Friday April 29, 2011
Today is National Arbor Day. If that's news to you, don't feel too bad. Even though Arbor Day has been around for 139 years, many people don't know much about it.
According to the 2011 Arbor Day Survey commissioned by Timberland, 76 percent of Americans don't know when Arbor Day is, 30 percent couldn't identify tree planting as the purpose of Arbor Day, and only 12 percent actually celebrate Arbor Day in any significant way.
Timberland, on the other hand, has taken Arbor Day to heart. The company has already planted more than a million trees around the world, and has pledged to plant 5 million more over the next five years--and you can get in on the action. Timberland is relaunching its Virtual Forest app on Facebook. Log on to plant a virtual tree, and Timberland will plant a real one in Haiti (up to a million trees).
If you're wondering whether planting trees is really worth the effort, the Enterprise Rent-a-Car Foundation, which is underwriting the planting of 50 million trees over 50 years in national forests around the United States and in countries worldwide, gathered a few facts about the benefits of trees in time for Arbor Day this year:
- One million trees can generate $162 billion worth of environmental benefits over 50 years. SOURCE: USDA Forest Service
- One million trees can absorb 1 million tons of CO2 during their lifetime. SOURCE: Carbon Day
- One million trees helps restore habitats of hundreds of species of animals, many of which are threatened or endangered. SOURCE: Arbor Day Foundation
- One million trees can provide oxygen for up to 4 million people in one day. SOURCE: Tree Canada Foundation
And like Timberland, Enterprise is making it easy for Earth-loving people to take part in Arbor Day by pledging to plant a tree (up to 50,000 trees) for Enterprise Facebook fans who commit to plant a tree of their own.
Even better, you can get directly involved in Arbor Day by grabbing a shovel and planting a well-chosen tree in your own community.
Graphic by Getty Images
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Thursday April 28, 2011
If you're going to be anywhere near Washington, DC, tomorrow, you may want to take part in a Save the Frogs Day rally outside EPA headquarters, where a coalition of environmentalists and concerned citizens will be calling for a federal ban on the herbicide Atrazine, a chemical that is doing serious damage to amphibian and fish populations and may be putting public health at risk.
The rally will start at 11 a.m. Protesters will march from EPA headquarters down 14th Street to Lafayette Park, near the White House, where they will celebrate and listen to speakers for an hour before dispersing at 2:30 p.m.
Atrazine, which is produced by the Swiss agrochemical company Syngenta, has been banned in the European Union since 2004, but 80 million pounds of the stuff is used each year in the United States, mostly as a weed killer for crops such as corn, sugarcane, rice and sorghum and on golf courses and lawns.
Atrazine may provide protection for crops and lawns, but it is a real problem for other species. The chemical is a potent endocrine disruptor that causes immunosuppression, hermaphroditism and even complete sex reversal in male frogs at concentrations as low as 2.5 parts per billion.
This problem is particularly acute, because amphibian populations worldwide have been declining at such unprecedented rates that, today, nearly one-third of the world's amphibian species are threatened with extinction. In addition, atrazine has been linked to reproductive defects in fish and prostate and breast cancer in laboratory rodents. Epidemiological studies also suggest that atrazine is a human carcinogen.
The public health issue is a growing concern, because atrazine is also the most commonly detected pesticide in American groundwater. An extensive U.S. Geological Survey study found atrazine in approximately 75 percent of stream water and about 40 percent of groundwater samples in the agricultural areas tested. More recent data showed atrazine present in 80 percent of drinking water samples taken from 153 public water systems.
Atrazine is not only widely present in the environment, it is also unusually persistent. Fifteen years after France stopped using atrazine, the chemical can still be detected there. Every year, more than half a million pounds of atrazine caught in the airstream during spraying falls back to Earth in rain and snow, later seeping into streams and groundwater.
The EPA re-registered atrazine in 2006 and deemed it safe, saying that it posed no health risks for humans. The NRDC and other environmental organizations question that conclusion, pointing out that the EPA's inadequate monitoring systems and weak regulations have allowed atrazine levels in watersheds and drinking water to reach extremely high concentrations, which certainly puts public health in question and possibly at serious risk.
The EPA is currently reviewing the hazards associated with atrazine. The agency is not required to make a decision regarding the safety and legality of atrazine until 2012. Rally organizers are hoping to influence, and perhaps accelerate, that decision.
If you can't make the rally, you can still sign a petition asking the EPA to ban the use of atrazine in the United States.
Tree frog photo by Getty Images
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Thursday April 21, 2011
thredUP, the nationwide online mom-to-mom swapping service that makes it easy for mothers to trade and recycle children's clothes, books and toys, is celebrating Earth Day by offering a free $13.95 swap credit to anyone who signs up on April 22.
The Earth Day discount is the culmination of thredUP's weeklong GreenUP for Earth Day initiative, which is promoting eco-conscious family living through a series of green lifestyle articles published by thredUP content co-directors and former Martha Stewart Living editors Michele Adams and Gia Russo. In addition, thredUP is also offering a $5 listing credit this week to parents who trade in their gently used kid products.
"Kids outgrow clothes in a matter of months and tire of new toys in a matter of minutes. There's a lot of waste in this industry," Adams said.
There's also a lot of pollution. Every step of the clothing life cycle is potentially harmful to the environment. Hazardous emissions are generated during manufacturing and more than 20 billion pounds of clothing and textiles end up in U.S. landfills annually.
Founded in 2010, thredUP aims to combat the massive waste and inefficiency in the children's clothing market by giving parents a green alternative. Since then, more than 100,000 mothers have joined thredUP to exchange boxes of stuff their kids no longer use items they actually need. Over the past year, thredUP has helped parents up-cycle more than half a million children's items.
"We launched thredUP to eliminate friction around recycling children's goods," said CEO James Reinhart. "We've built a platform that connects your needs with another mom's haves, and does all the hard work to make the trade happen. Turns out, when recycling is easy, affordable and delivered with a touch of serendipity, it can be pretty fun."
Image courtesy of thredUP
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Wednesday April 20, 2011
One year ago today, the BP Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig exploded and caught fire, killing 11 workers and later sinking, setting in motion the largest accidental marine oil spill in world history and one of the worst U.S. environmental disasters on record.
By the time the ruptured underwater oil well was finally capped some five months after the accident, following numerous failed attempts to stop the leak and a public relations barrage of misinformation by oil giant BP, approximately 4.9 million gallons of crude oil had spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. Chemical dispersants used in efforts to clean up the spill forced much of the oil to sink, destroying the region's shrimp and oyster fisheries, and putting sea turtles and dolphins at risk. Much of the remaining oil surged into coastal wetlands and marshes, contaminating the nesting areas of many bird species and disrupting migratory patterns.
Today, congressional and Gulf Coast Republicans complain about President Obama's restrictions on offshore oil drilling, claiming economic hardship for the oil industry and its employees, while virtually ignoring the plight of fishermen who are still unable to earn a living, the health effects continuing to emerge among clean-up workers, and the environmental damage that scientists say may take decades to fully assess.
The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill left a stain of serious environmental and economic problems along the Gulf Coast. Pretending they don't exist won't make them go away, and claiming that the only real victim is the industry that caused the problems won't provide solutions.
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