Household Env Impact Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Household Env Impact - Lab Report Example The experiment was done based on the highest national average of household water consumption --- toilet flushes. It was hypothesized that lesser water can be used to flush toilets as effectively. If the water consumption in flushing toilets can be decreased by a third of the normal use, this could save around 10% of the total household water consumption. The results of the experiment showed that water conservation was 12.5% to 15.5% of the total water usage. Lab Report: An Experiment on Household Water Consumption Introduction According to the American Water Works Association, Americans are the biggest water consumers worldwide. According to the Colorado Water Research Center, the average daily household water consumption is 400-500 gallons, which means that an average person uses around 80-100 gallons of water per day. Some statistics claim that average per capita water consumption is even higher than 150 gallons per day. With all these numbers, the biggest percentage of individual/ household water use --- an estimate of 26% --- goes to flushing the toilet. The next biggest household water consumption goes to clothes washers, which eats up around 22% of daily household water use. The third biggest water consumption goes to showers and baths, which eats up around 19% of daily household water use (U.S. Geological Survey). ... 452 & Willis et al. 1998). Background Water is a valuable source of life. Using water resources efficiently and wisely will help fill the needs of both the private and public sectors. Households, farms, businesses, and industries all need water to survive and flourish (Chimbari et al. 451). Furthermore, water is essential not only to humans, but to all living organisms as well. Everyone, from individuals to large industries, water use should be appropriately shared to avoid water shortages especially in times of fluctuating and limited supplies. Water availability depends on several factors. One of the most talked about issue that affects water supply nowadays is climate change. The rapid and continuous increase in the population also means that more water is consumed even if the supply does not really change. Urban development also means that there are now more paved surfaces that cause a decrease in rainwater absorption by the ground. Water conservation is essential to ensure adequ ate water supply in the future, and everyone can take part in this very simple task (Yung, Tolson, and Burn 252-4). Objective This experiment aims to cut down water supply by approximately 10% by limiting water waste in toilet flushes. Hypothesis If the average household water consumption in flushing the toilet is around 104-130 gallons per day when using a 3-5 gallon toilet flush, then using a 2-gallon flush can cut down this number and save at least 10% of the average household water consumption. Materials A working toilet flush Empty plastic bottle (one 1-gallon or 2 half-gallons) Small pebbles or sand (will fit the mouth of the bottle) Bottle cap/s Chart/table to record water meter readings Clock (or 24-hour timer) Water meter

Homework Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Homework - Essay Example However, some of them might also lead to the country’s stunted economic growth. Should a government run a budget deficit? Running it would be government action. Not running it would be inaction on the part of the government. Government inactions could either be a good or bad move which could be justified in the resulting output. In other words, investment and accumulated capital, available resources, compatible institutions, technological growth, and entrepreneurship are either specific government actions or inactions that are potential sources of economic growth. 3. What factors affect productivity? Factors that would embolden productivity are economic policies. These include policies to Embolden Saving and Investment, growth through import investment, policies to control population expansion, policies to build up education level, policies to technologically innovate, policies to provide funding for research, and policies to maximize the economy’s openness to trade. 4. What are the key topics in macroeconomics? The key topics in macroeconomics are growth, business cycles, unemployment and inflation. 5. Describe fiscal, monetary, and structural policy. Fiscal policy is regarding changes in government spending or taxes, to make more active or slow down economy. Monetary policy helps influence the economy by initiating changes in the banking system’s reserves that would affect money supply and credit availability in the economy. Structural policy on the other hand focuses in general on economic productivity and growth. 6. Describe the factors that will affect demand and supply (in other words, what factors will shift the supply and demand curves). Factors such as income, prices of other goods, tastes and expectations are factors affecting demand. Those factors affecting supply are prices of inputs, technology, taxes and subsidies and expectations. Factors affecting demand are mostly those that consumers are looking forward prior to their purc hase. Factors affecting supply are in general would affect the creation of certain product or service offerings. 7. a. Explain thoroughly what the supply and demand curves represent. The supply curve is a representation of the relationship between price and quantity supplied while the demand curve represents the relationship between price and quantity demanded. Assuming everything is constant; supply curve will have the slope upward to the right. So, the quantity supplied should increase in response to the rise in price, in the absence of shift factors. Assuming other things constant, the demand curve slopes downward to the right, which means the rise of price makes the quantity demanded goes down. b. Draw a supply and demand curve for petroleum. Be sure to label all curves and axes. c. Draw the effect of a ban on petroleum imports on the graph drawn in part (b). Show the effect on price and quantity. Assuming the demand is constant, there would be a decrease of supply when there is a ban on petroleum imports. The result would be increase of price due to lack of supply as clearly stated based on the characteristic of supply curve. d. Explain the difference between demand and quantity demanded. Demand is a schedule of quantities of a good that will be bought per unit of time at diverse prices, other things cons

Budgeting as a Performance Management Technique

Budgeting as a Performance Management Technique â€Å"Financial measures are inadequate for guiding and evaluating organisations’ trajectories through competitive environments.† Kaplan and Norton (1996: 24) In the introductory quotation, Kaplan and Norton, in their call for a balanced performance management scorecard employing financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth perspectives, cite one reason why finances, including budgeting, are increasingly ineffective when used to the exclusion of other factors. The Beyond Budgeting Round Table (â€Å"BBRT – Beyond Budgeting Round Table† 2007: n.p.), self-described as â€Å"an independent, international research collaborative†, and others have identified additional drawbacks associated with focusing on budgeting as a performance management tool. This essay begins by identifying and discussing those drawbacks then continues with a discussion and evaluation of a proposed solution proposed by the BBRT. Over the past two decades the pace of competitive change has been occurring at an ever-increasing rate, but the budgetary processes of many organisations have not changed (Coombs 2005: 34). Coombs suggests that traditional budgetary processes add little value because they limit an organisation’s ability to react to environmental changes. Increasing numbers of organisations recognise this problem as indicated by expressions of dissatisfaction with existing budgeting processes (Fraser 2001: n.p.). Fraser claims that, as organisations realise the diminished value of budgeting in performance management, they are acknowledging the increasing costs of, and time required by, the current budgeting process. Parmenter (2003: n.p.) claims that increasing numbers of organisations in Europe, Asia, New Zealand, and the United States believe that the budget is a hindrance to management. Fraser (2000: n.p.) contends that the budgeting process, as part of the conventional performance improveme nt model, is too rigid to respond to rapid changes in today’s economy. In â€Å"About Beyond Budgeting – The Budgeting Problem†, the BBRT (2007: n.p.) identifies and describes problems with the traditional budgeting process. These problems are associated with budget management time and cost, user value, shareholder value, flexibility, business costs, product and strategy innovation, focus, relationship to strategy, culture, and ethics: Budgeting Time and Cost. The budgeting process is time consuming. Estimates of time consumed are as high as five months for each cycle, occupying 20 to 30 percent of financial managers’ and senior managers’ time. As an example of the cost of the traditional budgeting process, Ford Motor Company calculated the annual cost of its budgeting at US $1.2 billion. User Value. Although the budgeting process provides an element of control to some managers, the people who actually use budget information realise little value. For instance, almost 80 percent of finance staff time is spent on lower value activities with the small remainder devoted to higher-order activities such as financial analysis. Shareholder Value. Budgets concentrate on internal targets, which are heavily influenced by prior period budget results, rather than focusing on maximising value to customers and shareholders. Flexibility. Budgets are often too inflexible to support quick responses to changing environmental factors. Only one-fifth of all organisations change their budgets within the related fiscal period. Business Costs. Not fully spending budgeted amounts is discouraged in many organisations leading to a failure to adequately question budgetary requests. In this way, unnecessary business costs are protected rather than reduced. Product and Strategy Innovation. Traditional budgetary practices discourage risk taking because emerging opportunities are too often not reflected in current period budgets. Focus. The focus of budgets is frequently on sales goals instead of customer satisfaction. Although most organisations recognise the importance of customer satisfaction, individuals are often not rewarded on this factor; rather, they are rewarded on achieving sales targets. Relationship to Strategy. Budgets are often â€Å"divorced† from strategic decisions due to the poor support that budgets provide to organisational strategy. Culture. Traditional budgeting creates and maintains dependency cultures in organisations because people are deemed successful when they strictly adhere to budget figures. Ethics. The high importance of meeting budgetary goals may cause people to behave unethically, even fraudulently. Fortunately, there is an alternative to the traditional budget model. Coombs (2005: 34) suggests that this alternative should create and support a â€Å"performance climate†. The alternative should empower managers and encourage entrepreneurship throughout the organisation; should be externally-, rather than internally-, focused; and should provide an environment that promotes individual motivation. Claiming that it is â€Å"at the heart of a new movement searching for ways to build lean, adaptive and ethical enterprises that can sustain superior competitive performance†, the BBRT has developed a solution to increase the effectiveness of performance management in the twenty-first century (Fraser 2001: n.p.). Two concepts underlie the BBRT solution (â€Å"About Beyond Budgeting – Concepts† 2007: n.p.): adaptive processes and devolved networks. The BBRT recommends replacing fixed budgets with adaptive processes incorporating ambitious, regularly reviewed targets based on benchmarks, peer goals, and previous fiscal period results. The BBRT also recommends replacing centralised decision-making and performance accountability with devolved networks, which are achieved through decentralisation, to increase productivity, motivation, and customer service. The BBRT’s concepts of adaptive processes and devolved networks each embody six principles (â€Å"About Beyond Budgeting – The Principles† 2007: n.p.). Adaptive process principles include: (1) formulating goals based on maximising performance potential, (2) evaluating and rewarding based on contracts for relative improvement, (3) conducting action planning in a continuous and inclusive manner, (4) ensuring resource availability, (5) coordinating actions across the organisation based on customer demand, and (6) basing management controls on effective governance and ranges of performance indicators. Devolved network principles include: (1) instituting a governance framework with clear principles and boundaries, (2) establishing a high-performance climate, (3) delegating decision-making authority, (4) assigning decision-making responsibility commensurate with authority, (5) expecting accountability for customer results, and (6) creating information systems that supp ort ethical behaviour. The inadequacy of traditional budgeting as a performance management tool, considering the ever-increasing pace of environmental change faced by most organisations, is well supported by research conducted by the BBRT and others. The concepts and principles offered by the BBRT seem solid if somewhat limited in scope in that the BBRT, in heavily focusing on budgeting, does not furnish a comprehensive solution for the array of performance management issues faced by today’s managers despite its implicit call for such a holistic approach in its purpose of â€Å"searching for ways to build lean, adaptive and ethical enterprises that can sustain superior competitive performance†. Perhaps incorporating the BBRT’s recommendations into Kaplan and Norton’s broader balanced performance management scorecard approach, (1996: 44)—financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth perspectives—would yield a significantly stronger and more comprehensive approach for modern organisations. References Beyond Budgeting Round Table (2007) â€Å"About Beyond Budgeting – Concepts†, available from http://www.beyondbudgeting.plus.com/BBRTweb4/bbconcept.htm [Accessed: 7 March 2007]. Beyond Budgeting Round Table (2007) â€Å"About Beyond Budgeting – The Budgeting Problem†, available from http://www.beyondbudgeting.plus.com/BBRTweb4/bbprob.htm [Accessed: 7 March 2007]. Beyond Budgeting Round Table (2007) â€Å"About Beyond Budgeting – The Principles†, available from http://www.beyondbudgeting.plus.com/BBRTweb4/bbprinc.htm [Accessed: 7 March 2007]. Beyond Budgeting Round Table (2007) â€Å"BBRT Beyond Budgeting Round Table†, available from http://www.beyondbudgeting.plus.com/BBRTweb4/index.htm [Accessed: 7 March 2007]. Coombs, Hugh (2005) â€Å"Budgets Should Be Geared for Rapid Response†, Western Mail, June 18, 2005. Fraser, Robin (2000) â€Å"Beyond Budgeting: Organizational Devolution and Performance Management†, Strategic Finance, October 1, 2000. Fraser, Robin (2001) â€Å"Figures of Hate: Beyond Budgeting†, Financial Management (UK), February 1, 2001. Kaplan, Robert S., and Norton, David P. (1996) The Balanced Scorecard, Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Parmenter, David (2003) â€Å"Abandon Budgets and Set Your Enterprise Free†, New Zealand Management, October 1, 2003.

Essay --

Gun Control The time has come for our country to take action to reduce gun violence in America. Aurora, Colorado, Sandy Hook Elementary School, and most recently Arapahoe High School are only three of the recent atrocities. More than twenty mass shootings have taken place since 2009, yet many people still believe it’s acceptable to own guns. We, as a country, have suffered too many losses to not take action. No laws created can ever fully stop every act of violence, but there are ways to prevent the mentally ill, the suicidal, and criminally minded from buying guns and ammunition. If the government tries to ban people from owning every type of gun, we will get no where with the issue. The problem in our country is having access to assault rifles and handguns. Many assault rifles sold are semi-automatic, firing one round every time the trigger is pulled. For example, an AR-15 can fire between 45 and 60 rounds per minute. No civilian needs to have a gun this powerful; the only place they should be allowed is for military use. Having these types of guns available to the public ...

Yes Men Fix the World, Ethics of Protest and Bringing Issues to Light

AG401 Film Yes Men Fix the World, the Ethics of Protest and Bringing Issues to Light 1. What ethical/moral/philosophical constructs are the activists operating under with respect to their tactics in protest? The Yes Men use Utilitarian Ethics of Duty and Rule Consequentialism. With this mindset, they carry on pranks and hoaxes to reveal the lies of large corporations and government. In the theory of Duty-Based Ethics, people do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. These large corporate giants do nothing but take the toll on others’ misfortunes.An example of Duty-Ethics can be seen when Andy impersonates Jude Finisterra, a spokesperson for Dow Chemicals, being interviewed on BBC regarding the Bhopal Legacy catastrophe of Union Carbide and its deadly gas leaks in India. He is quoted saying, â€Å"this is the first time in history that a publicly owned company, of anything near the size of Dow, has performed an action which is significantly against its bottom lin e, simply because it’s the right thing to do. † In theory of Rule Consequentialism, it states that an action is morally right just because it is required by an optimific social rule; relating back to Duty Ethics.With the motive under Rule Consequence, the Yes Men planned to set a course of actions which might trigger a reaction so that corporate giants and government may conform to such a social rule. As long as the outcome is of a happy ending for the public, Mike and Andy will have succeeded to change and affect society in ways that money could not. To correct an action which harms society more than benefits it, sometimes ridiculing and exposing the negative aspects of it might be the only course for corrective action. 2. Do the tactics distract from the message or lend power to the message? On what ethical grounds?In theory, such pranks and hoaxes are supposed to create change as a result from negative publicity. This derives from Kantian Ethics, which actually goes against Consequentalism, kind of an oxy-moron. Although it is morally just, their actions do have negative consequences to certain parties. As far as exposure goes, their tactics seemed have to work in their favor, and the Yes Men have also defied legal repercussions in every scenario. And by bringing such important public issues into light, some objectives were achieved; transmitting the power of voice towards the public, and conveying the theory of moral duty to the companies.However, their main purpose was not accomplished, and their tactics seem to have failed again; in fact nothing significant was taken into consideration or changed by any of the targeted corporations, or even the government entities. For example, in the Catastrophic Loss Conference, Andy and Mike pose as representatives from Halliburton; which they have claimed was the top company in extracting profits from a disaster. Halliburton has made hundreds of millions of dollars off the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and now the Yes Men have arrived to presenting another invention called the SurvivaBall; again to â€Å"profit† off some disaster.Their tactic was to create the â€Å"biggest joke ever by making fun of stupid concepts with stupid ideas. † And with something as simple as the SurvivaBall being so useless, it relates to the concept of Big Corporate making money off others’ misfortunes instead of solving the problems which lay before them; the ironic part is that the SurvivaBall is actually more useful than what the government or companies like Halliburton have created for disasters. But to their shock when all was presented, their attempts of letting people know what â€Å"sucked about letting greed run our future,† was instead greeted with business cards. . What about the ethics of law enforcement in dealing with activists? If anything was taken from this documentary, it was that companies cannot learn to behave differently by themselves; government has to mak e rules to control them. To fix the world, it is going to take more than two guys, cheap suits, and fake websites; it would take millions of people. When activists begin threatening for change, law enforcement entities may only deal on legal premises; as there is a right to freedom of speech and to assemble and petition the government.If no harm and damage or rioting is caused, law enforcement may only be there to prevent incidents. An example may be observed with over two dozen people wearing SurvivaBall costumes demonstrating in the East River; where police shut down the demonstration for lack of a permit. Andy Bichlbaum was arrested on an outstanding parking ticket charge and a handful of others were served with summons and tickets for disorderly behavior and creating hazardous conditions. So they also tried this, attempting to cost HUD more money and put some out of jobs.They hope to expose to the public by making a mockery of an entity in able to stimulate a solution or action. But it never works. Mike Bonanno Andy Bichlbaum Duty-Based Ethics Jude Finisterra, faking as a spokesperson for Dow Chemicals regarding the Bhopal Legacy catastrophe of Union Barpide and its deadly gas leaks in India, quoted saying that â€Å"this is the first time in history that a publicly owned company, of anything near the size of Dow, has performed an action which is significantly against its bottom line, simply because it’s the right thing to do. However it was hilarious that he noted they were going to liquidate $12 billion in assets to provide care and compensation to the victims and their families. Halliburton #1 company in extracting profits from a disaster. Made Hundreds of millions off Katrina, and now (name) and (name) are presenting the Survivor Ball, to â€Å"profit† off a disaster. Biggest joke ever, of how to make fun of stupid ideas, well, with stupid ideas. For example, something so simple of a Survivor Ball is useless, also like the concept of mak ing money off others’ misfortune instead of solving the problem.But the ironic part of this is that the survivor ball is actually more useful than what the government or companies like Halliburton have created solutions for disasters. But what their attempts of letting people know what sucked about letting greed run our future, but instead of freaking out, they just took their business cards. Companies cannot learn to behave differently by themselves, government has to make rules to control them. So they also tried this, attempting to cost HUD more money and put some out of jobs.

Ill effects of smoking in INDIA

â€Å"Smoking is Injurious to health† A true, accepted but an UN-acquired fact by the majority of genes of the world. People are careless for their health, family, environment and moreover for their motherland. People who smoke not only put these people in danger but themselves too as it seem for them that they don't value their life and put it into danger. India is a country where Cigarettes needs to be termed â€Å"Illegal†, as majority of smoking, smoker and it apparatus (tobacco, nicotine, etc. ), are dwelled here.India, the youngest country with high population and major of thou being â€Å"Youth†, is inhered to bad habits (alcohols, rugs) at a great pace. One of which is â€Å"Smoking†. Both the adults as well as youth are badly addicted to it. â€Å"Excess of anything leads to Disaster!!! † This quote correctly describes the current status of our land, India. As major of the population smokes, which lead to hundreds of deaths between the age of twenty to sixty-five. If one who smokes measures out the amount of â€Å"Tar† present out In his lungs it'd be about a liter, which Is sufficient to make him Ill, very Ill.Tar Is a poisonous toxin, which when gets accumulated In excess In our lung causes choking ND ultimately leads to â€Å"Death, Death, and Death!!! â€Å". In a country like India, there are severe problems which dwell Including the severe most â€Å"Corruption† ,add on another, â€Å"Smoking†, which adds on to the cause of destruction for our country. It has not only one but many adverse effects: 1 . Causes air, water and land pollution; 2. Danger to life; 3. Financial crises In a family; 4. Epidemic disorders like, â€Å"Cancer†; Thus, concluding my point that, â€Å"Cigarettes should be Illegal In India†, as It Is the mall cause of smoking and â€Å"Smoking Kills!!! â€Å"