I’m not Irish, but I love GREEN!

Mother Nature can be annoying for some athletes when the weather doesn’t cooperate on game-day.  One of the major reasons many collegiate and professional sports are being played on artificial turf is an attempt to take Mother Nature out of the equation. 

“It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature” was a line used in a commercial many years ago showing the wrath of Mother Nature when Chiffon was able to create a spread that tasted just like butter.  However, on June 25, 2008, Jane Akre posted an article on InjuryBoard that used this tagline in her exploration of the potential harmful effects of the lead that shows up in the artificial turf on athletic fields.

http://feeds.injuryboard.com/IBNationalNews is a website dedicated to personal safety, injury prevention and recovery.  Their interest in the lead in artificial turf is because, as Akre points out, the CDC (Center for Disease Control) estimates that lead levels are elevated in more than 300,000 children in this country.  The real concern comes because tests have revealed lower IQ scores, memory problems, hyperactivity and behavioral problems in children who have had excessive lead exposure.  Read the rest of this entry »

What is the best way to get children involved in environmental projects?  SustainLane and the Earth Day organization are proving that animation can get them very interested.  Kijani is an 800-pound visionary gorilla that left the Congo to live in a magical San Francisco greenhouse.  He joined up with four kids from around the world to create a sustainable earth. Kijani means green in Swahili, but the kids call him “KJ”.

“Gorilla in the Greenhouse” is an action-filled animated web site (www.greengorilla.com).  It was released on Earth Day, April 22, 2008.  The pilot episode (“The Great Pacific Garbage Patch”) features the Greenhouse Gang uncovering an island of plastic bags in the Pacific.  This adventure inspires the gang to start taking actions towards a healthier environment.  The web site is very creative and uses music to motivate other children to join in their cause. 

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In “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the 1700’s, men on a long voyage began to run out of drinking water.  Even though they were surrounded by water, it was seawater causing them to say, “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”  Is it possible that we might have a similar concern about the lack of drinking water in the future?

Elizabeth Royte, an environmentally focused researcher and reporter, has written several books about the “greening” of America.  Her first two books were Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash and The Tapir’s Morning Bath: Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest and the Scientists Who Are Trying to Solve Them.  Recently she has also authored Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It, and discussed her book with Dr. Mehmet Oz on his radio show on XM channel 156.

Royte grieved over the fact that Americans throw away over 30 billion water bottles a year.  Additionally, she offered some startling statistics:

• U.S. water sales jumped from $115 million in 1990 to $4 billion in 1997.

•Sales increased a shocking 170 percent from 1997 to $10.8 billion in 2006.

•Bottled water is now a $60 billion-a-year business worldwide.

•Per person consumption of water went from 5.7 gallons in 1987 to 27.6 gallons in 2006.   Read the rest of this entry »

“Eco-education doesn’t have to be expensive,” wrote Daniel Stone in the September 15, 2008 Newsweek magazine.  In his article, “Getting an Early Start,” he described how environmental learning is not just about climate change or the “plight” of the earth.  Innovative teachers with “green lesson plans” focus on the natural world as a basis for their lessons in a variety of subjects. 

Stone gives an example of a classroom studying a stream by incorporating the study of language, math and social studies.  He also pointed out studies from the State Education and Environment Roundtable reporting, “students exposed to a nature-based curriculum score higher more than 90 percent of the time than students taught the same subjects in the classroom out of a textbook.”

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