A cleaner environment by providing trash cans
by David Chung
Description and Rationale
The Philippines is known as one of the most beautiful counties in the world. However, the Philippines is also known as a polluted country. In the Philippines there is lot of garbage in the streets. This may be because Filipinos don’t know how to throw away the garbage properly, but because there are no trashcans to dispose of the garbage.
What would be the benefit in the Philippines if there are trashcans in the streets to throw away garbage? If there was a trashcan in each streets, will the people throw their garbage inside the trashcan or will they still throw their garbage on the streets? And if there were trashcans, will people steal the trashcans? If stealing of trashcans occurs can it be stopped? Will the garbage collectors empty the new cans of garbage?
Might there be a way to locate the trashcans in the streets where people can’t steal them and where people can throw their garbage? Is it required to attach the trashcans to the ground so that people won’t steal them? Does the top of the trashcan have to be securely attached so that dirty animals won’t eat any waste food inside the garbage? Based on research rats love eating waste food inside the garbage and this can cause spreading of diseases to everyone. Is it possible to stop spreading the disease of the rats by rat-proofing trashcans.
The initial purpose of this project is to reduce the garbage in the Philippine, especially in the streets by placing the trashcans, and to make the trashcans somehow attached to the ground so that people won’t steal them.
I hope that this project will help change the garbage pollution in the Philippines, by providing garbage cans. This will help make the Philippines more beautiful than before.
Biology
Common Names and Synonyms
Rattus norvegicus is the scientific name for the rat. Norway rat, Brown rat and Common rat are also the common names for the rat. Other synonyms include mouse, mice or rodent. In tagalong(Philippine language) it is called Daga.
Classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia(hair on a least part of the body)
Order: Rodentia(rodent)
Family: Muridae(mouse)
Genus: Murinae(mice)
Species: Rattus(house rats)
Morphology and Physical Description
The brown rat grows up to 10 in. (25 cm) long excluding the naked, scaley tail and sometimes weighing more than a pound (.5 kg). It is commonly brown with whitish underparts and pink ears, feet, and tail. It is a poor climber, but is an excellent burrower and swimmer; it is found in the damp basements and sewers of most temperate zone cities. The laboratory white rat is an albino strain of the brown rat.
Rats are omnivorous, aggressive, intelligent, adaptable, and extremely fecund (capable of producing a lot of offsprings). Rats may live as long as four years. They are social animals but sometimes fight among themselves.
GETTING FOOD
Rats eat a wide variety of food. They have voracious (raving or consuming large quantities of food) appetites and will eat almost anything. They are true omnivorous scavengers, but mostly prefer grain, livestock feed, and meat. Rats have also been known to eat soap, leather, furs, candy, milk, meat, vegetables, poultry, eggs, grain, seeds, fruit, nuts, snails, and other rodents. A rat can eat a third of its body weight each day. Rats also need water, as they cannot survive long without it. Rats need 1/2 to 1 ounce of water daily.
Rats feed themselves when they are hungry and they will do everything to get foods so that they can feed themselves. Plus the rats will also kill other rats when they are starving in order to feed themselves/survive.
REPRODUCTION
Rats are one of the mammals that are very easy to breed. A rat can reach sexual maturity when it’s five weeks of age. Also rats have breeding season although very hot or cold temperature changes will reduce the breeding time. The gestation period is normally twenty two days which is about three weeks. A postpartum pregnancy will normally last for twenty eight days. The birth process normally takes about an hour or two. In general, the mother rat will deliver a new pup every 5 to 10 minutes. The average mother will give birth to six to thirteen pups.
Getting Food
Rats eat a wide variety of food. They have voracious (raving or consuming large quantities of food) appetites and will eat almost anything. They are true omnivorous scavengers, but mostly prefer grain, livestock feed, and meat. Rats have also been known to eat soap, leather, furs, candy, milk, meat, vegetables, poultry, eggs, grain, seeds, fruit, nuts, snails, and other rodents. A rat can eat a third of its body weight each day. Rats also need water, as they cannot survive long without it. Rats need 1/2 to 1 ounce of water daily.
Rats feed themselves when they are hungry and they will do everything to get foods so that they can feed themselves. Plus the rats will also kill other rats when they are starving in order to feed themselves/survive.
Reproduction
Rats are one of the mammals that are very easy to breed. A rat can reach sexual maturity when it’s five weeks of age. Also rats have breeding season although very hot or cold temperature changes will reduce the breeding time. The gestation period is normally twenty two days which is about three weeks. A postpartum pregnancy will normally last for twenty eight days. The birth process normally takes about an hour or two. In general, the mother rat will deliver a new pup every 5 to 10 minutes. The average mother will give birth to six to thirteen pups.
Environmental Factors
The rat is well suited to its environment it can live anywhere in the world but prefer warm places. Rats can live in anywhere whether it’s clean or dirty. They usually live in the dark crowded place. Some rats lives in houses so that they can easily get food by the humans. Rats are usually active at night and prefer warm places rather tan cold places.
Wild rats carry mycoplasma, though the percentage of the population that is infected may vary from place to place.
Rats don’t carry plague (diseases). They catch the plague and they die from it. The plague is also transmitted from animal to animals by fleas. It may also affect the human beings but nowadays the plague can be cured by antibiotics.
Rats also carry rabies. Because of this, many animals (especially household animals) dies.
In Philippines rabies are very common to household animals. Some people know that the animals/humans can get rabies from rat bites, but this is not true. Rabies transfers through the cut or the wound in the animals or humans. If rat’s urine somehow goes into the cuts/wounds in the animals or human bodies that is how animals or humans can get rabies. But humans beings getting rabies are very rare.
Origin and Distribution
Rattus norvegicus is native to central Asia and believed to have come from Northern or Northeastern China. They did not come from Norway, as their name suggests, but they are believed to have entered Europe in the mid 1500s on ships from Norway.
Importance to People
Rats benefit human beings in many ways. They benefit human beings by being a first consumer for our food web. But not only this, they also benefit humans beings by being useful as a subject for experiments for scientist for various types of a new medical testing. Also in some countries like China, rats are eaten as food. Some forms of this species are also kept as pets. To a smaller degree, they serve as decomposers in cities by reducing garbage and other food lying around.
Rats live mostly in and around human settlements, where they have few natural enemies and an abundant source of food. They invade food supplies and cause widespread destruction; they also spread human diseases such as typhus and tularemia. Despite human efforts to exterminate rats, the house rat population is probably equal to the human population.
In the Philippine rats benefits humans by being an useful experiments for the students and teachers who studies internal anatomy.
Rats are also eaten as a food in the Philippine but it is very rare and only some places sell rats as a food, also rats benefits the children or gives happiness to children’s in the Philippine by being an animals that the children can easily breed.
Survivability and Endangered Status
There are overflowing populations of rats in the Philippines as well as all over the world. Also scientist says that the rat population all over the world is equal or greater to the human population.
Since rats are over populated and carry diseases, humans tend to kill rats.
Because of this problem human beings are trying to stop the rats from reproducing by killing them with poisons but the poisons also affects slightly affects the human beings.
Potential Solutions
In the Philippines there is lots of garbage, especially in the places where there are no garbage cans. Will the pollution of the garbage in the Philippines reduce if there were garbage cans? I think the answer is yes. Based on what I saw, places where there are garbage cans provided have less garbage in the ground. Also, I know that Filipinos are very clean. Because of the fact that they are so clean I think they can help, make the Philippines to become a less polluted country, and I am positive that Filipinos will dispose their garbage properly if the garbage cans are provided.
I believe that by providing garbage cans will make the Philippine a less polluted country. also In Genesis 1:1 it says that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” and in Genesis 2:15 it says that “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” This means to me that we are in charge to take care of our environment and our world. We can’t not blame others for making our environment dirty or just saying that keeping the environment clean or not is not my business. It is because God has given us human beings a job and that is to take care of what He had created. Also this was God’s command which means keeping the environment clean is not optional but is mandatory. If we do not take care of our environment I think it is a sin, or not following God’s command and that even if it’s just for our benefit I think we have to take care of our environment. The pollution of the world won’t harm God, but it will harm us. Increase pollution will give us carbon dioxide to breath rather than oxygen. So for our own benefit I think we should be environmentalists and that we should thank God for creating a place that human beings can live in, we should honor God by keeping the environment clean.
Possibility 1
By providing a garbage cans that are completely attached to the ground and only replace the plastic bags when they are full. By attaching the garbage cans to the ground in order that the rats or other animals will not knock down the garbage cans.
Advantages:
1. This will help reduce the garbage pollution.
2. By doing this there will be no trashcans knocked down on the ground so the rats would get of it.
3. Having the garbage cans attached on the ground will help by not spending anymore time picking up the garbage that other animals have scattered.
Disadvantages:
1. If there is dirty water inside the garbage can and if it doesn’t get cleaned out, mosquitoes will hatch their eggs and this may lead to mosquito carried diseases, in dengue.
2. Because the garbage can is completely attached to the ground, it will be hard to empty the garbage can unless there is plastic that holds the garbage can.
3. Even though the animals can’t knock down the garbage cans, the animals will still somehow mange to climb up to the garbage cans and scatter the garbage (reaping of plastics).
Possibility 2
Advantages:
1. Since it is metal and heavy it will be hard for the animal to knock down the garbage.
2.
3. If the top is clearly attached there will be no smell coming out from the garbage cans and there will be no animals eating the garbage.
Disadvantages:
1. Small animals can easily climb up and eat the garbage.
2. If somehow the garbage cans are in up sided position all the garbage will fall and animals can eat the garbage and than people have to pick up the garbage that has fallen out.
3. Since the garbage can in attached in the ground it is not transferable.
Possibility 3
These types of garbage cans are very rare in the Philippine. I have seen many of these kinds of garbage cans in Korea. But luckily I found this type of garbage cans just walking outside of the mall in Eastwood. This kind of garbage cans is protected by metal bars from bottom to top and in the top bar it has a lever in order to open and close the top and it has a hole in the middle of the top in order to dispose the garbage (this is the outer layer of the garbage cans). Inside the metal bars there is a garbage can plastic with cover on it. When it is full, it can be picked or pulled up the plastic bag and replace a new plastic bag.
Advantages:
1. By having metal bars the garbage can is protected from knocking down or from falling.
2. Because of the metal bars the animals (especially rats) can’t climb up and because it has a metal bar it is very hard for animal to climb up. Instead every time the animal tries to climb up they will slip.
3. Because there is a top that protects the garbage cans and has a distance from the real garbage can and since the hole is small there is no way that animals can get inside the garbage and eat the garbage
Disadvantages:
1. Because it is made up of metal bars and has no top covers, the place around the garbage can will smell bad.
2. Since the garbage cans is covered with plastic, if there are any people throwing their cigarettes inside the garbage cans. The plastic will melt and leave some holes which make some liquid/small things spill.
3. When the garbage is full it is hard for a person to lift up all the garbage.
This was also my action step. I was thinking about building a garbage can like this but I couldn’t because it will probably cost a lot of money. But luckily I found this type of garbage can while walking around in Eastwood and was amazed that they have this kind of garbage cans in the Philippine. For my action step I wrote a letter to the Eastwood’s director in order to know the price and how long it took to build the garbage cans, but sadly I haven’t got a reply yet. So I decided to interview a janitor and ask some benefits, aka advantages of having this type of garbage cans and also the disadvantages.
Bibliography
Aguirre, Windsor and Stuart A. Poss. Rattus norvegicus. February 15, 2000 http://www.gsmf.org/nis/nis/Rattus_norvegicus.html
Global Invasive Species Database. Rattus norvegicus. 11 September 2006. The Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG). http://www.issg.org/database/
Introduced Species Summary Project. Maria Maust, author. on November 19, 2002. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc/danoff-burg/invasion_bio/inv_spp_summ/Rattus_norvegicus.html
Jonathan. Personal interview. 02 May 2008.
Rat. GNU Free Documentation License on 3 May 2008, at 10:52. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rats
Rattus evertti. 2004-2008 the BayScience Foundation, Inc. on April 24, 2008. http://zipcodezoo.com/Animals/R/Rattus_everetti.asp
Rat Population. Jenny Laurie, author. http://www.tenant.net/tengroup/Metcounc/Dec00/rats.html
Reference.com. Copyright © 2008, Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. http://www.reference.com/search?q=rat
Reproduction in rats. Debbie Ducommun, author, columnist, Foster & Smith, Inc. http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?articleid=889
Wild Rats and Diseases. website are Copyright © 2003, 2004. http://www.ratbehavior.org/WildRatDisease.htm
by David Chung