As most of us move through our daily lives; talking on our cell phones, driving around town, buying groceries in supermarkets and living in heated and air-conditioned comfort, it is easy for us to forget that there is an entire world of people out there that have little to no idea what many of these experiences are like. In the landlocked, Southeast Asian country of Laos, there are many people who would fall into this category. For the most part isolated from the rest of the world by the rugged mountain forest terrain that makes up their home, they still live life much as their ancestors have for the last 5000 years. Subsisting by growing their mountain rice sans mechanical...
Like many people my age, I grew up riding a bicycle. It wasn’t just for fun, but was practical transportation from my rural home a few miles outside our small Wisconsin town to wherever I wanted to go from the age of 10 or so until I got my driver’s license. Now more and more people are biking, and the reasons are many and varied. After years riding a bike very sporadically (as evidenced by the dust and cobwebs I needed to clean off each time I took mine out of the garage), a few years ago I finally ditched my old 10-speed and got a new hybrid bike with a comfortable seat, which I’m trying to use more...
One of the most exciting (or depressing, I’m not sure which) aspects of my environmental journey is learning things I had no idea about. Sometimes I know a little (enough to be dangerous?), sometimes nothing at all. The topic of today’s blog falls into that “nothing at all” category. Have you ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP)? Well, neither had I until recently. Being a lifelong Midwesterner my initial reaction was “Nothing to do with me.” Turns out, it has a LOT to do with me, with all of us. We helped cause it, and we can help cure it. So what is this exactly? Actually it’s two areas in the Pacific – one between California...
I won my junior high school poster contest celebrating the first Earth Day. I've recycled for over 20 years. I follow family members around the house turning off lights and adjusting the thermostat. Those are just some of my bona fides as a suburban mom concerned about the environment who preaches (and practices) “Reduce, Reuse, And Recycle”. Therefore it was quite disconcerting to learn that my disgust for disposable plastic bags and support for banning them may be misplaced. Not that those annoying, flimsy plastic receptacles are good for much other than lining the pockets of those who make them. Au contraire. For one thing there are far too many of them – between 200 and 300 million bags...
by Colin Rojas An increasing number of people are now wanting to do their part to save the planet due to the worsening problems caused by global warming. Unfortunately, numerous people assume that going green is costly and time consuming. Read on to discover several immediate things you can do to get on on the path to living green. Recycling is the top way to start. A lot of people continue to place glass and aluminum items in their normal garbage even though recycling is not that hard to do today. In the US, it's not hard to locate a trash service that offers glass and aluminum recycling choices. Many people still continue to discard these items even though...
