 Today I want to talk about one key idea of environmental geology that will relate to your first project. We want to analyze a system, whether it's simple or complex, and then figure out how that system works over time, whether that's a small timescale or a large timescale, and then analyze that system based on the behavior of just one person making a change, or whether we can get a million or billion people to make a change related to that system. When we think of humans and their life span, we go cradle to grave, which is why we're standing here in a cemetery, and that often affects our concept of a life span, but products also have a life span, and we define that by cradle to grave, and we're going to look at the different energy inputs that go into each part of a product's life cycle. Of the three parts of the product life cycle, most of the energy is actually used when it's created. Mining, farming, and transportation of these raw materials, as well as the energy to refine these raw materials, is where most energy is expended, including the energy to manufacture and assemble and ship the final product. During the product use, minimal energy may be expended, except items that require additional inputs like electricity, gas, disposable components, or cleaning. Finally, at the grave, additional energy is also used, mostly descended to the landfill in North Carolina, but also in recycling to convert it back into raw materials once again. First focus of your first project is identifying the resources used from cradle to grave, but what makes us get rid of some of our products right away while we keep others for decades? The other focus of the product life cycle we want to look at is how fast that life cycle plays out, so we want to look at its timeline or what we call its residence time. So often we get rid of products well before they need to go to the grave before they're worn out. As an example of that concept, I have two water bottles with me today. I have a spring water bottle whose residence time or timeline could be measured in minutes. I buy it, I use it, and it goes to the grave. I get rid of it. With a reusable water bottle, I could probably use this for a decade before it wears out. So its residence time could be very long, even though both products do the same thing. Looking at the life cycle residence time of electronics, Apple is often criticized for the planned obsolescence of their devices. Their product design encourages obsolescence or prevents you from repairing or upgrading their older products easily. For example, a broken screen or dead battery encourages you to purchase a new device. As another example of obsolescence, I brought with me an alarm clock which was manufactured in March 2001. So this is an example of technical obsolescence because sales of alarm clocks have dropped automatically recently because all the functions of it have been replaced by your cell phone. So the alarm feature, the music feature, make this product technically obsolete so why can plug this in a wall and it would still work. Many people have chosen to replace it with another product that has the same features and then some. In your first project, you're going to consider what energy inputs go into each phase of the product life cycle, the cradle, the product use, and the grave. So I'd like to do nexus to look at some examples of the energy inputs into each of these phases. Coming back to my reusable versus disposable bottle water example, ignoring the bottle, we can consider the energy required to get the water to me. A lot of energy is used to ship water in a truck from somewhere else, for my spring water bottle example, in this case Crystal Spring Florida, versus a local tap source for my reusable bottle. Coming back to my alarm clock example, it uses a lot more electricity during its use, but often these alarm clocks are kept for 10 or 20 years. While my phone may use less electricity, but in America, we replace our cell phones every year and a half on average. In many cases, a lot more energy is used in the manufacturer of a product than its use. Finally, let's consider our clothing. Just as much energy may be used in doing laundry as in the manufacturer of your clothing. Levi's is working on waterless genes that require a lot less energy to manufacture, but also may not need as much water or need to be washed as often. Finally, we have to consider how these product life cycles play out over global populations. If 100 million more people get a car or a cell phone, we have to take into account that small changes in the product life cycle can have large global impact.