“is everything of plastic? almost, ” a video advertisement for the futuristic dream house boasts. 

we are past that future now. so where is the house?

well, depending on the type of plastic, pieces of the house may have ended up in different places around the world. since plastics can take anywhere from 20 to 500 years to break down, elements of the house are likely still somewhere on this planet, negatively affecting animals and plants alike, and likely ending up on our plates.

microplastics have been found everywhere, and are now thought to be ubiquitous in the environment.

microfibers from house of the future’s synthetic fabrics could be falling out of the sky with snow and rain. microplastics have now been found to undergo transportation via the atmosphere and be deposited back down to earth.

some of the synthetic materials, once weathered into smaller pieces by other forces could easily be ingested by all sorts of wildlife, especially since research shows that plastics immersed in ocean water emit a chemical signal that seabirds smell and easily mistake for their other sources of food.

some of the more dense plastics from the house might more easily sink in aquatic environments, like this high-density polyethylene bucket at the bottom of the ocean.

even if the entirety of monsanto’s house of the future was properly disposed of in a landfill, it could still be wreaking havoc on the environment. landfills have been found to leach chemicals and have the potential to contaminate groundwater sources. or, like the scene shown in this photo, the elements can weather away at the manmade features and eventually wash them out to sea.

how can we change?

while we cannot undo the creation of the house of the future, all of us can pursue actionable everyday steps to help curb the deleterious effects of plastic on our environment and its inhabitants.

• before you buy something made of plastic or packaged in it, try to find a secondhand or zero waste alternative to it. always have your bottle or mug on you and think ahead for food or snacks so that you don’t catch yourself in a pinch having to purchase plastic-wrapped food.   
• contact companies you support about reducing their plastic footprint. this handy guide walks you through how to go about contacting businesses—complete with a script!
• if contacting businesses is not up your alley, call them out on social media about excessive packaging. outreach is key to solving the plastics problem
• contact your representatives and urge them to support the break free from plastic pollution act of 2020.

this temperature difference can be very problematic when heat waves hit big cities for a number of reasons. for example, increased temperatures can increase energy consumption and increase the amount of air pollutants and greenhouse gases that are emitted. 

but these heat islands (uhis) also are problematic for individuals experiencing heat stress — which can cause heat injuries that sometimes lead to death — and can exacerbate global temperatures.

it’s a rising concern that’s being met with research on the subject — with the hope that the research can inform solutions and result in action. here are some solutions that can help reduce the impacts of the urban heat island effect.

increase the green 

shading

preserving and increasing the green space and canopy cover in urban areas can have a significant impact on how warm a city is. with increased canopy cover, the potential for more shade exists and consequently more cooling effects. most of the time this means planting more trees to increase tree canopy cover. but deciding where to plant trees in a city is crucial to the success of the trees and the cooling that they provide, as well as crucial to making sure that the urban canopy is distributed fairly.

aaron ramirez, an assistant professor at reed college, and hannah prather, a postdoc in ramirez’s lab, employ translational science when conducting their research, where they incorporate managers and other stakeholders into the process of research so that conversations can be started right away about how to act upon the research.

they are working with the city of portland to reduce the canopy disparities and make sure that less wealthy communities are not more adversely affected by the urban heat island effect. 

“our research interests in this area are focused on how uhis drive increased tree stress in urban forests,” ramirez said. “this is an important potential feedback loop whereby communities already underserved could experience higher rates of tree stress and mortality, which would strengthen the urban heat island effect.

“in our work, we are developing new methods for measuring tree stress in the urban landscape and working with managers to explore ways to prevent these dangerous feedbacks between increased tree mortality risk and human health risks.”

management decisions, informed by their research, could be anything from updating approved planting lists to including more drought-tolerant trees to changing how the city manages irrigation of city parks. this is especially important for portland and other cities that have some of the highest urban heat island effects around the country. portland, ranked no. 4 in the difference between rural and urban temperatures, is up to 19 degrees hotter in urban areas, while no. 1-ranked las vegas has a difference of up to 24 degrees. 

green roofs 

increasing the amount of green spaces in cities can happen in seemingly unlikely places. green roofs have the ability to help combat the urban heat island effect by providing shade, reducing rooftop temperatures, and increasing insulation in buildings, which reduces energy consumption. green roofs can even remove greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants from the air via sequestration and storage. 

solar 

the use of solar energy can have many of the same effects as increasing green spaces in cities in addition to acting as a mitigator of climate change and the heat island effect. in using solar panels, the need for non-renewable energy is reduced and fewer amounts of detrimental emissions are put into the atmosphere in the first place, which can help reduce temperatures by not contributing to the greenhouse effect.

depending on the type of solar array installed, it can provide shading and cooling similar to that of vegetation.

additionally, when installed on rooftops, solar panels are able to insulate buildings. in the summer months this can create a cooling effect during the day, while in the winter months it can help prevent heat loss at night. this means less cooling energy and costs in the summer and less heating energy and costs in the winter.

city management

vegetation is a great way to adapt to urban heat islands, but how we manage man-made materials is also very important in how we react to rising temperatures. 

cooling materials

the materials that buildings, cars, pavements and other surfaces are made of and what color they are affect how much heat is retained in those objects and how much heat stays in urban spaces.

lighter colors have high albedo — a measure of how much light that hits a surface is reflected without being absorbed — and trap less heat than darker colors. cool roofs and cool pavement can help lower temperatures, but there are more areas that can also be evaluated.

the heat island group at berkeley labs is looking at cars, pavements, roofs, and walls to evaluate what materials and colors can help create cooler cities. often this means lighter colors and more reflective materials will provide the most benefits.  

city planning 

the urban heat island effect is a complex network of many factors, such as those discussed above. researchers like vivek shandas at portland state university point out that there are other factors to consider as well in addition to the ones already discussed. designing our cities so that there are varied building heights, varied canopy cover, and varied street widths can immensely help reduce the heat island effect by increasing air flow that can then cool down the city environment. the hope is that research like shandas’ can help inform city planners and managers so they can adapt to the detrimental urban heat island effect. 

so: what do we do?

whether mitigating it in the first place or adapting to the urban heat island effect, there are many ways in which researchers have the potential to work with bureaucracy to bring about much needed change. this can be accomplished by increasing urban green spaces and cover, choosing better materials to build with, planning cities in better ways by being informed by research, and reducing our reliance on energy from fossil fuels.

these ideas — along with reducing our footprints in other ways including eating more plant-based foods, reducing fuel consumption for travel, using less single-use packaging, and interacting with our legislators to let them know how we feel about a changing climate — have the potential to reduce the urban heat island phenomena and make cities safer for residents in the years to come. the research has and will continue to guide us to solutions. now is the time to act upon it.

herzfeld initially got involved in the 2019 global climate strike scene through her internship work at 350 colorado. 350 is an international grassroots organizing group that tackles climate issues. after developing skills with 350 colorado and collaborating with 350pdx, the portland, oregon, branch of 350, herzfeld played an instrumental role in getting reed college students to attend the portland climate march. her objective: get as many reed college community members as possible to participate in the climate strike and show up to the climate march. 

herzfeld spearheaded a petition that circulated reed’s campus and called for the college president to shut down the school in recognition of the climate strike. she, along with other students, managed to obtain 676 signatures, equivalent to nearly half of the students currently enrolled at reed college, in support of the petition. other organizing that occurred in the weeks leading up to the event included plastering the campus in posters, coordinating transportation to the strike, and banner and poster making for the march itself, among other logistical details to make the day of the march smooth sailing. 

herzfeld felt compelled to join the movement and help organize due to her increasing anxiety about climate change.

“i was going to school and learning about all the problems in the world—politically and economically and environmentally. and i was learning about all these problems but i was so busy with school that i wasn’t doing anything. so i was locked in on-campus learning things that were making me extremely depressed and terrified, with no outlet and no time to actually do anything about it. so over the course of last semester, i got increasingly anxious and [was] just in a really, really bad place–to the point where there was one night that i had like a six-hour panic attack,” herzfeld said.

herzfeld took all this energy and applied to the influential 350 colorado internship the day following her panic attack. speaking up and helping out really was not a choice for herzfeld; it was an obligation. 

“we don’t have time, we have to,” she said. “this is a moral responsibility. this is the future of the planet. what else is there to fight for? you know?” 

the organizing does not end with the end of the climate march for herzfeld. 

“i’m really excited about the future. i’m honestly finding it really hard to even concentrate on schoolwork at this point because all i want to do all the time is just organize,” she said.

she plans on connecting all the colleges in portland to create a coalition of environmental organizers to try and organize and share ideas and resources. she wants it to become “the cool thing for colleges to do—declare a climate emergency,” in hopes that their statuses as institutions can help influence the climate change conversation to get some much-needed change happening. 

the climate strike not only brought newcomers to the movement, but it also inspired people already informed on the movement to stay involved and motivated. 

“after the climate strike i’m a lot more hopeful about the future of the world than i was before the climate strike,” herzfeld shared. “i feel like there’s a global revolution/renaissance that’s building and that people all over the world are feeling more connected by this global existential threat that connects us in a way that we’ve never had before. we’ve never had a crisis like this where everyone is to a degree complicit in it in some way. as a planet, we can’t really shift the blame because it’s kind of all of us…we’re all the enemy. but we’re also all able to be a part of the solution.” 

when she’s not organizing petitions and protests or studying in her interdisciplinary major of political science, sociology, and economics with a focus on network theory, herzfeld can be found watching films, painting, and attending metal shows around portland.

“it’s a good way to get the angry energy out — especially around climate change and politics” 

she’s excited to keep organizing however, and she’s excited with what the climate movement will lead to. 

“i think that the nature of this problem is going to lead to a really, really awesome global movement that we’ve never seen before,” herzfeld said. “that’s what i hope. that’s what i believe. and that’s what i’m working towards so i’m really excited to see what happens.”