EARTH DAY IS COMING UP

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APRIL 22, 2011

So, what are you doing??



You can do something simple like;

• Recycle! (which should be an everyday thing -_-)
• Pick up a piece of trash you see outside.
• Buy eco-friendly products.
• PLANT A TREE!!
• Use a power strip to turn off televisions, stereos and computer systems when you're not using them and unplug appliances such as phone chargers, extra refrigerators, and printers until you need them.
• Shorten your shower time!
• When you go grocery shopping, buy in bulk. This way there is less packaging and its also cheaper in the long run.
• Reduce, reuse and recycle all day long.
• Wear green and/or brown. Dress in environmental colors for the day; think "tree"!
• Engage others in conversations about your environmental concerns.
• Ride your bike
• Refuse to use paper for the day.
• Install a CFL or compact fluorescent light bulb.
• Also, bring your own reusable shopping bag. You can buy them at local grocery stores.
• Buy organic.
• Go meat free.

But if you really want to go hard..

• Volunteer at your local river/lake for a clean up. (Just contact your nearest lake officials. Google is your friend :) )
• Take public transportation of the day. Buses/trains/metro/car pool.
• Take the time to finally fix that leaky faucets and pipes
• Host a waste-free picnic with friends and family.
• Every night for a week, collect your household garbage and weigh it on your bathroom scale. Record your results every few weeks and celebrate your success as your trash slims down.
• Start composting.
• Consider buying a carbon offset to make up for the greenhouse gas emissions you create on the other 364 days of the year. Carbon offsets fund reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through projects such as wind farms, that displaces energy from fossil fuels.

For more ideas, check out Mother Nature Network

Environmental Quotes

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The earth does not belong to man -- man belongs to the earth.
-- Chief Seattle

I believe in God, only I spell it "Nature".
-- Frank Lloyd Wright

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
-- John Muir

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
-- Native American Proverb

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.
-- Henry David Thoreau

The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
-- Barry Commoner

He that plants trees loves others beside himself.
-- Thomas Fuller

The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.
-- Ralph Nader

There is a great need for the introduction of new values in our society, where bigger is not necessarily better, where slower can be faster, and where less can be more.
-- Gaylord Nelson

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtfully committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
-- Margaret Mead

For 200 years we've been conquering nature. Now we're beating it to death.
-- Tom McMillan

Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?
-- Groucho Marx

We have met the enemy and he is us.
-- Walt Kelly

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
-- Henry David Thoreau

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
— Bill Vaughan

The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity… that’s all there is. That’s the whole economy. That’s where all the economic activity and jobs come from. These biological systems are the sustaining wealth of the world.
-- Gaylord Nelson

Until a man duplicates a blade of grass, Nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge. Remedies from chemicals will never stand in favorable comparison with the products of Nature, the living cell of a plant, the final result of the rays of the sun, the mother of all life.
-- Thomas Alva Edison

The earth is what we all have in common.
-- Wendell Berry

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man.
-- Chief Seattle

To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.
-- William Blake

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more.
-- George Gordon, Lord Byron

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.
-- Cree Indian Proverb

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet, and the winds long to play with your hair.
-- Kahlil Gibran

WIFI: THE DEATH OF TREES

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We all know that Wifi is God's gift to man. But at what cost? Does wifi radiation make trees sick? According to studies in the Netherlands, 70 percent of the trees in urban areas (opposed to 10 percent five years ago) have had symptoms such as cracks, bumps, discoloration and tissue damage while the trees in the forest have had little to none of these symptoms. This has also affected trees in the western hemisphere.

To test the theory, researchers exposed 20 ash trees to various radiation sources for a period of three months. The report stated that “trees placed closest to the Wi-Fi radio demonstrated a “lead-like shine” on their leaves that was caused by the dying of the upper and lower epidermis of the leaves. This would eventually result in the death of parts of the leaves.

Read more: Is Wi-Fi Making Trees Sick? | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

IS IT SAFE .. YET?

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I've been asked numerous times (because I'm obviously an "all things environmental" guru) "Is it safe to eat seafood?". I wrote a blog about it a while back. Remember the sniff test? Well, obviously that didn't work out. Go figure, right? Apparently, the more seafood you eat, the higher the risk you are of being poisoned. Makes since right? Sorry Pescetarians. Maybe this is your cue to go all the way. Vegan!

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) found cancer causing agents from the oil in the Gulf seafood. Obviously, people living in the Gulf are feeling the full force of it all. FDA miscalculated the average amount of seafood citizens eat therefore causing them to downplay the effect seafood from the Gulf will have on those who eat it. I can vouch for this misrepresentation because I eat seafood almost everyday.

Tragic.

What is DEFORESTATION?

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photo credit; http://www.guardian.co.uk

NASA has found new life

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Before you get excited thinking there is an alien walking around somewhere, there isn't. Or at least not from what we know. What NASA has found is a bacteria made up of arsenic. Creepy? Arsenic is deadly to us. This was thought to be completely impossible until, well, they found it. EVERY living being on planet Earth is made up of these vital components; carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur.

Being that this "being" is alive and made up of arsenic opens the door to possibly discovering life on planet unlike the Earth. But I knew that! Of course every being in the universe doesn't need an "Earth like" environment to survive.

GREENPEACE IS GANGSTA

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Activists from Greenpeace just dropped a banner from a Kentucky hotel during an EPA hearing for coal ash. Pretty bad ass if you ask me.

GREENPEACE .. WE GO HARD!

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GREENPEACE DOES IT AGAIN!

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Activists from Greenpeace are now hanging from the anchor chain of Chevron's Stena Carron to prevent the ship from sailing out to their drill site. All this is in effort to combat offshore drilling.

Classic example of one of my favorite quotes;
No one can do EVERYTHING. But everyone can do SOMETHING.

I absolutely love the fight in Greenpeace. These people are extremely passionate about protecting the environment and are absolutely willing to put their selves in danger just to do so(obviously). I am utterly proud to be apart of the team.

One day, you'll see me strapped to a tree..one day.







peace&love




Images from; Greenpeace

BREAKING NEWS: Vermillion Oil Rig 360 Explosion

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Vermilion Oil Rig 380 has just exploded with 13 people on board around 9:30 a.m this morning. All 13 people were blasted into the ocean and are currently awaiting help. Only one was found injured.

The Vermillion Oil Rig is owned by Cairn Energy is is located 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana and west of the BP's Deepwater Horizon which also blew up in April.



Stand by for further information.

VICTORY IS OURS!

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CONGRATULATIONS


Congrads Greenpeace for their amazing victory in getting Burger King to drop Sinar Mas! Sinar Mas has been doing some major destruction to the Paradise Rain forest through their palm oil exploration. The world is already running low on our beautiful rainforests! It's only right that we protect the little that we have. After all, who wants to live in a Concrete Jungle?

Bottles are being popped in the Paradise Rain forest.

“Hands off the Arctic, go beyond oil!”

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Day 2 @ Greenpeace *happy dance*
I am now interning with Greenpeace

Civil disobedience at its best.


!!Tell Cairn Energy to get out of the Arctic!!
!!Tell Cairn Energy to get out of the Arctic!!
!!Tell Cairn Energy to get out of the Arctic!!
!!Tell Cairn Energy to get out of the Arctic!!


Its no secret that Greenpeace is known for their civil disobedience. So when I found out that Greenpeace activist were hanging from an oil rig in the Arctic demanding Cairn Energy to "pack up and go home", I was more amused than surprised. I love it!

So apparently, the activist had to flee Danish navy commandos to get to the rig where they then suspended their selves into the air using ropes to hang from the rig. They are said to have enough supplies to stay suspended for several days.

If they are able to halt the drilling for just a short time, Cairn Energy will struggle to meet a tight deadline to complete its exploration before winter ice conditions force it to abandon the search for oil off Greenland until next year.

by gp_espy via Twitpic edited by James Greenpeace UK

They are already doing the hard part. Do YOUR part! Which is pretty simple and easy.


!!Tell Cairn Energy to get out of the Arctic!!
!!Tell Cairn Energy to get out of the Arctic!!
!!Tell Cairn Energy to get out of the Arctic!!
!!Tell Cairn Energy to get out of the Arctic!!

PARSONS "REDUSE.REUSE.RECONSTRUCT"

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I am utterly in love with Parsons. I'm currently in the application process for their environmental studies program. I love how they are able to mix my major in environmental studies with fashion. Students in the Association in Applied Science program were given a project to design clothes leaving zero waste and using sustainable materials for their designs. Here are a few things these brilliant students came up with.









photo credits; treehugger.com

SIERRA'S TOP "COOLEST GREEN SCHOOLS"

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Did your school make the cut?

1. Green Mountain College (Poultney, Vermont)
2. Dickinson College (Carlisle, Pennsylvania)
3. Evergreen State College (Olympia, Washington)
4. University of Washington (Seattle, Washington)
5. Stanford University (Palo Alto, California)
6. University of California, Irvine (Irvine, California)
7. Northland College (Ashland, Wisconsin)
8. Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
9. College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, Maine)
10. Hampshire College (Amherst, Massachusetts)
11. University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, California)
11. [TIE] Middlebury College (Middlebury, Vermont)
13. University of Colorado, Boulder (Boulder, Colorado)
14. Warren Wilson College (Asheville, North Carolina)
15. University California, San Diego (San Diego, California)
16. University of California, Davis (Davis, California)
16. [TIE] University of Vermont (Burlington, Vermont)
18. University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
19. New York University (New York, New York)
20. Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Georgia)

FORGET A MINI-VAN !

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This will be my ride of choice. ;-)

A WEEKEND WITHOUT OIL!!!!

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"A Weekend Without Oil"
Its a goal to curb 1,000,000 gallons of oil!!



SIGN UP HERE!!
SIGN UP HERE!!
SIGN UP HERE!!
SIGN UP HERE!!

• Walk or ride your bike: Avoid using cars and if you must, always try to carpool. Transportation accounts for 40 percent of our petroleum consumption and is easily one of the biggest areas we need to improve upon.
• Enjoy the outdoors: Avoid buying new sporting equipment, since oil makes up nearly 25% of rubber. Footballs or basketballs, for example, can last for many years and used equipment is often just as good and will reduce demand for oil needed to make new rubber.
• Use reusable bags: Avoid disposable plastic. Plastic bags are a huge waste for very little benefit. Nearly 10 percent of U.S. oil consumption, approximately 2 million barrels a day, is used to make plastic products alone.
• Be conscious about what you eat that weekend: You can reduce oil demand by changing your diet to eat less meat, more local foods that require less transportation and organic food, which doesn't use petro-based fertilizers.
• Don't buy new make-up that weekend: The majority of cosmetics are petroleum-based, including lip gloss, face powder, nail polish, and more. So avoid buying new make-up products this weekend and research the brands when you purchase in the future.
• Drink tap water: Avoid beverages bottled in disposable plastic, they make up nearly 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year, so get a reusable bottle and fill it up.
• Make your electronic gadgets last: Avoid buying new electronics. Electronics take a lot of oil to produce and the gadgets you already have can last much longer than the rate at which new ones are released.
• Go to the movies or stream them on Hulu: Avoid buying new DVDs/Blu-Rays, as oil is a key ingredient in their production, packaging and shipping.
• Skip buying new clothes that weekend: Swap clothes with friends or check out the local vintage store. The less new clothes you buy the less oil is used in the manufacturing process and transportation.
• Head to your local library or read online: Avoid using a printer and buying printed material including daily newspapers. Printing doesn't just waste paper, nearly 100,000 gallons of ink each day is used on daily newspapers alone.

SIGN UP HERE!!
SIGN UP HERE!!
SIGN UP HERE!!
SIGN UP HERE!!

WHAT A WONDERFUL IDEA!

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UK has a wonderful pay as you throw system. It's like "eureka!". This is an attempt to get consumers to decrease trash while increasing recycling.

Check this out
This is a microchip in their trash cans that weigh's the amount of trash thrown away. Then bins weight the trash and the microchip shows where the trash came from. So when the garbage collectors come, they then charge the residents by the amount weighed. Don't like it? RECYCLE!!

And yes, this IS in America also. Some Maine communities are also practicing this "pay as you throw" system. I personally believe this should be a world wide effort.

"Pay as you throw" will obviously lessen the amount of re-usable trash being sent to the landfill. Most states landfills are so full that they are having to pay other states to except their trash. Even some parts of Canada has to pay the US to accept their trash.

In Maine, residents have cut their trash to 50% from the PAYT and the town's recycling rate grew to 150% in one month! With this, the town saves money and ultimately, the tax payers also.

WILL SEAFOOD BE SAFE?

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The "sniff" test.


I told you in a previous post about how they are checking seafood for oil. To refresh your memory, basically all they do is sniff for oil.

But have no fear, environmentalists are here!!

Prominent environmental groups are calling for better testing. The Natural Resource Defense Council has sent letter to the Food and Drug Administration(FDA) asking them to;

• Ensure that there is comprehensive monitoring of seafood contamination.
• Ensure public disclosure of all seafood monitoring data and methods.
• Ensure that fishery re-opening criteria protect the most vulnerable populations, including children, pregnant women and subsistence fishing communities.

What would you do without us? =)

GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS

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THOUGHT OF THE DAY

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When you think about it; its not about saving the environment per se. The planet will always be here. The environment will eventually renew itself, millions of years later.

Its more-so about saving us from ourselves. After all, we need the environment. The environment doesn't need us.

When we pollute and destroy the environment, all we are doing is essentially hurting ourselves.

• We pollute the water that we need to drink in order to survive.
• We pollute the air that we need to survive.
• We destroy the land that we need to grow our food.

Amongst other things.

So eventually, people will destroy their selves as an effect to destroying the environment to the point of it being non-livable for us. Then the planet can efficiently renew itself. When the virus(people) is gone.

Or we can start now. Help better the environment. Lower our impact on the environment. Stop while we are ahead. It's going to take the most but it's worth it.

Wake up world.




Food for thought