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Three Things You Need to Know About Bioproducts

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  Hey everyone! I am sure a lot of us have heard all about how we have to start making smarter choices as consumers. Every day we use products like disposable cutlery when we go out to eat or plastic bags as we go shopping. But here is the issue with that - there is only so much of those products we can use and honestly, the means of producing and disposing of those nonrenewable products is seriously detrimental to our environment. We have got to think about the future of our planet here! So here is the alternative: bioproducts. Bioproducts are made from renewable biomass products that are already in abundance like plants, and actually helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions through its production! So let us talk about the three things you need to know about bioproducts in order to make the change and begin the significant act towards a better future! At the heart of producing bioproducts, we have to consider where the process starts - from converting crops to sugar and fermentatio...
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Wood: the Pluses, the Minuses, and the Neutrals

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  Hello everyone! I am back and going to talk about a specific resource today - wood. Wood is undoubtedly a very common product that is prevalent in our day to day lives, for houses and furniture, and for energy like in fireplaces. Wood is such a common commodity due to trees being such a convenient source of resources as well as the fact that a tree can be thoroughly used, with no parts going to waste. Although the abundance and convenience of the resource are great benefits to it as a bioproduct, there are some negatives to the resource that essentially render the resource to be considered as a relatively neutral resource.   As mentioned before, one of the advantages to wood as a resource is that it is fairly convenient to harvest and use up. Harvesting methods are typically categorized into three distinct forms, selection harvest is where the trees are specifically selected based on size and distinction as either groups or single trees, clear-cutting - where all the tr...
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All feedstocks, biorenewables included, have to be sourced from somewhere.

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  Hey everyone! In the last post, I talked a lot about the general consumption of renewable resources and the impacts that has had. Now, I want to focus on the fact that these resources are coming from somewhere - they have to be developed in some way and what that process entails.  For the most part, the most widely known and used biorenewable resource is some form of wood. That entails that the resource is actually taken from some type of woody biomass - for which there are three mains systems: natural forests, plantation forests, and short rotation coppicing (Lesson 8). There are marked differences between natural forests and plantation forests - primarily because of the intention behind them. Natural forests are, as the name would suggest, naturally occurring - it makes up about 90% of the forests in the United States and closely follows the ecological processes and is related to the biodiversity of the area it is in. Meanwhile, plantation forests are planted specifically ...
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Consumption, Resources, and the Environment: What You Need To Know.

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  Hey everybody! As some of you may know, I have been taking a biorenewable resources course this semester, primarily to learn about these growing resources and how they are impacting our ever developing world. This blog serves as a way for my friends and family to get a view into what I have been learning and what I thought would be useful information. With the stage the developing world is at now, almost everyone is guaranteed to be “using up” resources in some way - in the form of non-renewable resources (resources that are mined), renewable resources (typically nature derived resources - wood or sunlight), and biorenewable resources (like plants). Specifically in the case of using all these resources, there are significant impacts that stem from consumption. The population is only growing and with that, as mentioned before, it leads to a higher consumption of resources as the world develops at a faster rate. According to a study conducted by Friends of the Earth Europe, humans ...
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