Catching Moments vs Sustainability

Hi everyone! I am Indri from THINK-Research Team

This is my first blog in 2021. Hope this year would be better than last year :)

To start my blog, I want to ask some questions: What are you doing in the first week in 2021? What were you doing during a holiday? Have you made one-year plans for this year?

I think everyone in this world would hope the same wish: we want the days when we could go everywhere and meet everyone would come. Hopefully :)

This time, I want to write about New Year Eve. People would spend their time to see fireworks and count down the time before 00.00 on 31st December. People would catch this moment with their friends and families. Of course, New Year's Eve fireworks would be the most popular moment. Usually, I didn't see the fireworks on New Year Eve, but on 31st December 2019, I went to Yarra River in Melbourne to see this moment. On that day, I believe everyone wished 2020 would be amazing. We didn't expect that 2020 would be so special. When I saw the fireworks show, I thought about carbon footprint, emission, and money in my head. I imagined how much they spent and how much waste would we get from this event.

You could find some articles or papers about the environmental impact of New Year's fireworks. Those fireworks represent one of the most unusual atmospheric pollution events in the course of a year. A majority of particles aerosolized from fireworks are metals and their compounds. In a research study, concentrations of these elements: Strontium (Sr), Barium (Ba), Magnesium (Mg), Bismuth (Bi), Aluminium (Al), Copper (Cu) and Potassium (K) were found a week after this event. The amount of material remained in the air depends on several factors, such as wind, trees, and buildings. Air pollution could be a potential health and environmental risk.

(Source: Tanda et al. 2019)

New Year's Eve fireworks only occur once a year. But, the impact could give short to long-term effect on health, environment, and economic. If we're talking about LCA (life cycle analysis), all of these chemicals require high amounts of energy to be produced, only to fizzle out in a few minutes.

Fireworks would cause not only air pollution but also noise and waste. After the show is over, parts and packaging are left behind on the street and roofs or in gardens and water. Rocket shells and packaging consist of around 70% of a firework, cardboard, plastic, clay, and wood. There are some ideas to create eco-friendly fireworks using the battery. These ideas would provide less waste, emission, and noise.

The last thing, we have to spend a large amount of money to show huge fireworks displays. There are 3 most expensive fireworks displays recorded around the world (GSI Market, 2017):

1. Abu Dhabi spent $20 million in 2009,

2. Kuwait recorded $15 million spent for fireworks in 2012, and

3. Sydney spends around $6.3 million annually.

Imagine if we have $20 million, how many biodigesters, PV panels, hydropower, wind turbine, or compost that we can install. If we invest $20 million to design eco-friendly fireworks, how much we can save in the future. New year moment might be expensive or cheap. It depends on how we spend this time. It could be as simple as family gathering at home or cooking special food. But it could be an expensive show or display.

In our life, we would have any options to catch a moment. You could think sustainability from a plan to action. It's like our biogas business model. We keep developing it to improve the sustainability and incentive for farmers. If you want to check our biogas design, you could visit this link. Also, we are looking for giftmakers on THINK, DO, and BE team. Let's be a part of us. Check this link out! See you on the next post ^^