Earth hour

One hour of last Saturday was known as earth hour. Earth hour is when people and companys turned off their power to save energy.  People all over the country turned their lights off for that one hour. Chicago saved an estimated 420 tons of carbon dioxide. That is saving a lot of energy! This helped the earth a lot. If you missed this great event, try having one of your own.  Pick a day and turn off your power for an hour.  Let me know how it goes.

       This is Addison, signing off. 

Oh,Give Me a Habitat!

That's what most animals want. A habitat. A habitat is the place where a plant or animal naturally lives and grows. Different animals live in different places. For example,a frogs habitat is wetlands. Most animals don't want one, they need one. People destroy the animals home and drive all the animals  off  . One way to stop it is writing letters to different people, like the following:

the new president

state legislators 

governor

If we reduce our destruction, endangered animals will be helped physically and naturally.

This is Addison, signing off.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Did you know that our oceans are not clean? In the middle of the ocean, there is a huge patch of garbage.  This is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  The Pacific Ocean has a clockwise circle of currents that traps the garbage in the center where the winds can't get it.  This garbage patch is the size of a continent and goes 100 feet down into the ocean.  It is full of  millions of pounds of garbage.  (See How Stuff Works)

The garbage patch is made up of little pieces of floating plastic.  This creates problems for marine creates and humans.  It effects the entire food chain, because little fish eats the plastic, bigger fish eat the little fish, birds or humans then eat those fish!    Another problem is birds are choking or feeding plastic to their young.  

So where does this trash come from?  80% of this trash comes from land.  

So what can you do?  Recycle, recycle, re-re-re-recycle!  Another way is to stop using plastic bags.  We can also encourage our legislatures to pass laws to keep our environment plastic free.

This problem isn't going to go away.  But, we can keep it from getting worse by encouraging friends and neighbors to do their part.

This is Addison. Signing off.

One Month Anniversary

I have been blogging for one month now.  In that month, I have learned new things.  When I started this blog I wanted to inform my readers about the earth, but it looks like you have informed me about great ideas and new things.

I am grateful for all the things you have taught me with your comments.

Here are some of the things I have learned:

1.  Plastics can be dangerous for sea animals.

2.  There is a great garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (I'll write more about this later.)

3. Thanks to Aunt Amanda I learned that some dish soaps have petroleum in them.

4. I learned that incandescent light bulbs are harmful.

5. A lot of things we buy have a package - most things in fact!

Thank you for informing me about things you found.  I want to keep writing and learning things about the earth.

This is Addison, signing off.

Packaging Scavenger Hunt

Here is a fun challenge. How much aluminum, cardboard, cellophane, foil, paper, plastic, and styrofoam is used to package the foods you eat?

Look through your cupboards and refrigerator. See how many foods you can find with no wrapping, with one wrapping, with two wrappings, and with three or more wrappings. List the foods you find on a chart. Share with me what you find.

FOODS WITH NO WRAPPING: (example: apples, bananas)

FOODS WITH ONE WRAPPING: (example: bread)

FOODS WITH TWO WRAPPINGS: (example: cereal)

FOODS WITH THREE OR MORE WRAPPINGS: (example: microwave dinners)

Plastic Bags in California

Good news! One of our California State Legistators, Loyd E Levine, is trying to make it so you have to pay to use plastic bags. If that is passed, you will have to pay 15cents to use a plastic bag. This is to encourage people to use paper or bring their own bags. This could really help save tooons of oil! Here is a link to his website so you can write to him and tell him you support the idea.

This is Addison, signing off.

Vegetable-based soap vs. Regular soap

This a very important message. Some regular soaps have PETROLEUM. That's really bad. Vegetable-based soaps do not, so they are better for the earth.

Regular soap uses a precious resource, oil. Oil is a non-renewable resource and it is becoming scare. We use oil on a daily basis. Cars,electricity, airplanes,trains,plastics and many more items use oil. The more oil we save the better we preserve our earth.

Petroleum is also toxic. Imagine using petroleum on your dishes where your food goes! Wouldn't you be a lot better off using vegetable based soap?

My mom, after learning about this, said she would switch to using vegetable based soaps and cleaning products. She was also invited to a "healthy home experience" party. She is going to learn about products that are better for the earth. I'll post again about this after the party.

Here is what one soap making company said:
"If every household in the U.S. replaced just one bottle of 25 oz petroleum based dishwashing liquid with our 25 oz vegetable based product, we could save 81,000 barrels of oil, enough to heat and cool 4,600 U.S. homes for a year!"

Do you want to switch? Tell me if have and how you like it.

This is Addison,signing off until next time. See ya!