The previous post in this week’s theme of social media talked about how social media trends such as gender reveal parties have created significant pollution to the environment. However, social media fortunately does have its upsides as well. Looking past trends, the functionality of social media allows individuals and communities to connect with one another to pursue a common goal.

In Poland, lawmakers have banned the burning of coal to heat homes after environmental activists had come together to pressure them through a Facebook campaign, drawing over 20,000 followers (Gardiner, 2014).  The campaign made use of Facebook to share important information about the pollution occurring within the city of Krakow and the site was used to garner support through signatures for a petition to change the regulations regarding the smog. Additionally, software designers offered to create a mobile app that supports the residents in Krakow to track the air conditions within the city (Gardiner, 2014).

The example above highlights several things. Firstly, social media is an efficient tool in garnering support for environmental change. A study had found that after the coal ban, there was a 40% decrease in the sum of carcinogenic polycyclic acrylic hydrocarbons, benzo(a)pyrene, benzo(g,h,i)pyrene, indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene and pyrene (Majewska et al., 2021).

This illustrates how social media campaigns can bring realistic and effective changes to the environment, effecting top-down policies. Furthermore, with the application created to track air conditions, locals within the city are able to avoid travelling under harmful environmentally pollutive circumstances that may endanger their health. Thus, social media here can be seen as a means to bring effect to reduce environmental pollution and its negative impacts.

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Have you ever seen a gender reveal party on social media? Scrolling through social media, I have come across a few dozen gender reveal party videos, showing extravagant ways in which parents find out the gender of their child. However, what most people don’t see from these videos are the detrimental effects that these performances have on the environment.

In April 2017, a US border patrol agent shot at a target full of blue coloured explosives with the intention of announcing the gender of his child. The explosion resulted in damage to 47,000 acres of the Arizona forest (Sullivan, 2020). 3 years later, in 2020, a Californian couple used a smoke bomb to reveal their baby’s gender, igniting a blaze that set off a wildfire that destroyed 7,000 acres of land and lasting a full 23 days (Canon, 2021).  The first obvious pollutive impacts of these wildfires are the carbon emissions released into the atmosphere. It has been found that wildfires inject large amounts of black carbon particles into the atmosphere, which can reach the lower stratosphere and cause strong radiative forcing of the climate (Ditas et al., 2018). The result in the loss of vegetation in these forests would also result in a loss of carbon sinks.

Additionally, the loss in vegetation would result in an increase in stormwater runoff, transporting nutrients from the soil such as nitrogen and phosphorous to accumulate in the streams (Morrison and Kolden, 2015). This effect has been found to last several years after the events of the wildfires. As the nutrients accumulate into the river streams, the pH of the aquatic ecosystem changes, adversely affecting the ecosystem within. For example, it has been found that nutrient loading into the California sea otter’s nearshore habitat has been documented to cause Sea Otter’s mortality (Miller et al., 2010). As such, this illustrates the pollutive effects of mismanaged gender reveal parties that set off unwanted wildfires in the environment.

While the birth of a child may be a beautiful thing to celebrate, we should certainly not celebrate at the expense of the environment. Once again, the excessive consumption of activities that place reckless harm to the environment is something that we can work together to halt.

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