Bringing Awareness to School

May 13, 2008

I put up a display case to educate students at my school about polar bears, and ways they can help! Here are the pics of it being put up and a few pics of what is in it:

Ride Your Bike to School Day.

Apr 23, 2008

In a week or so, if the weather holds up, We are planning to have a Ride Your Bike to School Day. Some teachers will give out e.c and hopefully we will be able to raise polar bear awereness and maybe get some more kids riding their bikes to school in the morning.

We have had it approved by the principle and now we just have to talk to each teacher indivdually to get extra credit from them.

How it turned out:

Well, the weather could of been a little bit nicer, or a lot nicer, it rained polar bears on us! Even though it was freezing cold, and we got very wet, about 70 students rode their bikes/walked, and over 50 participated in an alternitive activity. Over 20 teachers gave out extra credit to participants!

How it inpacted the enviornment:

Each student that rides there bike to school has parents that go about a mile out of there way-on average. The average gas mileage for cars in America is 24.7 Miles to the gallon, so each student that rode there bike saved .04 of a gallon of gas, and since we had 70 participants, and the save that much there and back, we saved roughly 6 gallons of gas. Which was 4.8 LBs of carbon emmissions.

It may not seem like a lot, but, many of those students decided to start riding there bike on a regular basis, and the average bikes on the bike rack before was 10, and if all 70 of those kids started riding there bike, we would save over 1200 gallons of gas every single school year, and since .80 percent of each gallon burned turns into c02 they could pottentially save 960 pounds of c02 a year, we will watch the avrage of students riding there bike to school and if it goes up, we will definitly post it.

Alternitive activities:

The students that did the alternitive activities, helped a lot as well. They had to do 3 things to help the enviorornment, out of a list we supplies them, some things on the list did not effect c02 as much as others, so we did not add them. Everything that was on our list was:

Recycle one bag of recyclables

Buy a reusable water bottle discontinue use of unreuasable water bottles

Turn off your lights when you are not using them

Pick-up one bag of garabage

Replace 5 of regular light bulbs with energy-star effecient light bulbs

Ride your bike/walk, somewhere instead of asking for a ride

Unplug iPod chargers, televisions, cell phone chargers, etc. wehn they are not in use as they consume electricity

Energy Star-rated light bulbs:

Some students switched out older models of light bulbs for energy star-rated ones. Each light bulb saves 270 Grams of C02, and the switched out 5. Every student that did this saved 1350 grams of C02 from going into the air. Those students saved 8100 Grams of Co2, which converts to 17.8605 pounds.

Turning of the lights

Students that made sure that all lights were turned off, also saved a lot, because a light makes .54 pounds of c02 an hour and they all avreged at about 5 hours of keeping lights off, each student saved 2.7 pounds of c02, all of these students saved 21.6 pounds of c02

Un-plug chargers, etc.:

7 students unplugged all of their chargers etc. When not in use for 3 days, saving .0422 LBs of c02 a day, and a .89 LB of electricity If they kept going for the next year they would each save 15 pounds, Which is 105 LBs.

All in all we saved 45.1505 LBs of carbon from being emitted into the atmosphere. If kids kept doing what they learned for the next year we could save an estimated 1865 lbs of carbon!

Canvasing the neighborhood

Apr 18, 2008

    We have been going out for the past couple of weeks talking to the neighbor's about how they help the emviornment (Recycling, if they use styrofoam, etc.) Their reaction's weren't always the most we hoped for.

    Everyone listened to us and a few people actually talked to us but, it was extremely frustrating how often we had people just staring us down until we left! It hasn't discouraged us though!

    With our new T-shirts, we will be going out and talking to more people.

What we want to accomplish!

Apr 03, 2008

We have decided to try and eliminate non-biodegradable styrofoam from the earth! Because the non-biodegradable styrofoam creats more green house gasses to make, kills plankton (They make up over half of our oxygen), litters the land and ocean, and fills our land fills. How often do you use Styrofoam? Once a week when you eat out and bring back a few Styrofoams boxes, or when you send a package to someone filled with packing peanuts... or maybe just when you took a quick drink out of a tiny cup and then threw it in a garbage can. Well that 20 second drink that you just threw in the garbage won't decompose for the rest of your life, or your children's life, or they're children's life, in fact it most likely won't decompose for another 500 years or so.
The point I'm making is that packing peanuts, take-out boxes, cups, bowls, plates, all made of Styrofoam that is not very reusable or possible to recycle. All it can do is take of valuable space in a land fill for a few hundred years. It adds greatly to all the trash filling the sea--and it's deadly to any animal that finds it a tasty snack. I am trying to help polar bears because, not only could they simply swallow the piece of trash and die, all the garbage and the production adds to global warming, and global warming takes away from their habitat quickly over time.
More will die out simply because they can't adapt quickly enough to a warmer climate, and then half of their range is just frozen ice, so half of their home would disappear altogether. Where would all the inhabitants of America go if half of it just melted away? Their goes half of America--billions of peoples homes. What would we do then, we wouldn't have anywhere to rebuild, we wouldn't have enough food, we would be riddled with the diseased and homeless, most of us would die off, and this is the same for polar bears.

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