ISCI 360 Project - Stage 2
Our model examines the relationship between two straw types (plastic straws and biodegradable straws) and their impact on the environment and economics. Specifically, we are interested in figuring out whether biodegradable straws are a viable solution to plastic straws.
Our model is broken down into three aspects: Social, Environmental and Economic. Color coding is used to differentiate between the different aspects and is explained below:
Turquoise represents the social aspect.
Purple represents the economic aspects.
Green represents the environmental aspects.
Blue represents other crucial stocks and flows in the model that do not necessarily fit into the three aspects above.
In our model, the Canadian population is assumed to increase steadily until a carrying capacity is reached. This can be seen in the graph as the line increases linearly before plateauing indefinitely. We assumed that we will be able to maintain the population at our carrying capacity due to technological advances.
Social Aspect:
The social aspect refers to the impact that awareness of the detrimental costs of straws can have on the usage of straws. The two flows that contribute to awareness are word of mouth (i.e. your friends and family informing you about the effects of straws and influencing you to stop using them) and media coverage (i.e. the media highlights the effects of straws). Both of these flows are dependent on the Canadian population such that 25% of the Canadian population at any time will be impacted by word of mouth or media coverage. (Side note: since word of mouth and media coverage are dependent on the Canadian population, they will plateau when the population does.) This is an arbitrary number but was chosen to show what a change in perspectives of the Canadian population can do. These flows input into an 'awareness of detrimental effects of using plastic straws' stock that reduces the number of plastic straws being used.
Plastic Straws
According to data from the United States individuals usually use 1.6 straws everyday and thus, we have assumed that to be true in Canada as well. Plastic straws start at a base value (due to the previous straw usage) and grow with the Canadian population while subtracting the awareness component of the model.
Environmental Aspect
Since the decomposition of plastic versus paper is significantly different, the amounts that accumulate in the ocean and landfills can be monitored. In addition, the impact on the environment can be monitored. Since plastic straws take longer to decompose, they have a larger impact on wildlife in the ocean than biodegradable straws. Thus, as the plastic straw usage decreases, the amount of habitat loss occurring plateaus. We have also included the aspect of clean-up in which the plastic from the ocean can be moved to the landfill. You will notice that the habitat loss plateaus but does not decrease. This is because we cannot reverse the damage we have done (without additional rigorous clean-up) but can mitigate additional damage. (Please note that clean-up affects only the stock 'Plastic Straws in the ocean' and thus, does not affect the stock 'habitat loss.' Therefore, clean-up will reduce the number of plastic straws in the ocean and indirectly affect the stock 'habitat loss.' However, it will not clean up the plastic straws already impacting 'habitat loss.')
Economic Aspect
The economic aspect monitors the amount of money it takes to make plastic straws versus biodegradable straws and the amount of money the government needs to fund ocean clean-ups. It can be seen that a the usage of plastic straws decreases, the need for clean-up money from the government decreases. However, there is a base level of damage that has already been done by us and thus, larger scale clean-ups will be needed to reverse that. In other words, smaller clean-ups will mitigate the damage we are currently doing but not reverse the damage we have already done. We can also track the cost of making each straw; it can be seen that biodegradable straws are more expensive to make.
However, the energy required to make the straws is less for biodegradable straws than plastic straws. Thus, there are trade-offs for using biodegradable straws.
Although, biodegradable straws are more expensive, they require less energy to make, decompose faster, require less funding for clean-up and impact the wildlife in the ocean to a lesser degree.
