The Perfect Project: Learn Something, Give Something, Get Something and Have Fun

Visit http://www.nwf.org for your own registration kit.

The school year will end this week and, with that ending comes a beginning. The Hippie family is embarking on a whole new adventure.  My sweet 3rd-grader will be home schooled.  If you’re new to LHM and wondering why on earth such incredibly rational folks like us (teehee) would choose to make such an unconventional decision you can read all 100 reasons.

Knowing that I have the massive responsibility of my child’s educational future resting on my own shoulders has made me VERY alert for wonderful learning opportunities.  One such chance came to my attention recently and I’m excited to share it with you.

The National Wildlife Federation offers a very cool program in which your outdoor space – be it a farm, forest or 2nd floor balcony – can become a “Certified Wildlife Habitat.”  There are five requirements:

1) Provide a food source for native wildlife.  This can include nuts, berries, nectar, seeds or native plants.

2) Provide a water source: a bird bath, fountain, stream, pond, etc. (Hmmm…. an art project to build a stone bird bath?  Or even better… a motorized fountain?)

3) Provide shelter: a wooded area, a bird house, rock pile, thicket, or other natural cover.  (I’m thinking that there is a math lesson in the measuring and fractions involved in building a bird house.)

4) Provide a place to raise young: Mature trees, Nesting Box, Host Plants for caterpillars, cave, water garden, etc.

5) Send NWF a check for $20.  OK… obviously this is a fundraising thing for them.  But I’ve got no problem with that.  It’s a win-win, I say.

How simple and totally fun is that?  I’m so excited!

For our efforts we get:

1) A very cool chance to talk about, explore, and research the plants, animals and insects native to our area.

2) The opportunity to teach about the importance of caring for the planet and ALL of its inhabitants.

3) A certificate for our wildlife habitat.

4) A free one-year membership to NWF which includes a subscription to National Wildlife magazine and 10% discount on their merchandise.

5) A subscription to Wildife Online.

6) A press release for our local newspaper (I’m thinking… another learning opportunity about advertising & media?)

7) Inclusion in NWF’s National Registry of Habitats.

And for an additional $30, a very cool weather-proof recycled aluminum yard sign.

In the fall, when we start working on this project in earnest, I will share a bit more about exactly what we are doing to meet the stated requirements.  In the meantime, I’m keeping an eye out for other fun educational projects to add to our non-school year.  Any suggestions?

One Less

I confess!  I’m guilty!  I admit it!  I do it every day.  Pretty much every waking hour. I allow my children to do it. I watch my husband do it.   I am worse than many (though, perhaps, better than some). I am so accustomed to doing it that I don’t even realize I’m doing it most of the time.

I’m a waster.  A garbage-producer.  A consumer of disposable stuff. A taker of more than I need.

I was clicking on random internet stuff while half watching the morning news and nursing my first cup of coffee when I came across the website www.50waystohelp.com. That sounded right up my alley.  So I browsed through. Many of the 50 ways were pretty common.  If you’ve been out of your cave in the past ten years you’ve heard that the “pigtail” lightbulbs save energy.  If you haven’t been out of your cave in 10 years your carbon footprint is probably already pretty small so you don’t really need to worry about it!

But one idea really caught my eye.  It said, “use one less paper napkin.”

Apparently, the average American uses 2,200 paper napkins per year, or about 6 per day.  One less per person per day would mean approximately 313,000,000 napkins EACH DAY that don’t end up in the landfill.  Just in the USA.  Whoa.  That’s a lot!  And it’s not even taking into account the environmental impact of producing & marketing all those napkins.  I don’t know how many times I’ve gone out for fast food with my kids, grabbed a handful of napkins, knowing that my little hippies would be head-to-toe in ketchup and pasteurized, processed cheese food. Turns out, they don’t spill a drop and I throw all those perfectly clean napkins in the trash.  Just this morning there was a spill on the floor and I reached for a paper napkin to clean it up. As I type this my son’s nebulizer equipment is drying on a paper napkin on my kitchen counter.

Well!  If I can help good ol’ mama Earth by using just ONE LESS napkin, what else could I use just ONE less of?

How about one less plastic water bottle each day.  I know.   Plastic water bottles are the devil’s work and all that.  I get it. I do.  But I’m a LAZY hippie.  Remember?  It’s so EASY to grab a bottle of water on my way out the door!  It’s a bad habit that I will break someday. But not today.  But maybe just ONE less? Sure.  I can do that!  JUST ONE is easy!

Anything else?  Well…. I bet I could use one less gallon of gas each week.  If I use one less gallon of gas do I get to spend my saved $3.89 on a fancy coffee?  Mmmm.  That’s good motivation right there!

Can I use one less piece of paper each day? Sure! I can’t imagine how often I’ve printed something I didn’t REALLY need, or used a fresh piece of paper to make a list or write a “note to self” instead of using a scrap.

I could probably eat one less pound of beef each month.  It wouldn’t really be so hard to have a meatless meal once or twice a week.

I could use one less plastic baggie each day by putting my daughter’s snacks in re-usable containers.

Obviously, recycling helps with the issue of waste.  But it doesn’t remove the core problem.  We, so very often, take much more than we NEED. Then, when we can’t use it all we just toss it away.  Conservation really starts with being conscious of what we are doing.  Maybe, if we all stopped and asked ourselves, “Can I do with just ONE less of this or that?” the whole world would breathe a sigh of relief.

What can you live with just ONE less of this week?

2 Minutes to Save the Planet

Earlier this week I read one of those blogs (not unlike my own) that was all about simple things we can all do to help improve the environment.  This particular writer proposed something very simple that I’d never heard before.  ”Save approximately 5 gallons of water a day by cutting 2 minutes from your shower time.” (Forgive me, but I can’t remember where I read this.)

Huh.  2 minutes?  Well.  That’s not so much.  Especially for someone like me who can languish in a hot shower for the entire length of an episode of Yo! Gabba Gabba!  (This is how I measure uninterrupted time.  Yes, I use ‘the electronic babysitter.’ Judge me if you must.)

So then I started to think about a science lesson from the 5th grade.  Our teacher grossed us all out by informing us that the same water has been on Earth forever. Therefore we routinely drink dinosaur pee.  To a 10-year-old this is a VERY memorable statement!

So, if the water never actually GOES anywhere, why do I need to worry about these extra 2 minutes?  (I know. Some of you are smarter than me and are amazed at my ignorance right now.  But give me some credit.  At least I’m learning and not just languishing in my ignorant bliss.)  I waited for nap time and then turned on my trusty old (OLD) Vaio and asked this very question.  This is what I learned:

Only 1% of the world’s water is fresh (not salt) and unfrozen and in a useable state.  My teacher was right…. the water cycle moves this same water from the earth to the clouds to the earth again over and over.  BUT when we take too much, in an unnatural way it causes the underground aquifers to run dry. In turn this dries up the lakes, rivers, ponds, etc fed by those unseen streams.  This can (and has in many places) wreak havoc on the local ecosystems.  It can also cause those aquifers closest to the oceans to become salty, making them unfit for our use.

FURTHER, those treatment plants that we put so much faith in can only treat limited amounts of water.  So if everyone uses too much, too fast the extra, untreated stuff goes straight back into the ground/river/lake or wherever (depending on your municipality). OK. So, now think about what you washed down the pipes today.  Laundry soap? Nasty food scraps from last night’s dishes? And whatever was flushed?  Now think about that being dumped directly, without treatment into the same lakes and oceans where you take your vacation.  GROSS!!!!!

AND there are a great deal of chemicals involved in cleaning all the above mentioned grossness out of the water so that you can turn your tap on tomorrow and get some clear, clean H2O.   All those chemicals remain in the water, seep into the dirt, leech into the crops and then into us.  Because that’s what we need.  MORE chemicals in our bodies.

As if that’s not enough, there is electricity needed to run the treatment plants and the pumps and all that good stuff.  Electricity that, in most areas, is still made by burning fossil fuels.  Which create pollution.  Which seeps into the water…..

You get the idea.

Back to the 2 minute thing.

I looked up how many showers the average American takes each year.   I am, apparently, grossly dirty compared to my neighbors because I only take 4 or 5 a week.  The average in the USA is EIGHT.  That’s right… more showers than there are days in a week.  Australians take even more!  (A little side note: there are some SERIOUS drought issues in Australia right now.  Coincidence?  Hmmm…) So, if the population of the USA is about 312,000,000 and each person saved 16 minutes per week in the shower that would be nearly 12,480,000,000 gallons of water EACH WEEK!  And that’s JUST in the USA.

THAT’S A LOT OF WATER!

So, thank you, fellow blogger, for opening my eyes!  I will, indeed, strive to take a shorter shower.  I hope you all will do so as well.  And, while you’re in there, being a little quicker than you were yesterday, give thanks that you have the luxury of clean, clear water on tap.  There are many in the world who don’t.  Let us never take this gift for granted!