Difference between revisions of "Team:Tec-Monterrey/Human Practices"

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                 <h1 style="font-size:30px;">Human Practice</h1>
 
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                 <p>iGEM Tec-Monterrey 2016 is based in the most heavily polluted city in Latin America. Amidst rampant consumerism and a dearth of civic action, we’re trying to light the spark to ignite the fire of environmental consciousness.</p>
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                 <p>iGEM Tec-Monterrey 2016 is based on the most heavily polluted city in Latin America. Amidst rampant consumerism and a dearth of civic action, we’re trying to light a spark that will ignite the fire of environmental consciousness.</p>
 
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                 <p>Imagine a future where the well being of our planet is not taken seriously, where unawareness and indifference lead to contaminating millions of liters of water and our soils, producing lasting effects in human health and the environment. A world where economic interests shape our moral decisions and where the striking consequences of our actions are relentlessly ignored. </p>
 
                 <p>Imagine a future where the well being of our planet is not taken seriously, where unawareness and indifference lead to contaminating millions of liters of water and our soils, producing lasting effects in human health and the environment. A world where economic interests shape our moral decisions and where the striking consequences of our actions are relentlessly ignored. </p>

Revision as of 09:33, 19 October 2016

iGEM 2016 - Tec de Monterrey

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Human Practice

iGEM Tec-Monterrey 2016 is based on the most heavily polluted city in Latin America. Amidst rampant consumerism and a dearth of civic action, we’re trying to light a spark that will ignite the fire of environmental consciousness.


Imagine a future where the well being of our planet is not taken seriously, where unawareness and indifference lead to contaminating millions of liters of water and our soils, producing lasting effects in human health and the environment. A world where economic interests shape our moral decisions and where the striking consequences of our actions are relentlessly ignored.


You don’t have to imagine anymore, that future is now. We are living in critical times, where the decisions we make now, will crucially affect the way of living of future generations. It is said that if you don’t do something about it, you are part of the problem too. We chose to be part of the solution instead.


General Outline

When deciding what our project would be, a key element stood out from the others. We wanted to solve a real and pressing issue that our community faces nowadays.


It wasn’t hard to come up with something: we just had to look at our cell phones, laptops, and tablets. We just had to look at the rivers of our city, polluted with TVs and toxic materials. We just had to look at the landfills competing with the mountains for the landscape of our city. We just had to look around, and the answer was right there all along.


The electronic industry is the fastest growing manufacturing industry nowadays, producing massive amounts of waste every year. The lifespan of electronics, such as computers and cellphones, is deliberately dropping and new devices keep appearing to replace the old ones. Consumerism and the unconsciousness of people cause the production of millions of tons of e-waste every year. Most of this residues end up in landfills, where the hazardous substances within the waste end up being released, harming not only the environment, but also the health of people in surrounding communities.


After discussing and carefully pondering the effects that all of these issues have in our community, we, as a team, were deeply concerned about the current situation; we realized that we actually wanted to provide solution outside the lab as well as inside it. In fact, we realized that our community needed us to do it.


In order to achieve this, we organized our Human Practice in an integrated feedback system: we approached stakeholders and the general community with the purpose of obtaining and analyzing data to assess the severity of the problem. Then, we involved our community in different events aimed to create consciousness about e-waste pollution and the dreadful consequences of the incorrect e-waste disposal. We also wanted to inform them about the different ways in which they could participate and come up with solutions to help us improve our current situation. Throughout this process, our experience allowed us to evaluate and reshape our project according to our society’s needs.


The following is a general outline of the different events and activities we carried out as part of our Human Practices:

Conversation with B.E. Carlos Lara Valenzuela, Manager of Grupo Peñoles.

We approached Carlos Lara, Manager of the Mineral Processing Department of Grupo Peñoles’ Center of Investigation and Technological Research. Grupo Peñoles is the world’s biggest refined silver producer...

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Counseling with the Geomicrobiology Laboratory of the UASLP.

Initially we had some trouble obtaining A. ferrooxidans for use in the lab, however, we were lucky enough to contact Dr. Viridiana García...

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Meeting with CVR, one of the few certified e-waste recycling companies in Mexico.

Besides the impact it had on our project, we never imagined that going to an e-waste recycling plant would have such an impact on ourselves. It served as a harsh reminder of the reality we live in....

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Visits of the general public in our lab

During our time working at the laboratory we received several visits from students of the faculty, high schoolers, professors and parents interested in our project. We explained our project, but we also talked about the severeness of the situation we are facing...

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San Pedro de Pinta & Callejero

San Pedro de Pinta is an outdoors event that started in 2011 by the Culture Department of San Pedro´s Government and IMPLAN (The Municipal Institution of Urban Planning) with the purpose of promoting a healthy lifestyle among children and adults in public spaces.Every first Sunday of the month our school Tec de Monterrey organizes a social event called “Callejero” where the student community gathers with people from Distrito Tec, which is how the area comprising the neighborhoods surrounding the school is called...

Read more Feb 18

Arena Gaming: 5v5 League of Legends Tournament

The video game industry has a huge impact nowadays; a single game like League of Legends can be played by millions of people every day. People meet and communities are created around video games, making this impact even greater. However, few among them are aware of the potential source of e-waste that are video games...

Read more Feb 18

E-week, an e-waste collection campaign.

Panorama Tec is the official newspaper of Tec de Monterrey, our university. Printed weekly, its main purpose is to inform, spread and promote the most relevant activities on our college. Besides being a modern media, dynamic and of high quality in terms of form and content, it has an historical record of Tec de Monterrey´s life...

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Radio spots and Panorama Newspaper

An important aspect that we considered for our human practices is education concerning pollution due to e-waste, because a lot of people do not know about the problem. We decided to inform the student community as well as the community of Monterrey through the means of short infomercials where we informed people about the dangers of e-waste...

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E-waste Art

As a way to involve high school students with our project and to reach a younger audience, we decided to do a contest in which people of different high schools could use electronic waste as the main source of material for the creation of innovative sculptures that could make an impact on society...

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Environmental forum

As a way to involve high school students with our project and to reach a younger audience, we decided to do a contest in which people of different high schools could use electronic waste as the main source of material for the creation of innovative sculptures that could make an impact on society...

Read more