It's Earth Week!
Sunday, April 18, 2010
This daily calendar is a helpful reminder of all of the ways we can help our children learn about the earth and little reminders of the simple things we can do in our daily lives to protect our planet.
Monday
Today is the beginning of Earth Week. Start out the week with walking to school or riding bikes and scooters. If you live to far away carpool!
Did you know by reducing the number of miles you drive by walking, biking, carpooling or taking mass transit wherever possible. Avoiding just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year! Start a carpool with your coworkers or classmates. Sharing a ride with someone just 2 days a week will reduce your carbon dioxide emissions by 1,590 pounds a year.
Pack your children’s lunches, snacks and beverages in reusable containers did you know that most products we buy cause greenhouse gas emissions in one or another way, e.g. during production and distribution. By taking your lunch in a reusable lunch box instead of a disposable one, you save the energy needed to produce new lunch boxes.
Single-serve bottled water is the fastest growing beverage of choice in the United States. Nearly 2.5 billion bottles of water a year are sold in New York alone— stacked up end to end, they’d reach the moon!
Tuesday
Time to review our homes, are we doing our best for mother earth?
Replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (cfl)CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
Install a programmable thermostat.Programmable thermostats will automatically lower the heat or air conditioning at night and raise them again in the morning. They can save you $100 a year on your energy bill.
Move your thermostat down 2° in winter and up 2° in summer.Almost half of the energy we use in our homes goes to heating and cooling. You could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple adjustment.
Choose energy efficient appliances when making new purchasesLook for the Energy Star label on new appliances to choose the most energy efficient products available.
Do not leave appliances on standby.Use the "on/off" function on the machine itself. A TV set that's switched on for 3 hours a day and in standby mode during the remaining 21 hours uses about 40% of its energy in standby mode.
Buy a Fireplace plug it’s a simple way to save. Did you know that 30% of the energy that is used to heat or cool a house is lost through bad insulation or fireplaces. This is a huge amount that you could otherwise be saving and spending elsewhere, and with a few simple steps you can purchase a product that will help you save this money every year. A fireplace plug is like an inflated pillow that will seal your fireplaces chimney and stop the heat from escaping from there. It is made from heat resistant and durable materials so it will last for a long time once it is installed and will pay back the investment you make in it many times over.
Wednesday
Let’s make some healthy choices of the food we intake and serve our
families. Buy locally grown and produced foods. The average meal in the United States travels 1,200 miles from the farm to your plate. Buying locally will save fuel and keep money in our community.
Buy fresh foods instead of frozen. Frozen food uses 10 times more energy to produce.
Seek out and support local farmers marketsThey reduce the amount of energy required to grow and transport the food to you by one fifth. Seek farmer’s markets in our area, and go for them.
Buy organic foods as much as possible. Organic soils capture and store carbon dioxide at much higher levels than soils from conventional farms. If we grew all of our corn and soybeans organically, we’d remove 580 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere!
Eat less meat- Methane is the second most significant greenhouse gas and cows are one of the greatest methane emitters. Their grassy diet and multiple stomachs cause them to produce methane, which they exhale with every breath.
Thursday
Wow we are making great changes this week, let’s keep it up!
These are a few simple changes we can make for our childrens health. Our children are exposed to high levels of PVC (polyvinyl chloride often contains phthalates) through the many household items they come into contact with. PVC is the smell of that new shower curtain smell and also new car smell. Let’s make a change today and try to remove these items out of our homes.
Look through toys with the #3 and ditch them those are usually the hard plastic toys. Choose art supplies that say non-toxic and certified by the Art & Creative Materials Institute (ACMI).
Put dust mite covers around your pillows and mattresses when you can purchase organic beddings. Check out these websites: Ecobedroom, Lifekind, Greensleep.
There are so many more but this is a beginning.
Friday
It’s the end of the week and we want to do something
Time to have some down time. Rent a movie rather than buying new and use a hot air popper rather than microwave popcorn. You can season it yourself and there are no chemicals. By renting the movie you saved on packaging from buying new.
Saturday
It’s time to get out on the yard and play.
Everyone loves a lawn that looks like a golf course but if you are using chemicals to get that lawn green maybe today is the day to reconsider your lawn care practices. Of 30 commonly used lawn pesticides, 19 are linked with cancer or carcinogencity, 13 are linked with birth defects, 21 with reproductive effects, 26 with liver or kidney damage, 15 with neurotoxicity, and 11 with disruption of the endocrine (hormonal) system.
Of those same 30 lawn pesticides, 17 are detected in groundwater, 23 have the ability to leach into drinking water sources, 24 are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms vital to our ecosystem, 11 are toxic to bees, and 16 are toxic to birds. With numbers like this, the only logical question becomes: is this really necessary and what can we do to stop or prevent this kind of contamination?
Sunday
It’s the last day of Earth Week!
Time to do some cleaning and the windows are a great start. Many brand name cleaners are beginning to offer environmentally friendly versions of their glass cleaners, but perhaps one of the greenest of all is to use a simple solution of 2 tbsp white vinegar in a gallon of water, with crumbled up newspapers wipe out those smudgy fingerprints in seconds and think of all of the paper towels you’ve saved. If vinegar isn't your thing lemon juice or club soda are good alternatives. Plant a tree and celebrate both our Earth and your family.
Monday
Today is the beginning of Earth Week. Start out the week with walking to school or riding bikes and scooters. If you live to far away carpool!
Did you know by reducing the number of miles you drive by walking, biking, carpooling or taking mass transit wherever possible. Avoiding just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year! Start a carpool with your coworkers or classmates. Sharing a ride with someone just 2 days a week will reduce your carbon dioxide emissions by 1,590 pounds a year.
Pack your children’s lunches, snacks and beverages in reusable containers did you know that most products we buy cause greenhouse gas emissions in one or another way, e.g. during production and distribution. By taking your lunch in a reusable lunch box instead of a disposable one, you save the energy needed to produce new lunch boxes.
Single-serve bottled water is the fastest growing beverage of choice in the United States. Nearly 2.5 billion bottles of water a year are sold in New York alone— stacked up end to end, they’d reach the moon!
Tuesday
Time to review our homes, are we doing our best for mother earth?
Replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (cfl)CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
Install a programmable thermostat.Programmable thermostats will automatically lower the heat or air conditioning at night and raise them again in the morning. They can save you $100 a year on your energy bill.
Move your thermostat down 2° in winter and up 2° in summer.Almost half of the energy we use in our homes goes to heating and cooling. You could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple adjustment.
Choose energy efficient appliances when making new purchasesLook for the Energy Star label on new appliances to choose the most energy efficient products available.
Do not leave appliances on standby.Use the "on/off" function on the machine itself. A TV set that's switched on for 3 hours a day and in standby mode during the remaining 21 hours uses about 40% of its energy in standby mode.
Buy a Fireplace plug it’s a simple way to save. Did you know that 30% of the energy that is used to heat or cool a house is lost through bad insulation or fireplaces. This is a huge amount that you could otherwise be saving and spending elsewhere, and with a few simple steps you can purchase a product that will help you save this money every year. A fireplace plug is like an inflated pillow that will seal your fireplaces chimney and stop the heat from escaping from there. It is made from heat resistant and durable materials so it will last for a long time once it is installed and will pay back the investment you make in it many times over.
Wednesday
Let’s make some healthy choices of the food we intake and serve our
families. Buy locally grown and produced foods. The average meal in the United States travels 1,200 miles from the farm to your plate. Buying locally will save fuel and keep money in our community.
Buy fresh foods instead of frozen. Frozen food uses 10 times more energy to produce.
Seek out and support local farmers marketsThey reduce the amount of energy required to grow and transport the food to you by one fifth. Seek farmer’s markets in our area, and go for them.
Buy organic foods as much as possible. Organic soils capture and store carbon dioxide at much higher levels than soils from conventional farms. If we grew all of our corn and soybeans organically, we’d remove 580 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere!
Eat less meat- Methane is the second most significant greenhouse gas and cows are one of the greatest methane emitters. Their grassy diet and multiple stomachs cause them to produce methane, which they exhale with every breath.
Thursday
Wow we are making great changes this week, let’s keep it up!
These are a few simple changes we can make for our childrens health. Our children are exposed to high levels of PVC (polyvinyl chloride often contains phthalates) through the many household items they come into contact with. PVC is the smell of that new shower curtain smell and also new car smell. Let’s make a change today and try to remove these items out of our homes.
Look through toys with the #3 and ditch them those are usually the hard plastic toys. Choose art supplies that say non-toxic and certified by the Art & Creative Materials Institute (ACMI).
Put dust mite covers around your pillows and mattresses when you can purchase organic beddings. Check out these websites: Ecobedroom, Lifekind, Greensleep.
There are so many more but this is a beginning.
Friday
It’s the end of the week and we want to do something
Time to have some down time. Rent a movie rather than buying new and use a hot air popper rather than microwave popcorn. You can season it yourself and there are no chemicals. By renting the movie you saved on packaging from buying new.
Saturday
It’s time to get out on the yard and play.
Everyone loves a lawn that looks like a golf course but if you are using chemicals to get that lawn green maybe today is the day to reconsider your lawn care practices. Of 30 commonly used lawn pesticides, 19 are linked with cancer or carcinogencity, 13 are linked with birth defects, 21 with reproductive effects, 26 with liver or kidney damage, 15 with neurotoxicity, and 11 with disruption of the endocrine (hormonal) system.
Of those same 30 lawn pesticides, 17 are detected in groundwater, 23 have the ability to leach into drinking water sources, 24 are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms vital to our ecosystem, 11 are toxic to bees, and 16 are toxic to birds. With numbers like this, the only logical question becomes: is this really necessary and what can we do to stop or prevent this kind of contamination?
Sunday
It’s the last day of Earth Week!
Time to do some cleaning and the windows are a great start. Many brand name cleaners are beginning to offer environmentally friendly versions of their glass cleaners, but perhaps one of the greenest of all is to use a simple solution of 2 tbsp white vinegar in a gallon of water, with crumbled up newspapers wipe out those smudgy fingerprints in seconds and think of all of the paper towels you’ve saved. If vinegar isn't your thing lemon juice or club soda are good alternatives. Plant a tree and celebrate both our Earth and your family.
