So, turns out, this is my second last day. Hope you’re used to it by now. And then I’ll stop. And it will feel so weird. :) Here we go.

• Over 40% of all tropical forests have been destroyed and another acre is lost each second.
• Each year, humankind adds six to eight billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and destroying forest, pumping up the concentration of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming- an effect that could raise temperatures by three to ten degrees by the year 2050.
• While the U.S. makes up only 5% of the world’s population, we produce 72% of all hazardous waste and consumer 33% of the world’s paper.
• Worldwide, thousands of pounds of plutonium (hey! I’ve heard that word before... oh right, on Scooby Doo 2 Monsters Unleashed. It’s a good movie. You guys should see it sometime :D) are being produced, used and stored under conditions of inadequate security. Using current technology, only two pounds of plutonium is required to make a nuclear device.
• The annual catch in 13 of the world’s 15 major fishing zones has declined and in four of those - three in the Atlantic and one in the Pacific oceans- the catch has shrunk by a startling 30%.
• Mining companies are allowed to buy our public lands for less than five dollars an acre- any they pay no royalties on he gold and other minerals they extract. This taxpayer giveaway, combined with the cost of massive environmental  damage and cleanup, amounts to a billion dollars a year.
• Grazing has led to soil erosion, watershed destruction and ruin of wildlife habitat on millions of acres of our public lands. Taxpayers subsidized grazing fees with $1.8 billion during the years 1985- 1992.
• In many urban areas, children are steadily exposed to high levels of air pollutants, increasing the risk of chronic lung disease, cell damage and respiratory illness.
• Dioxin and other persistent pollutants that are released into the air accumulate in our waterways, wildlife, food supply and human blood-streams. These poisons may cause cancer and reproductive disorders in human beings and other animal species.
• Millions of pounds of toxic chemicals, like lead, mercury and pesticides, pour into our waterways each year contaminating wildlife, seafood and drinking water.
• One-half of our nation’s lakes and one-third of our rivers are too polluted to be completely safe for swimming or fishing.
• Raw sewage, poison runoff and other pollution have caused 8,000 beach closures or advisories over the past 5 years
• All but one species of the magnificent ocean-going salmon in the Pacific Northwest face a growing risk of extinction throughout most of their range, due to habitat degradation and over fishing.

So I really hope you are enjoying/enjoyed these facts. Only one day to go, until we don’t have to do this anymore. Get excited. :) I’ll make tomorrow’s blog super special, since it is my last one. I really hope you enjoy it.

Until next time, stay green.  

Here we go again. I really hope you’re enjoying this.

• We waste enough sporks to circle the Earth, and then some; enough plastic eating utensils are thrown away every year to circle the equator 300 times. That’s about 40 billion pounds of plastic knives, forks and spoons, the vast majority of which end up in landfills where scientists say they’ll take 500 years, give or take maybe, 10 years- to decompose.
• Airlines waste enough soda cans to build dozens of planes
• We shop 3.5 hours a week. Americans spend about 3.5 hours every week shopping for groceries, clothing and other items. (I wonder what we’re like...?)
• Indoor air can be 100-times more polluted than outdoor air; according to the Environmental Protection Agency, the air inside your home may be 100 times more polluted than the air outside, due in part to mould
• Population Growth: In that short time the industrial revolution has also caused an amazing growth of population. In last 50 years it has grown more than the previous four million years. The number of one billion was reached in the 19th century, while today there are almost seven billion people on Earth. These estimations say that we could reach the number of nine billion until 2050. If food is a problem today, it’s not easy to imagine what a problem it would be forty years from now.
• The Wall Street bailout: It reached over $700 billion and still grows. Only 4% of that could end world hunger. There is a well known old Chinese saying: “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.” According to that, this is not the right solution for the problem, but there are indications which show that only $30 billion per year are needed for creating and implementing programs that could help toward solving this issue.
• Australia’s Geothermal Energy; Only 1% of the untapped geothermal energy potential in Australia could be enough for the next 26,000 years, providing optimism for the future. We can not use that energy yet, but the Australian government invests a lot in green technologies recently and announced that this one won’t be excluded. They hope to be able to use up to 40% of that until 2020.
• Cars vs. Public Transport; Apparently, Americans use 140 million cars to travel almost four billion miles everyday, using over 200 million gallons of gas for that.
• Too Little Air in China; Only 1% of the 560 million city residents in China breathe air that is considered to be safe according to the standards of the European Union. The cancer has become the number 1 reason for deaths, but things become even worse, as clouds of polluted air reach the skies of Japan and Korea as well, causing acid rains. (I guess the facts and the rain would sting a little...)

Well, that is enough for me tonight and I will talk more tomorrow.   :)




Until next time, stay green.  

I’m doing a double today, so please, feel free to get super excited for this! I’m going to get right to it.

• The world’s per capita grain production has been on the downfall since 1985 despite the use of fertilizers and pesticides.
• The uncontrolled fishing that is allowed has reduced the amount of commercial species. Some species, up to one tenth of their original population.
• Every day 50 to 100 species of plants and animals become extinct as their habitat and human influences destroy them
• The Earth has been around for 4.6 billion years. Scaling this time down to 46 years we have been around for 4 hours, and our Industrial Revolution began just 1 minute ago. (wow this is scary!) During this short time period, we have ransacked the planet for ways to get fuels and raw materials, have been the cause of extinction of an unthinkable amount of plants and animals and have multiplied our population to that of a plague.
• (But hey! There is a solution!) Despite all of the damage we have caused the environment, most of it is reversible. (So, start at your local park, get involved on Clean up Australia Day, do whatever you can to help our precious environment!) We can restore habitats and return species to them; clean rivers; renovate buildings; replenish the top soil, replant forests. However, these activities do not relieve the worst symptoms of the damage. We still have to fix the source of these problems; us and our vision that we must progress.
• In Peninsular Malaysia, more tree species are found in 125 acres of Tropical Forest than in the entire North America.
• In Peru a single bush may contain more ant species than in the British Isles.
• A study has shown that there are possibly over 30 million species of insects dwelling in the canopies of tropical forests.
• 63,000 square miles of rain forests are being destroyed each year.
• Already over half of the world’s tropical forests have been lost
• Madagascar is the home to a rainforest where 60 percent of it’s 12,000 different plants species are unique to that island
• When you visit a pharmacist, one in every four purchases will have come from a tropical rainforest
• Medicine produced in tropical forests bring in commercially 30 billion dollars a year
• More than anything else, rainforest is destroyed by peasant farmers. However, the responsibility for this lies largely with the governments who fail to promote land reform and sustainable agricultural practices as an alternative to forest clearance.
• Greater than a quarter of our rainforest is in Brazil
• The Grasslands cover one-fifth of the land on Earth.
• The majority of grasslands are found around the tropics.
• Natural grasslands are; the Savannah's of Africa, the North American prairies, and in Southern USSR- the dry steppes.
• Semi-natural grasslands are where the forest has been cleared and grazing, cutting or burning maintains the grass cover. Tending to be more productive most South and South-East Asian grasslands are semi-natural grasslands.
• The temperate grassland soil contains a lot of organic material (more than the tropical)

So that is all my facts for today, using up one website, there are other facts that I didn’t put up on here, so you can go to the link in the bibliography section- Check. It. Out. See you tomorrow! Or have a one-way conversation type thing... :D




Until next time, stay green.  

Since I’m doing a double today, I’m going to make it slightly shorter, here goes!

• 80% of the world’s forests are gone
• 2000 trees a minute are cut down in the Amazon alone. (That is 7 football fields a minute!) (Um, wow, that makes me kind of sick...Damn, I think I ate too many chips)
• 40% of our waterways are undrinkable.
• 75% of fisheries have been fished beyond capacity
• 100,000 synthetic chemicals are used in production today.
• Food with highest level of contaminants is mother’s milk.
• 200,000 people a day are moving to cities from environments that no longer support them.
• Average person consumes twice as much as 50 years ago.
• We see more ads in one year than people 50 years ago saw in a lifetime. 3,000 ads a day! (Well, I don’t watch that much TV, so I’m kind of glad)
• For every one garbage bin, you put out at the curb, 70 bins were filled by all the processes
• 90% of all things that we buy are not in use after 6 months.

Okay, I know that was short. Short and sweet, I guess. :)

Until next time, stay green.  

So I’m going to get right to it. You know, if you had read yesterday’s blog that I was going to absolutely bombard you with facts about the environment. And I don’t feel like wasting anytime. And I found a site which is absolutely perfect. So, here goes;
If just 25% of U.S. families used 10 fewer plastic bags a month, we would save over 2.5 billion bags a year.
On the average, the 140 million cars in America are estimated to travel almost 4 billion miles in a day, and according to the Department of Transportation, they use over 200 million gallons of gasoline doing it.
Every year we throw away 24 million tonnes of leaves and grass. Leaves alone account for 75% of our solid waste in the fall.
Over 100 pesticide ingredients are suspected to cause birth defects, cancer and gene mutations.
About 1% of U.S. landfill space is full of disposable diapers, which take 500 years to decompose.
Energy saved from one recycled aluminium can will operate a TV set for 3 hours, and is the equivalent to half a can of gasoline.
Glass produced from recycled glass instead of raw materials reduces related air pollution by 20%, and water pollution by 50%.
Americans use 50 million tons of paper annually- consuming more than 850 million trees. (I guess we know who’s killing the environment.)
Homeowners use up to 10 times more toxic chemicals per acre than farmers. (Gross much?)
By turning down your central heating thermostat one degree, fuel consumption is cut by as much as 10% (I know what I’ll be doing next winter)
Insulating your attic reduces the amount of energy loss in most houses by up to 20% (I wonder if mine is...?)
One ton of carbon dioxide that is released in the air can be prevented by replacing every 75 watt light bulbs with energy efficient light bulbs. (Well, I know I’ve done that *smiles proudly*)
Every day (yes, DAY) 40,000 children die from preventable diseases.
The human population of the world is expected to be nearly tripled by the year 2100. (Well, I will possibly be dead by then, so I don’t think it will effect me. But if I live to see 2100, that would mean I would be 101  years old. *Feeling proud*)
A three percent annual growth rate will result in the doubling of consumption and production of food and other products in 25 short years. The amount of motor vehicles (wow, I think I’ll... just... walk everywhere...) that are expected to be operated will increase 15 million a year until at least 2010.
Okay, I think that’s enough for today. But, there is a heap more where that came from and I am not going to stop any time soon. Maybe I could start doing doubles each day, that way I could cover all the information I needed. Feeling devilish now. Well now, that’s a super idea. Get excited guys. Because I totally approve.

Until next time, stay green. 

So I have something to talk about. Of course. When don’t I? I just wanted to say that I only have six more days (five after today) and I wanted to say thank you. For reading all of the blogs, for putting up with my weird, boring and annoying behaviour or just going- ‘Oh here’s a site about the environment... oh she’s 14, whatever.’ and ditching. But thank you for at least coming to my site. Over the next five days (this is a future reference, ok? Don’t get freaked out for the future 5 blogs) I will be attempting to bombard you with relentless facts. So I’ve given you small facts every time, small ones. Teensy eensy ones, but nothing like this one. It will be so huge, it’ll be like... like.... all 5 of the Twilight movies every single one, all in a row. Like the way you do a ‘Twilight’ marathon in one night (okay, so not many people can relate to that. Even I can’t relate to that! It was the first series I thought of which had five movies, ok? Cut me some slack!) Cause if it were me that was going to do a marathon, I think I’d go for something more simple. Maybe all of the Harry Potter movies, or a whole range of Disney movies (Yes, I still watch Disney movies and I am 14; well, aren’t Disney movies supposed to be along the lines of timeless classics? Because if they are, I want to be a timeless classic as well. (Personally, if I were going to be one of the Disney princesses, I would totally settle for Belle from Beauty and the Beast, if any of you didn’t know. Because she is a lot like me. She has brown hair, brown eyes, she can sing (Not being full of myself....) and she loves reading books. And that library she has? I. WANT. IT.) So if you come at me, best be prepared, I’ll have an armful of books to throw/hit/assault you with) I think I forgot to mention in the triple brackets that I love her dress. You know, the yellow one? I think I’ll have to put some clips in for you. You know why? Because I felt like it. And really, this isn’t really a blog about rubbish. But I can if you want it to be. OMG, I don’t think my mum has bought Beauty and the Beast on DVD yet... grrr. Anyway, rubbish. I have an idea. We have heaps of videos still sitting up in a cupboard upstairs (yes I said VIDEOS) and until recently I stopped watching them, because my mum is starting to buy them all on DVD. One; that is a waste of money, because the Video player still works fine! Two; Mum is getting them all on DVD now, so I don’t have to watch them on Video. And it kind of makes sense, if you understand, because with the videos, you have to rewind them all the way back when you finished watching the movie, and that is a pain in the neck. So, have a nice night, and prepare to get educated. Yes. The library. Watch, look. It's awesome. And the Beast is

Until next time, stay green. 

So I was bored, right? (I mean, it’s normal, isn’t it?) So I decided to look up some different things about rubbish. Of course, that’s pretty much all I’ve been talking about. Well, that and Christmas. And, well, if you didn’t know, it’s getting closer (eyes stare up to the sky) it’s pretty exciting. (You know, that abashed? No, I have no idea what to call it. Well I was looking up stuff about polluting in our park and getting stuff in the creek can send it on it’s way to the ocean, and on a marinebio.org site, I found all these different clips about the ocean, the great pacific garbage patch and heaps of other stuff. And it was pretty interesting. Let’s keep it to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. We’ve talked about that before, and I don’t worry! I remember that, the picture with the man who is rowing through the rubbish infested waters. Real neat.  But anyways, Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation who first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch- which is an endless floating waste of plastic ‘trash’. And Charles Moore is drawing attention to the growing, choking, festering, disgusting plague of debris in our seas. Did you like that? I loved it. So dramatic. Haha. And it goes on (scroll down the page) and it says that about 20-22% of dredged material is dumped into the ocean. AND about 10% of all dredged material is polluted with heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury and chromium, hydrocarbons such as heavy oils, nutrients including phosphorous and nitrogen, and organochlorines from pesticides. Waterways and, therefore, silt and sand accumulate these toxins from land runoff, shipping practices, industrial and community waste, and other sources. When they go into the ocean, marine organisms suffer toxic effects and seafood is often contaminated. And wow, this is really bad. We eat seafood. Well, I don’t, not really. The most I like to eat is the crumbed fish. And fish, not so much, but I’d still eat it.  Prawns, I don’t like, they have beady eyes which creep me out. All other sea foods, please, just keep me away from it. So it seems like this is going to be a short blog, I will put the link in the ‘bibliography’ section. So I hope you have fun doing that, while I will try to find more ‘fun facts’ for you to learn about. Because we all love learning.

Until next time, stay green. 

So today I was thinking. (I think I do a lot of thinking) About a million things. (e.g. home ec assignment, english assignment, global assignment) And Christmas. Who doesn’t love Christmas? The answer; Scrooge. Well, apart from Scrooge, how you tell all those cute little kids about the stories where Santa comes down your chimney, and he puts the presents under the Christmas tree, all nicely wrapped (by each of the elves) except for one story. (The Santa Clause) Turns out Tim Allen’s Santa Claus is the only who knows how to live sustainably. I’ll give you a clip at the end... or a link... All Scott Calvin/ Santa Claus (same initials :D) does is just pull the presents out of his magical bag, and just chucks them under the tree. In some cases- literally! Because, what do we do with all this left over paper? It’s a waste, just using it for one day/night, and the next thing you know, a child’s greedy hands just wants to get to the toys and all that kind of fun stuff for Christmas  then the paper gets thrown away. In the recycle bin? Nope. Normal bins. Damn you, Santa (shakes fist towards the skies) for using wrapping paper without even thinking about somehow telling kids that they should be recycling. Anyway, enough with the heavy. It’ll be Christmas soon and its a time that everyone should enjoy. (America and Canada, I’m talking to you about the Christmas break) Well, for that little thing, I have a couple of friends that live in Canada, and they say they still have a month of school left; unacceptable! But I’ve been thinking. About a while lot of things. Littering is one. An also the amount of times I have started to talk about Christmas. You’ll probably hate me for that. Well, about half an hour ago, a storm started (completely off topic) and I was all ‘Yay! I love storms and it will water the plants in the park and will also fill up our slowly emptying pool!’ So that was pretty cool. And then it started hailing. And that was the time that my dad decided to come home. In a car. While it was hailing. And from what I’ve seen on that RACQ (I think) ad when it’s hailing and that lady is desperately trying to save her car, it doesn’t work out too well. Luckily it was only small bits of hail. And when I’m talking small, I mean the pad of your thumb small. Not baby hand small, teenager small. So if you’re an adult, grab your teenagers hand, or visualise your hand slightly smaller. (Do neither of these if you have naturally small hands) And that’s how big they were. Not big. At all. Then soon after my mum came home. No damage to her car either, since I haven’t heard her complaining apart from just before when my dad had bloody(when I say bloody, I mean bloody) steak pieces sitting in the fridge and the blood escaped. Only time she’s complained. Well, she’s complained about a lot of things, but half the things you wouldn’t want to know. The other half with probably bore the life out of you. At least I don’t have too much of my mother in me. Otherwise these blogs would have been so much worse.

Until next time, stay green.  And try not to complain too much- for everyone’s sake.

Okay, I haven’t been able to give a blog in the last few days because of my busy schedule (school, home, Home Ec assignment... sleep) so I’m going to try and make up for it. So today, I had bushcare,  and only got mildly eaten alive by mosquitos. But I found a couple of interesting ‘finds’. Turns out that there was two Pepsi cans, (Pepsi Max and normal Pepsi) and I also found a Dare Ice Coffee Mint Flavoured plastic container. With all three of those, I took them home with me. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the Dare in it’s environment before bringing it home, but I managed to get the two cans in the bushes. (Taken on my dad’s phone, since I didn’t bring mine, and anyway, my phone has horrible camera quality. The few bad things about a Nokia.) I’ll give you the picture as well. And we did a fair bit of weeding,  my dad, Mrs Watson, my sister and me. (my other sister had a uni exam and my mum doesn’t do ‘bush’ she stays home with the cleaning instead) So we got a lot of work done, and we filled up four bags of just pure weeds. Yep, I think it might’ve been one bag each. Like, the big weed bags that you get on clean up Australia Day; that size one. And yes, I know, they’re big. But I (proudly have to say) that I filled up one of those. And during the midst of having people stop and talk to us (5 people, 2 dogs) The first dog was adorable, they were talking to us for a while, and it kept sniffing our weeds, but it was so cute and the man said it was only 12 weeks! And her fur was so soft and silky. One of the cutest dogs I’ve ever seen. They just aren’t very cute when they poo everywhere. Yeah, and there was fresh stuff on the side of the path... only slightly disgusting. (Who am I kidding? It was really gross.) But I don’t think the cute dog did it. But the family said they were moving down to Sydney because the man is in the army, and that was really sad, because that little puppy was ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE! Anyways, I am trying to plan this out so this ‘blog’ can last a little longer and make up for the other two days, but it’s a bit hard to do that, so I’m trying to think of other stuff environment related to talk about. I’m trying to type this with my tongue... super weird. Yeah, I thought I’d do something weird. Don’t ask why. Anyway, I was at bushcare, and there was only 4 people there. It’s getting kind of sad, since there used to be around 10 or 11 people going. But they are all getting old, or their health is deteriorating, and one man is 96 this year! I mean, he doesn’t do it anymore, but it was still pretty cool at the time. Because I think he was in his late 80s early 90s when my family started going. And another man has had a triple bypass... wow, he’s strong, but he can’t come any more. So usually, most of my blogs only goes for about 500 words. But this time I’m determined to make this different. Well, actually, my sister’s friend goes sometimes, but she lives I don’t know where, a while away, and she has to come all the way over to our park to do bushcare, but honestly, you just have to ring and ask the council if you can start up a bushcare group somewhere, and you’re set. It’s pretty awesome like that. I don’t think I’d want to be in charge of that type of thing, but I’d definitely be involved with it. It makes you really aware of different weeds, and what’s happening in your local areas. And I’m proud to be a part of that, because we are trying to undo what others inflict upon the environment. And that’s something pretty special. So there you have it, I have made it past 700 words. No, exactly 708 words. Including the bottom stuff, it is 731 words. (including the rest of what I’m writing)

Until next time, stay green.  This was a special edition of environmental blog. :)

So after yesterday’s little blog, I was thinking about littering again. So I found some statistics I thought I should share with you.
MOST LITTERED ITEMS: Cigarette butts- of every item littered, 49% of items are discarded butts.
Plastic objects; the most littered by volume of material.
Most littered sites: Retail sites/shopping centres, industrial locations and  highways.
There are over 4000 chemicals in a cigarette butt that leach into water within one hour of contact, when a butt is littered on the street, there is a high chance it will end up in our waterways.
Australians throw away about 7150 recyclable bags a minute, with 429,000 recyclable plastic bags dumped into landfill every hour.
According to the National Litter Index (wow, I never knew there was such a thing) some of the most littered take away food wrapping includes: flavoured milk cartons, take-away cups and containers, cigarette packaging, paper bags and ice cream wrappers. (Damn, now I feel like ice-cream!)
Litter can harm and kill wildlife. Cigarette butts and small plastic items are often mistaken for food by marine life and have been found in the stomachs of young birds, sea turtles and other marine creatures. (For more information.... click here ->http://trashmyad.com.au/upload/documents/FactSheet-CleanMarine.pdf)
Littering is an environmental crime. Around Australia people can be given fines ranging up to $250,000.
SO DON’T DO IT!! Those are my wise words of wisdom for today. Just don’t do anything. Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t smoke, don’t drink drive, don’t drink, don’t drive, don’t litter, don’t... not pick up your dog poo. Just don’t do anything. Stay still, and don’t move a muscle. Just relax and listen to the sounds as cars honk and the screech of tires on the roads at night. Yep. That’s what I hear. I wonder what people would hear before pollution was happening. It would probably the clicking of horses and wheels along the gravel roads, people chatting happily, the swish of a fine lady’s dress.  And you want to know why my thoughts of an 1800s era was so vivid? Because that’s where I want to be. The big dresses, riding in a carriage, the bumpy, uneven roads. That’s what life should be like. No smoke, no... okay, there is better hygiene. But apart from that. Anyway, back on topic. Well, up above, when it’s saying all those things about the marine life, you know where the cigarette butts come from? Well, I didn’t see any, but I suspect at least half comes from the parks. Well, I’ve seen plastic in the bush. And then they tried to cover it up under the bushes, unacceptable. (That’s the water bottle by the way) And then there is the big fat, plastic bucket as well as the spray can, which probably contributed to some old teen vandalism. So, I’ll be sure to add these pictures in just for you to see. And it takes 450- possibly 1000 years for a plastic waterbottle to biodegrade. Well, isn’t someone being nice and humane with their littering habits?

Until next time, stay green.  Cause I honestly can’t think of anything else today.