Huakailani Hui Supports "I Love Kailua Town Party"
Earth Day was not a one day focus at Huakailani School. The girls at Huakailani School in Kailua have been focusing on reducing their carbon footprints on the Earth all month and have pledged to make it not only a year long, but a life-long focus. In April, the school joined over 2,000 schools across the nation for National Green Week with the combined goal to eliminate two million pounds of waste in one week.
The girls and their families have made a commitment to reduce the purchase of packaged products, especially for school snacks and lunches. The school uses reusable water bottles with filtered water instead of bottled water and organic food waste is fed to the class worms that make the nutrient rich vermicast for classroom plants.
The Huakailani Hui (school students, parents and teachers) volunteered to help with the "I Love Kailua Town Party", sponsored by the Lani-Kailua Outdoor Circle, on April 26. The Lani-Kailua Outdoor Circle is a non-profit environmental organization that is dedicated to beautifying Kailua by planting trees, shrubs and flowers in parks, public spaces, at schools and along streets and highways. The members of this wonderful organization are dedicated to preserving the shoreline, open spaces, and green areas of Kailua.
Huakailani firmly believes in instilling the importance of being an active community member in their students. The Huakailani Girls, made up of girls from Kindergarten to Grade 5, know that they are not too young to show volunteerism. The school's community service efforts, such as volunteering for the “I Love Kailua” event, shows support for the environment and their Kailua Town home.
The Huakailani Girls have pledged to reduce, reuse and recycle and to help keep Kailua Town Litter Free. The school currently located on Uluniu Street will be expanding and moving to Hekili Street in the heart of Kailua Town in August. In the fall, the Huakailani Girls will form a Kailua Town Litter Patrol. Be sure to wave and say “hello” when you see the girls in their pink shirts, beautifying Kailua Town’s sidewalks and lanes.
The Real Cost of Plastic Bags
The Real Cost of "Free"
Well over a billion single-use plastic bags are given out for free each day. But as the old adage says, nothing comes for free. Here are some facts to illustrate the actual costs paid by our environment and society for the fleeting convenience of unlimited, free, single-use plastic bags. To see the real costs, we must look at the "cradle to grave" multiple impacts and the effects of each phase of a bag's life.
Phase 1: Production Costs
The production of plastic bags requires petroleum and often natural gas, both non-renewable resources that increase our dependency on foreign suppliers. Additionally, prospecting and drilling for these resources contributes to the destruction of fragile habitats and ecosystems around the world.
The toxic chemical ingredients needed to make plastic produces pollution during the manufacturing process.
The energy needed to manufacture and transport disposable bags eats up more resources and creates global warming emissions.
Phase 2: Consumption Costs
Annual cost to US retailers alone is estimated at $4 billion.
When retailers give away free bags, their costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
Phase 3: Disposal and Litter Costs
Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food. Turtles think the bags are jellyfish, their primary food source. Once swallowed, plastic bags choke animals or block their intestines, leading to an agonizing death.
On land, many cows, goats and other animals suffer a similar fate to marine life when they accidentally ingest plastic bags while foraging for food.
In a landfill, plastic bags take up to 1,000 years to degrade. As litter, they breakdown into tiny bits, contaminating our soil and water.
When plastic bags breakdown, small plastic particles can pose threats to marine life and contaminate the food web. A 2001 paper by Japanese researchers reported that plastic debris acts like a sponge for toxic chemicals, soaking up a million fold greater concentration of such deadly compounds as PCBs and DDE (a breakdown product of the notorious insecticide DDT), than the surrounding seawater. These turn into toxic gut bombs for marine animals which frequently mistake these bits for food.
Collection, hauling and disposal of plastic bag waste create an additional environmental impact. An estimated 8 billion pounds of plastic bags, wraps and sacks enter the waste stream every year in the US alone, putting an unnecessary burden on our diminishing landfill space and causing air pollution if incinerated.
From www.reuseblebags.com
No comments:
Post a Comment