RER-2

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November 2019 Eco-Report

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November 2019 Eco-Report

Part of a series of archived reports in Refugia
RER-2
Author:	Sylh Alanor
Date Posted:	November 3, 2019
Dispatch:	[No longer exists Linked!]
Word Count:	974
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An’eth’ara, na lethall’en!

This is the Refugia Eco-Report for the month of November 2019, reflecting on our growth and changes experienced in October. Our numbers aren’t terribly impressive, but there are some interesting and important things that I feel should be pointed out before we feel too bad about it. As a group, we’ve done very well, and as you’ll see on the upcoming graphs, there are a lot of reasons to remain positive and upward-looking regarding our growth and progress. So let’s start!

As a quick reminder, our goals are to, by the end of the year, reach a regional average of 1500 environmental beauty score and 5000 eco-friendliness score.

Environmental Beauty

We’ll start with Environmental Beauty (click thumbnail for larger image):

As you can see, in terms of pure numbers, we haven’t advanced significantly. As of 01/10/2019, our regional score was 1222.71, 277.29 away from our goal. And as of 01/11/2019, our regional score was 1249.81, 250.19 away from our goal, meaning we’ve only progressed 27.1 points in a month. Compared to September’s growth, we progressed 74.91 fewer points.

But look back to that graph with me. The extreme growth we experienced as a nation through the centre of the month was a result of your hard work, taking us to a peak of nearly 1325, which means we matched all of the growth we achieved in September by the middle of October. In September, one of the oldest nations in the region went inactive, and we’ve kept an eye out for the inevitable CTE, which is the huge drop in the middle of the October. Even considering that loss, as of the date I’m writing this, we’ve almost regained all of the ground we lost in the latter half of the month.

The dip around 31 October is several of our nations leaving the region temporarily to help our friends in New West Indies and Canada, which will be detailed in another report coming soon.

Eco-Friendliness

Now, as for Eco-Friendliness (click thumbnail for larger image):

In terms of pure numbers, we’ve progressed, but progress has slowed since last month. As of 01/10/2019, our score was 4139.32, 860.68 points from our goal. And as of 01/11/2019, our regional score was 4354.51, 645.49 points from our goal. This is admirable progress, though it has slowed by 215.19 compared to last month.

But again, we must point out the positives. We yet again matched September’s growth by the middle of the month, reaching a peak of nearly 4700. The loss of an old nation hurt our scores, but you can see the upward swing in the beginning of November making up that lost ground yet again.

We’re doing really well, everyone, keep up the work and we’ll still meet our goals before the year is over!

Suggestions for Improvement

This month’s environmental suggestion is brought to us by Ortharion. In a telegram, he expressed interest in spreading the word about Ecosia, an environmentally-conscious search engine. I’ve been using Ecosia for a while now, but for some reason never thought about sharing it through this medium. Let me explain why I think all of us should switch from Google, Bing, Yahoo, AskJeeves…

Ecosia uses ad revenue to fund environmental projects, specifically planting trees around the world. As long as you have ad-block turned off (which I recommend you please please whitelist this site!), there will be a small image in the upper right corner that shows how many searches you’ve performed. On average, a tree can be planted with the ad revenue they generate from every 45 searches. If you set the site to be your default search engine, every time you look for something in your address bar, it’ll automatically give them another tick up in revenue.

It’s also incredibly good on privacy, not selling user data or storing your search history on site. All searches are also encrypted so that nobody can keep track of you.

Finally, Ecosia shares monthly financial reports and tree-planting receipts so that you can see exactly where the money they’re making from your ad revenue is going. They don’t pay out bonuses or dividends to the owners, and the salaries listed in the financial breakdowns are consistent. They have additional articles written and published on what they’re doing in spots that have been in the news, such as Brazil, where they’re trying to reestablish the Atlantic Forest.

I’d also like to mention that Google Images no longer lets you view the full-size image straight from their search function, while Ecosia does. Just saying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks for this suggestion Ortharion, and I hope we can keep the word spreading about Ecosia.

Environmental News

Now for some quick positive environmental stories before we go!

First, an article about an organisation of rural communities in the United States that are trying to overturn the stereotype that farmers don’t care about the environment. This organisation has been trying to start a dialogue between rural and urban environments, and also to talk with other rural communities from people on the same level about climate change and how sustainable farming can offset elements of that.

And also an article about an Indian doctoral candidate and architect who has created a modular wall system that can clean water without using chemicals. Instead, it’s made of a combination of ceramic tiles and algae that filters water as it runs over it. This is an interesting concept that I think, if it catches on in India and spreads to other countries, can do a lot for water purity and sustainability in the future.

As always, please always feel free to contact me with any news, suggestions, or improvements you’d like to see in future ecological reports. I try to respond to all telegrams within 24 hours and RMB posts much faster.

Da’reth Shi’ral,
Sylh Alanor