Thursday 1 June 2017

Building a Sustainable District

Throughout this video, many sustainable ways of maintaining a district were shown. I really enjoyed three in particular. These three included, waste into energy production, food waste converted into biogas, and solar/wind power.

I really enjoyed the waste into energy production concept, because it allows us to turn waste into heat/electricity. The concept of recycling your garbage through a vacuum shoot, in order to create a new sustainable way of producing energy, seems like a concept the entire planet should adopt. Another concept which I found rather intriguing was food waste into biogas. This Idea is really neat, because it allows Malmo to maintain a sustainable way to commute. The concept of turning food waste into biogas, which will then fuel city transportation, is something that will definitely reduce gas emissions. Finally, using solar/wind power to heat water in homes, is something very beneficial on a personal and environmental level. Not only are you saving money, you are also saving valuable electricity, which saves your city millions of dollars.

All three of these concepts would benefit the city of Ottawa greatly. I feel like using a system allowing us to turn waste into energy, would save the need to take up valuable space taken up by landfills. I also feel like this would make our economy richer, because we wouldn’t have to spend as much money developing electricity. This will also reduce gas emissions, because it would limit the amount of garbage trucks operating throughout the day. Converting food waste into biogas would also benefit the city of Ottawa, because thousands of people use Ottawa’s city transportation throughout the day. If all of the buses ran on biogas, we would reduce the amount of gas emissions given off each day. Heating water with solar/wind power, is another good way some residents could save money.


Although all of these concepts would have a great impact on our environment, they would also be hard to implement. Firstly, purchasing all the supplies, digging holes, hiring city workers, and building a plant to turn waste into energy would be extremely costly. It would be extremely time consuming to build enough vacuum shoots, to occupy the full city. Not only would this project be very costly, but it would also take many years to build, making this a long-term investment. Turning food waste into biogas would already mess up the current system Ottawa follows. It would probably take several years if the province were to consider implementing this concept. Wind/solar energy is already being used in some homes. This concept is one that would be easy to implement, if it wasn’t for the cost. Many people who reside in Ottawa would not be able to afford solar panels in the first place, because they can be very costly.

Overall, this video has given me a new outlook on environmental concerns, and what other cities are doing to combat this issue. I feel like many of these concepts could benefit our city in the long run, but first we must be able to afford them.
Thank you very much,
-Sahil Arora
(sahil@cedarridgehighschool.ca)