MANİSA BAHÇEŞEHİR KOLEJİ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7OIeqJfWEw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo5HCVoCvU8

The product helps to calculate the carbon footprint in daily life activities such as shopping, recycling, and transporting through the card system defined to individuals. It has a system that will give a signal to individuals like positive or negative over the daily limit. The card used in the prototype adds points how much carbon footprint an individual uses from the amount of electricity and water they use. In activities such as recycling, the card reduces points as an individual contributes to nature at the carbon footprint level. In this way, the system contributes to raising individual awareness. The card gives a warning for individuals who exceed the daily limit. This process was created using Arduino coding system. In the coding, the specified scores are loaded onto the card when the card is swiped. If an individual exceeds the daily limit, it gives a warning with a red LED light. And in the project, for those who do not exceed the daily limit for a long time, it is planned to plant trees as a reward on behalf of them. In this way, both individual motivations will increase and we will help the world thanks to the trees planted.  While doing this project, we’ve had detailed information about the carbon footprint. We sought answers to questions such as how much carbon footprint countries emit on average, which activities increase our carbon footprint, but what we can do to reduce this level. In this process, the NASA data universe has helped us a lot. We are aware that it is irrational to be able to completely clean our world or completely stop global warming, on the other hand, we should always remember that there is no Planet B. That's why we wanted to focus on a project that would slow down global warming. In order to support the world, we kindly invite you to our project. 

With the data to be collected after GOSAT, Greenhouse gases observing satellite, enters orbit, scientists stated that they will be able to calculate the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane gas at 56 thousand points on the earth. It is hoped that these data can help combat global warming (JAXA).

Satellites are one of the most important tools scientists use to study climate change today. The European Space Agency's Sentinel satellites are capable of measuring polar ice, declining forests, rising water, heat and salinity levels of seas and oceans, and even the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from major cities. 

The European Space Agency has 7 sentinel satellites orbiting the earth today. The data obtained from these satellites are evaluated at the Earth Observation Centre in Rome, the capital of Italy. Michael Rast, head of the Science Strategy department of the Earth Observation Centre, states that Sentinel 2A and Sentinel 2B satellites rotate on the same orbit and that they collect data by travelling all over the earth's surface in just 5 days. According to Rast, the frequent and continuous data collection of satellites "is of great importance in terms of giving important information and clues about what is changing in decision making, what is changing very quickly, which practices should be abandoned by human beings." (ESA)

earthobservatory.nasa.gov:

The key to stopping or slowing global warming may lie with cities—particularly large and wealthy ones. That was the major finding of an effort to map the carbon footprint of 13,000 cities—one of the first times researchers analyzed so many areas with a consistent methodology.

earthobservatory.nasa.gov:

Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels.

Models predict that as the world consumes ever more fossil fuel, greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to rise, and Earth’s average surface temperature will rise with them. Based on plausible emission scenarios, average surface temperatures could rise between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century. Some of this warming will occur even if future greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, because the Earth system has not yet fully adjusted to environmental changes we have already made.

What excited us the most about this project was that we were competing around the world and making an effort in a hackathon organized by NASA. We really enjoyed the process. We believe that we have contributed a lot to ourselves in a short time in this 48-hour marathon. It has been a good journey for us to gain new information by trying to use the data provided by NASA efficiently and correctly. During our work, we focused on finding solutions to global warming. The reason we chose this is to increase the time we can spend on Earth. As human beings, we are aware that we are looking for another habitable planet. But we have yet to find a planet where everything is perfectly fine for living. With the technology we have, we have not been able to send humans to other planets yet. That's why, we decided to contribute to our planet. We realized that we need to concentrate on greenhouse gases in order to prevent global warming. We learned that these gases increase the time the Sun's rays stay in the atmosphere by accumulating around the Earth atmosphere. Therefore, it has been figured out that the heat balance has changed caused the greenhouse effect with the increase of the heat on Earth. We added to our research how greenhouse gases are increasing. This led us to the issue of carbon footprint. A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) that are generated by our actions. We have come to the conclusion that our carbon footprint is increasing with every step of the day. We have learned that many things have an impact on our carbon footprint, such as the damage to the environment caused by the electricity, water, natural gas we use on a daily basis, the packaged foods we consume, the effects of returnable bottles, the transportation vehicles we use during our travels, and our entertainment and holiday activities. We also noticed that some studies have been carried out around the world on the emission of greenhouse gases. The Kyoto protocol, which was signed to control gas emissions, also drew our attention. According to this protocol, the contracting parties promise to limit and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If they do not comply with this promise, they accept the determined penalties. In Turkey, the law regarding the appropriateness of our participation in the Kyoto protocol according to the United Nations Climate Change Convention was adopted by the Turkish Grand National Assembly on February 5, 2009. Then, Turkey was included in this protocol on 26 August 2009. There is no limitation for gas emissions between 2008 and 2012. Using this information, we added a gas emission limiter system to our project in order to reduce gas emissions. In this system, it indicates a warning light that warns the individual if he/she exceeds the daily carbon footprint level determined for each individual. We are honoured to express our gratitude to our teachers who informed us of this work, to NASA who provided us all their data during the research, and to our school which provided the necessary material and support for us to create the prototype of our project.

Nasa.gov

JAXA

ESA

Nature.org

Wikipedia.org

Nrdc.org

Epa.gov

nationalgeographic.org

carbonfootprint.org

ipcc.ch

euronews.com

semtrio.com

#globalwarming #carbonfootprint #greenhouseeffect #ecocardgreenerworldwithecocart #thepoweroften #supportthrworld #ecocardforest #ecocardcommunity

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.