Sunday, March 21, 2010

It's a Plastiki-World Water-Bottled Water-Earth Hour Kind of Week

It's a pretty cool week this week, environmentally speaking.  A lot going on:

1.  The Plastiki set sail yesterday, on it's 100 day journey from San Fran to Sydney via the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  Both the Plastiki website's blog (http://www.plastiki.com/) and David de Rothschild's twitter tweets (which are here http://twitter.com/DRexplore & on Plastiki's home page) are great places to follow their adventure a la plastic bottle boat to the watery sea swirl o'plastic.  Love this picture of them from their site:
 
From http://www.flickr.com/photos/plastiki/ with the caption:  "The Plastiki crew - David de Rothschild, Jo Royle, David Thomson, Olav Heyerdahl, Vern Moen and Max Jourdan - waving farewell to San Francisco as they leave for their 100 day trip to Sydney.  ~Courtesy of Luca Babini" 

2.  Tomorrow  (March 22nd) is World Water Day.  This United Nations globally-celebrated day sprouted out of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro's United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.  www.worldwaterday.org is a fabulous place to go to learn more about this "enviro-holiday."  Here are some pretty startling water facts from "The Everything Green Classroom Book" by Tessa Hill, president of Kids for Saving Earth (http://www.kidsforsavingearth.org/  which is an equally great place to go for teaching/informational resources!):
  • Although 70% of the Earth is water, only 3% of that water is fresh.  Take away that which is frozen at both poles, that leaves less than 1% of our planetary water supply fresh and available.  
     
  • Given nearly 7 billion people are living on this sphere of ours, that's a lot of water to share.  In fact, approx1.1 billion people in the world don't have the ability to get safe, clean drinking water.  In eye-opening real numbers, that's 1 in 6 people, folks. 
Clearly, water is a precious commodity.  Now insert in that picture bottled water.  More numbers to make your head spin from "The Everything Green Classroom Book:"
  • 29,000,000,000 (that's billion with a "B") plastic water bottles are made in the US per year.  That's our global population x 4.5.     
  • What are those bottles made from?  Petroleum.  Crude Oil.  A non-renewable resources that could be going other, more necessary places.  17 million barrels of it in fact.
  • Over 85% of those water bottles aren't recycled.  Gee, where do they wind up?  Yep, the landfill or, according to http://www.plastiki.com/, about 50% of those plastics out there find their way to the ocean.  Given that plastic takes over 1000 years to decompose, and even then not 100% (leaving little plastic bits called "nurdles" which sea life eats), we've got problems left and right with this system.
So...enter our return friend, Annie LeonardDebuting on World Water Day ~ tomorrow! ~ is her latest creation in the Story of Stuff movie format:  The Story of Bottled Water.    Here's the trailer:  http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater-teaser/.   Pretty good day to "make a splash!"
3).  Okay, so if the Plastiki embarking AND World Water Day AND a New Story of Stuff movie coming out aren't enough, rounding out the week on Saturday night (March 27th) is Earth Hour (http://www.earthhour.org/).  Another global event to make another move toward global awareness.  Last year, one of their themes was to "Vote Earth" by using your light switch as your ballot box.  By turning off your lights from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm during the Earth Hour eve, you show your support in favor of a more conscious, green way of living.  It's another way one individual's actions can make a difference to support the sustainability of our home planet...especially since it's the only one we have. 
So here's what your "To Do List" should look like:
  • Keep track of Plastiki.
  • Pay attention to your water usage.
  • Watch "The Story of Bottled Water" and share it all around.
  • Flick off your lights Saturday night from 8:30 to 9:30 pm to let your vote be heard. 

"Water for All" picture from:  http://www.portlandroasting.com/files/4786WFA-logonew.jpg 
"Light switch" photo from: http://activerain.com/image_store/uploads/5/2/4/8/2/ar123601583728425.jpg

2 comments :

  1. I love the check list aspect! How appropriate that it is raining all day on "Water Day" in sunny Florida. I'll be watching the updates on Plastiki - so cool!

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  2. "Drink" in that FL water! Think of all the good things it'll bring down the pike! Thanks for being there...now and always!

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