December's Animal of the Month!

For the month of December, my mom has requested the erect crested penguin (Eudyptes sclateri) to be the animal of the month. Penguins are her favorite animals. If you would like to suggest an endangered animal to be featured, email me at viridorari@yahoo.com.

Recycling Projects: Pen & Pencil Organizer

The school season is in full swing now, and I know when I was in school I was constantly loosing my pens and pencils. This organizer can help your child keep all their utensils in one place, and they’ll have fun making it! This project comes from the blog Random Thoughts of a Super Mom.  

Picture courtesy of: Random Thoughts of a Super Mom

 

         Supplies Needed:

         -Cereal box, pancake mix box, snack box, etc.

         -Toilet paper rolls

         -Scrap paper/decorative paper/wrapping paper

         -Glue and tape

         -Markers/paint/paintbrush (optional)

         -Scissors

Ecofriendly Economics, Reavealing October's Animal of the Month!

What material can be used to make over 25,000 products, including clothing, cordage, fuel, plastic, jewelry, paper, building material, food, cosmetic products, and weed deterrent?

            I’ll give you a hint; it’s a plant. It can be grown in many climates, requires little to no pesticides, has a short growing season and a fast turnout, is drought resistant, is resistant to UV rays, and has minimal impact on the soil.

            Sounds too good to be true, right?  

            Well, it's real. The plant is called hemp, and despite its many uses and soft impact on the environment, it has a bad reputation because of its close relation to marijuana. Hemp does have THC (the chemical that causes the high) in it, but at significantly smaller levels compared to marijuana. It is cultivated to have very low THC levels; to receive a high, a person would have to smoke ten to twelve hemp cigarettes in an extremely small amount of time, which would be very difficult to withstand. Despite this, it is still illegal to grow it in the United States, and therefore hemp must be imported, which is unfortunate because this increases the cost of hemp and the environmental impact from transporting it. Notably, hemp has the ability to replace many current industries, such as cotton, fossil fuels, and tree fibers, which is important to keep in mind when asking “why isn’t hemp more popular?”

Recognizing Green Actions & Tigers

I wanted to highlight some green and sustainable things I've noticed on campus!

My friend John re-purposed a Snapple bottle into a coin jar!

 He decorated it with stickers :)

In my hall, we have the option to hang dry our clothes instead of using the dryer. 

Yay for saving energy!

Suggested Reading: Extinction of the Pipistrelle

As you may already know, I have a soft spot for bats. A really big soft spot, actually. I’ve been a bat advocate since I was kid, I managed to become a finalist for a big scholarship at my college with an essay about bats, and Viridorari’s first animal of the month was the golden-capped fruit bat.

            Most people see bats as a symbol of Halloween and creepy things, but many don’t know what an important roll they play in our global ecosystem, and in particular, our agriculture. Insect-eating bats are crucial for controlling pest populations that would otherwise demolish our fields. Fruit-eating bats are essential for pollinating fruit plants, much like bees. 

            I was very saddened to learn that recently, the Pipistrelle bat went extinct. They used to live on Australia’s Christmas Island, but now these tiny, adorable bats with the coolest name ever are gone for good. The Australian government failed to offer aid to scientists and the dying species until it was too late. The loss of any species is a terrible thing, especially when the cause of their death was caused by human related activities. Why is it that we think it’s okay to do as we please on this planet, without any regard to the other life forms that live here?

Ecofriendly Economics: Binder Recycling & Advice from Monks

Staples Recycling

            Now, Staples is offering an incentive to recycle your old, worn-out binders. Instead of throwing them away, take them with you to a participating Staples and turn them in. For each old binder you recycle, Staples will give you $2.00 toward a new binder that you buy from the store. Not only does this offer an outlet for binder recycling, but it allows you to save money on new office supplies! Keep in mind that the $2.00 credit can only be applied to one new binder. So, if you turn in two old binders and buy one new one, you can’t have $4.00 toward that binder. It’s $2.00 per new binder. Go to this webpage to find out more on the offer. 

            Make sure you use your office supplies for as long as you can before buying new ones. I am currently reusing my binders from my senior year in high school for my freshman year of college. They were still in usable condition, so there was no reason to discard them for new ones. The same goes with folders and unfinished packs of loose-leaf paper. I had enough loose-leaf paper left over from my senior year of high school that I didn’t have to buy new paper for college. Always keep in mind how you can reduce your consumption of goods, and subsequently, your money expenditures.

Recycling Projects: Yoga Mat Recycling

Uses for Yoga Mats

         Does Mom have an old yoga mat she’s planning on throwing out? Don’t let her! There are many fun ways to repurpose a yoga mat. My floor RA showed me this awesome page featuring twenty ways to repurpose a yoga mat, and I picked two to display here on Viridorari. Be sure to visit the page to see many more creative projects!

         Decorative Bulletin Board

 Picture courtesy of: http://www.brit.co/20-creative-ways-to-repurpose-old-yoga-mats/  

      

         Supplies Needed:

         Old yoga mat (preferably colorful, especially for a girl’s room)

         Scissors

         Sewing pins (straight pins), duct tape (optional)

         Nails or Command products (to stick the board to a wall. Command products are less damaging than nails and allow easy removal)

Revealing September's Animal of the Month

My experience at an interactive zoo in Oklahoma this past summer inspired me to declare the tiger as September’s Animal of the Month. At the GW Interactive Zoo, I had a unique opportunity to see some of the world’s rarest tigers and hold and interact with two tiger cubs. To read about my experience and see pictures, check out this free write post.

            While tigers are perhaps one of the most well-known animals on earth, revered as majestic, and the subject of many literary and poetic pieces, as a species, they are on their last legs. There are six subspecies of tiger, all of which are endangered. This month, rather than focus on one subspecies, I will touch on all six. Here is an overview of each:

Free Write: The Garold Wayne Interactive Zoo

While visiting my family in Texas from July 20^th-24^th, I had the opportunity to visit the world’s largest animal rescue park, The Garold Wayne Interactive Zoo. My Aunt Jane, a frequent visitor of the park, generously drove us three hours from her home to Wynnewood, Oklahoma, where the park is located. She is always eager to introduce her friends and family to the park for the first time.

As we entered the park, I saw a sign that informed visitors that the cost to run the park and care for the animals for one month was $60,000, and that the park was entirely reliant on visitor donations and entry fees. As we traveled through the zoo, I saw countless signs hanging on animal’s enclosures asking passerby to sponsor them (starting at $25.00 a month).

Ecofriendly Economics & Harsh Facts: Oil Spills

Harsh Facts

The Exxon Valdez Spill of 1989 was often considered the worst oil spill ever before the BP Spill of 2010. Exxon Valdez leaked 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

Without taking the BP Spill into consideration, an average of one billion gallons of oil are spilled into the world’s oceans each year.

In the BP Gulf of Mexico Spill, 60,000 barrels (2.5 million gallons) of oil were leaked each day. On May 17^th, 2010, the slick was 130 miles long and 70 miles wide.

The cost of Gulf Oil Spill to BP as of June 14^th, 2010, was $1.6 billion. $1.5 billion is the estimated amount insurers paid as a result of the spill.

About 400 wildlife species were threatened by the BP Spill, including the 25 million birds that traverse the Gulf of Mexico each day. 

2,300 square miles out of a total 7,000 square miles of Louisiana coastal marshes and cypress forests have been damaged as a result of oil drilling. 

The United States consumes 19.5 million gallons of oil per day. 

One estimate expects that over its fifty year lifetime, the Keystone XL Pipeline will have about 91 significant tar sands oil spills (significant meaning at least fifty barrels).  

Picture courtesy of: http://justmytruth.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/the-ripple-effect/

Activism Spotlight: Protesting Arctic Drilling

Drilling in the Arctic is a big issue right now- the Arctic is one of the last great wildernesses in the world, and is home to polar bears, caribou, Arctic foxes, whales, seals, and much more. Not only does the Arctic house amazing creatures, but the ice reflects massive amounts of sunlight back into space, keeping the Earth cool. If we drill in the Arctic, we risk polluting and damaging an important ecosystem that is already melting away from global warming. As recently as this week, I’ve signed petitions demanding that the Arctic be left alone, along with thousands of other people. I’m sure many have sent letters and called their representatives on the issue. Several organizations are working hard to keep oil companies out of the North Pole.

However, six Greenpeace activists went above and beyond with their advocacy for the Arctic in London. They did much more than make a phone call or sign a petition. They made quite the scene: on July 11th, friends Wiola Smul, Ali Garrigan, Sabine Huyghe, Sandra Lamborn, Victoria Henry, and Liesbeth Deddens climbed the tallest building in Europe, the Shard, to protest drilling in the Arctic. They began their climb in the early morning and reached the top at approximately 7:10pm, where they were promptly arrested for aggravated trespass.

Harsh Facts & Ecofriendly Economics: Buy with a Conscience

Harsh Facts

Cigarettes are well known for their ability to cause major health issues, ranging from asthma, to cancer, and even to death. We are warned not smoke around our young children to prevent the negative effects of secondhand smoke, and students are taught to avoid tobacco products in school. However, cigarettes have another dangerous side effect that isn’t well known; pollution.

Worldwide, smokers discard 4.5 trillion cigarette butts each year.

Discarded cigarette butts enter our storm drains, and then watersheds, and from there they can potentially travel all the way to the ocean.

Every cigarette butt can contain up to sixty known carcinogens including arsenic, formaldehyde, chromium and lead. There are 1,400 potential chemical additives.

Nicotine has been shown to be lethal to species of fish, crustaceans, zooplankton, and other aquatic organisms.

Cigarette filters are also composed of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic that remains in the environment for long periods of time without breaking down.

For the past eight years (as of 1999), cigarette butts have been the leading item found during the International Coastal Cleanup Project, accounting for nearly one in every five items collected.

Do you smoke? If you are unable to quit, discard of your cigarette butts responsibly. Consider writing to tobacco companies to ask them to address the environmental impact of cigarettes, and consider writing to your local government to take cigarette litter seriously.

Weekly Green Challenge: Sign Petitions

I continued to repurpose this week! I found a use for one of my other candle jars, and I used a side of the second fan box to transform a clutter of pictures on my wall into an organized picture board. I plan on using the other side of the same box to make another picture board.

The candle jar became a cup for razors in my shower

The box

My cluttered wall of pictures from a trip to Quebec.

The finished product!

What did you repurpose/upcycle? Send me photos of your projects at viridorari@yahoo.com and I will feature them on the next Green Challenge post. Remember, Viridorari always wants to know about what you’re doing to be greener! Email me anytime with your accomplishments.

Suggested Reading: Thirteen Gold Monkeys

I will be forgoing "Activism Spotlight" today. I'm busy preparing for my departure to Texas tomorrow!

Suggested Reading

 Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at zoos and conservation programs? Have you ever heard about the release of captive animals into the wild, and wondered how it was done? Is wildlife conservation important to you? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you need to get your hands on a copy of Benjamin Beck’s Thirteen Gold Monkeys.

    Beck was a part of the first ever expedition to reintroduce zoo born golden lion tamarins from the United States into the wild coastal rainforests of Brazil. Between 1983 and 2005, Beck helped coordinate the release of 149 zoo born golden lion tamarins into the wild. Thirteen Gold Monkeys is the fictionalized account of Beck’s adventures with the first two of these reintroductions, in which the reader sees both the humans’ and the monkeys’ points of view. In the story, Beck gives us rare glimpses of what it takes to organize and run a zoo, the infinitely complicated process of preparing zoo animals for the wild, and the scientists’ and caretakers’ emotional entanglement with the animals they are responsible for.

Recycling Projects: Featuring Jennifer Kemper

Today, Viridorari's eighth Guest Writer, Jennifer Kemper, will provide you with four recycling projects!  I discovered Jennifer at an arts and crafts show in Cazenovia, NY.

Jennifer Kemper has been an artist and potter all of her life. Though pottery is her main work, she has fun using other media as well.  A junk-collector from early on, she learned through experimentation to make various things using items that might have been thrown away. Her creations include wind chimes, hurricane lamps, garden totems, terrariums, candles, jewelry, lampworked glass beads, masks, clothing, and more. Some of these items can be found on her website www.kemperpottery.webs.com.
You can also see her work at The Artisans Guild in Oneonta, NY and at her studio at 120 Taylor Rd, Morris, NY.

Ecofriendly Economics & Harsh Facts: Hurricanes

Harsh Facts

Hurricanes are the most destructive and violent natural weather events on Earth.

Hurricane Katrina flooded 80% of New Orleans, destroyed over 100,000 homes, and took the lives of nearly 2,000 people.

More than a dozen states were affected by Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy in 2012; the cost of the storm amounted to $18.75 billion in insured property losses.

On average, 90 tropical cyclones develop around the world each year. From these, on average, six hurricanes develop each year in the Atlantic, while nine hurricanes form in the Pacific. 

Hurricane season in the Atlantic is from June 1st to November 30th.  The Eastern Pacific season is longer, from May 15th to November 30th.

Typhoon Tip was the largest and most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded, with a diameter of 1,380 miles. To put that into perspective, here’s a picture comparing Tip to the continental United States:

Picture courtesy of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane#Classifications.2C_terminology.2C_and_naming 

Recent studies speculate that climate change and global warming will cause hurricanes to become strong and more frequent in the coming years.

Weekly Green Challenge: Upcycle 5 Things

I continued to ride my bike this week to nearby places. I totaled 14.6 miles, which equates to .67 gallons of gas in my car saved, and with current prices, $2.45 not spent. That may not seem like a lot, but look at this way: this EPA fact sheet says that burning one gallon of gas emits nearly twenty pounds of carbon dioxide. So, traveling .67 miles on my bike kept my car from belching more than ten pounds of carbon dioxide into the air. Imagine how many pounds of emissions could be spared each year if we all started to use our bikes more often!

Do you love riding your bike, whether it be for exercise, sport, your wallet, or the environment? Sign People for Bikes’ pledge, and help them reach their goal of one million pledges! The pledge shows that you’re committed to riding your bike, and it will help advocate for making towns and cities more bike friendly by adding bike lanes, paths, and trails. Be sure to change your badge to the type of bike you prefer to ride! When I signed, I picked the “commuter” bike. Which style will you pick?

Picture courtesy of: http://lajollavelo.com/

Now, on to this week’s Green Challenge! I had a lot of fun this week reusing and repurposing a few things, so for the coming week, I challenge you to repurpose or upcycle five items instead of throwing them away or recycling them.

Here’s a good tip for upcycling; when planning to repurpose something, don’t think about what you can make that object into. Try to think of something you need or want around the house, and then consider the alternative items you could make it from. Not only does upcycling keep items out of the landfill, but, hopefully, your upcycled item will actually be useful to you and your household.

Harsh Facts, Ecofriendly Economics: Homemade Products

Harsh Facts of the Week

These facts come from 350.org and their campaigns to curb global warming.

350 parts per million is what scientists and climate experts believe is the safe upper limit of how much carbon dioxide can be in our atmosphere. We recently broke 400 ppm.

Scientists and governments alike also agree that warming the Earth by 2 more degrees Celsius would create a catastrophic outcome.

We can emit 565 more gigatons of CO2 and stay below that disastrous 2˚C mark.

Fossil fuel corporations have enough fuel in their reserves to create 2,795 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions- almost five times the safe amount.

Picture courtesy of: http://www.carbonemissionstradingexchange.com/

These numbers are simple and straightforward. They tell us that we need to get off our butts and do something. We have no place for careless fossil fuel, oil, and coal burning in a liveable future. Enough said.

“The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. It is not only a mirror of ourselves, but a focusing lens on what we can become.” –Lady Bird Johnson

Suggested Reading & Activism Spotlight: Trash-Free Living

Activism Spotlight

“Every time you reach for the trash,” Amy said, “if you make that motion a conscious thing, [you realize that you] reach for the trash so many times a day. I really was kind of amazed.”

Imagine living for an entire year without producing garbage. Impossible, right?

Apparently not, because that’s exactly what a young professional couple, Amy and Adam Korst, did from July 6th, 2009 to July 6th, 2010. Their original goal was to produce no more than one garbage bag of waste, and instead, they ended up with only a shoebox full of items that could not be recycled, reduced, reused, or composted between the two of them. 

Picture courtesy of: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2010-07-21-trash_N.htm

In comparison, the average American produces 4.6 pounds of garbage daily, three pounds of which goes to a landfill. We recycle only 32% of our total waste, and we trash 99% of everything we buy within six months. So, according to these estimates and averages, the Korsts saved about 2,190 pounds of waste from the landfill, which is over a ton.

How did they do it?

Recycling Projects: Homemade Paper

Homemade Paper

I was considering recently ways to reuse paper scraps from the paper shredder. Some sites suggested using them as cushioning in packages, for gift bag stuffing, for Easter baskets, or for pet cage bedding. Well, I don’t send packages that need cushioning very often, Easter isn’t until next year, I don’t own any pets that would need cage bedding, and I imagine digging through confetti to find the gift in a bag would be very messy and annoying. Another thing, too: the people who receive the package, gift, or basket will most likely throw out the paper shreds right away. None of these solutions seemed like a very lasting reuse of paper shreds.

    Then, I stumbled across a tutorial for taking paper scraps and turning them back into full sheets of paper. The project is pretty messy, but it sounds really fun, and I can’t wait to try it myself. Not to mention, if you want, you can be creative and decorative with this project!

Picture courtesy of: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hand_made_paper.jpg

    Most steps in this project are pretty harmless, but I suggest supervising your kids for the sake of controlling the mess factor.

Materials needed

-Unwanted scrap paper- paper shreds, newspaper, old bills, junk mail, construction paper, etc.
-Blender
-Water
-Liquid starch (optional)
-Plain wooden frame to the size of the paper you want to make
-Window screening, cut larger than the size of the frame
-Staples or tacks
-Dishpan or plastic storage container large enough to fit the entire frame inside
-Pieces of felt or flannel fabric slightly larger than the wooden frame
-Sponge
-Cookie sheets
-Weight (bricks, phone books, dictionaries, etc.)
-Clothesline and clothespins (or just a safe place for drying)