my life perfectly fine without it? Absolutely! I accept, it is my guilty pleasure cause whenever I go to front desk to get my packages, it's like a surprise to me. I enjoy opening boxes so much, sometimes I buy my detergents from Amazon (not kidding). However, there is one thing that concern me, it's that extra packaging that my order comes in. I of course put my boxes to a recycling bin for cardboards however I really hope they are actually recycled. Since I really judge big companies with their sustainability efforts now (cause they have all the money and control over a bunch of things), I looked into what Amazon does to contribute, so that I would...

When I hear the word sustainability, I mostly think about renewable energy and recycling. But what about sustainable food? We consume and waste way more than we need, that is for sure. Some people in the world don't even have access to clean water but we waste food. In Canada alone, every year more than $31 billion worth of food is wasted and Canada is supposed to be one of those countries that cares about sustainability. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture is the second UN Sustainable Development Goal on the list. When I moved to Canada I had no idea about sustainability or sustainable food so when I saw tags like "local, organic, non GMO, fair trade" I thought "wow, why are these people obsessed about these labels?". Because I grew up in Turkey in a small city and our produce is mostly organic, coming from tiny farms in small villages or my mom's little garden so I never actually paid attention to...