Sustainability

My Pledge for Mother
I've always had this ordained guilt for space my body and I take upon this earth. I see people throwing things away senselessly, fighting over prices and materials just for it all to fill landfills and clutter backyards to collect rust. I've always tried to search for the right, for the intention in everything I do. The intense guilt and self-loathing I felt when I would be told "that's junk, just throw it away" overwhelmed me as a kid. They start you off young, cutting out bold laminate letters reading "Remember to Recycle" in my first-grade classroom, right above the cubbies as you hang up your backpacks and take off your shoes. Continuing further with notes by light switches in my seventh-grade classroom, "The last one out turns off the light!", and even a designated student every week to make sure all computers were off after free time.
By Brianne Crowe5 years ago in Earth
Necessity is The Mother
Events that change the course What started as a swim with the dolphins twenty years ago, became a life changing event that turned my focus toward becoming environmentally conscious. The experience set a plan for eco involvement for the future that would involve more than one project.
By Zel Harrison5 years ago in Earth
Plastic Wars: Simple Lifestyle Swaps Can Save Marine Lives
Hi, nice to meet you! Sy the Sea Turtle here. I know you’re probably wondering why I used a bold outer space-style video intro crawl to grab your attention if I live in the ocean. First, I’m a huge fan of big-screen intergalactic battles to save the universe. Second, I caught your attention, didn’t I?
By Lori Melton5 years ago in Earth
Her Fabric Scraps
As a fashion designer, the quality of my tools is the foundation for the success of my projects. I’ve always valued a sharp pair of scissors and the fearlessness to make the first cut. Just like anything in life, you will never experience the beauty of the outcome if you don’t take the steps to turn a vision into reality. When I reflect upon my craft, I owe much of my creative style and prowess to my mother. My mom was deeply into fashion and would drag me to the mall with her every weekend. She would buy beautiful dresses and have a different vision for them. She would cut pieces off the dresses, so she could customize them for herself. Those scraps of fabric would end up in my room, wrapped elegantly around my Barbie bodies. I didn't know those little scraps of fabric were planting seeds for my future. That fashion design was where my heart explodes. She also made it a point to travel me around the world to allow me to see how other cultures dressed. I was blessed to travel to Africa when I was 14, which introduced me to the stunning quality and richness of African fabrics. I later studied fashion and graduated with a B.A fashion degree from university. That was the beginning of my forever thirst to create art.
By Teena5 years ago in Earth
Pikaia
I was Pikaia...I'm born from the ocean. I still swim and feel at home. Who got me out here? I'm just a remote accident, a survivor of extinction waves, those waves where many didn't. It just happened to be me. I could very well right now have to be hiding behind rocks to escape from dinosaur's teeth, or having to keep watching my back on the savannas. But just by luck, things took another way. Whose luck?. We conquered our greatness, but we compromised a whole planet on the way. It sounds a little like those promos, pay one and take five, but the opposite and in a biggest scale of numbers. In order to make this planet perfectly comfy, easy, and luxurious for us, and just for some of us, we sacrifice a brilliant creation of who knows who, and this part doesn't matter. What we can't deny, is that we all see a world made of Biodiversity, colors, incredible species hiding in the smallest places, intelligences expressed in the most astonish ways and far from being simply linked to brain size. Cognitively complex means of life that science tries to understand even today, and probably never will, including us. We watch a planet standing on its feet year after year of less care, fighting with the tools that this amazing ecological system has. And we live, day after day, without realizing we are in a war. We wake up, we look at the sky, and we say ''Look this beautiful morning'' and breathe a deep and fresh air being grateful for a new day. Just one second after, naively or not, we turn our backs and walk away starting the automatic environmentally harmful actions of our days, being on the wrong side of a war against ourselves.
By Melisa Zabala5 years ago in Earth
Tangling with the Hydra
We humans have created monsters. Not so much in the forms of humanoid blood-suckers or the vengeful dead, but of exhaustive speeds, plumes of unchecked toxins, and mountains of wasted items that simply don’t break down. When we put tons of carbon into the atmosphere, and remove many plants that would absorb the carbon, we contribute to the trapped heat which melts our sea ice and threatens to release methane gas trapped within, kept at bay only because it is frozen. Our black asphalt roads absorb more heat and we remove and seal up countless gallons of water in products on store shelves in surplus, denying the rest of the environment. We overfish, overhunt, and destroy anything that gets in our way whether it lives, breathes, or simply exists. There’s not a plant, animal, or rock we won’t remove.
By Megan Baker (Left Vocal in 2023)5 years ago in Earth
I Heart the Big Blue
Vacation by the coast? Yes. Love to surf or wakeboard? Someday soon, I hope. Ever gone whale watching? On my bucket list. Swim with the dolphins? Also, on my bucket list. Fancy snorkeling or scuba? I am a huge fan.
By Samia Afra5 years ago in Earth
We Have Work To Do
Alright, folks. It’s time we had a talk. What the f*(%! are we going to do about our trash problem? It’s not just about throwing shit in a bin and calling it recycling anymore. In many cases, these piles of “recycling” are shipped across the world – using fossil fuels to be taken care of there – or it ends up in a landfill with the garbage from the bin next to it. And while it’s not our fault that this is the current system in place and we’ve been given a life (at least in capitalism) that is completely reliant on non-biodegradable materials such as plastic or Styrofoam. But it is up to us to stop feeding it. That’s why the recycling plan has always been the three Rs:
By Lolly Paige Lennox5 years ago in Earth
The Ability to Reuse
The current state of the world is troubling. The climate is changing and it is causing serious harm to the environment around us. We as humans are a big cause of those problems and we have the ability to help create a cleaner Earth. We need to be aware of what we are using and what we can do to stop trashing our Earth. One of the most polluted areas is our oceans. All of these one-use products we throw away can end up in our ocean. This can cause damage to the ocean life within, along with contributing to the decline of our Earth. You all have seen the islands of trash floating in our oceans. That can never be erased, but it can be further prevented. To start, switch out single use items for reusable sustainable products.
By Sarah O5 years ago in Earth
From a leak to a tweak
Do you know how much water is wasted from a leaking tap? I didn't until I had one. I rent a house in Cairns, Queensland with my son and as tenants, we can be charged full or excess water consumption. With this in mind, I was keen to get a leaking tap in the kitchen sink fixed however plumbers were busy, so I had to wait a few days for one to have time and do this.
By Georgie5 years ago in Earth
4 Mermaid Habits for Sustainable Human Living
Did you know mermaids have a very small carbon foot print? And it’s not just because they don’t have feet. Now I know what you may be thinking: “Mermaids aren’t real.” While denying the existence of mermaids is understandable, denying climate change is not.
By Malia5 years ago in Earth
I Believe the Children Are Our Future
The duty of reducing one's carbon footprint is a relatively new concept, unseen and unheard of mere generations ago. Our most recent ancestors didn't have to consider the condition of the planet or the effects their daily living may be having on the well-being of future generations. While they rarely wasted anything and found new uses for items that would otherwise be discarded as trash, this was a direct result of the mental strain endured throughout The Great Depression. That era shaped them into waste not, want not people, and they did all they could to ensure they always had what they needed even when it seemed silly to the next generations. We would snicker as they carefully unwrapped their gifts, folding the paper ever so gingerly, so that they could reuse the wrapping paper when it was their turn to bestow a gift on someone. Watching them rinse off used aluminum foil or plastic margarine containers for the purpose of food storage was met with eye-rolling and snide comments about how cheaply those items are available at the store. Our elder generation had the reuse portion down of the 3Rs - reduce, reuse, and recycle. The other two Rs, however, were not on their radars. The concept of recycling was unbeknownst to them. To think of placing certain trash items in a container at the end of your driveway so that a special truck could come gather them to take them to a special facility where they would be cleaned and treated in some way so that they might be used again to create something else was never heard of in their lifetime. Reducing waste was also not something that would have made any sense to them. Hard-working and determined people, the end would always justify the means. They didn't have the luxury of information at their fingertips. Whatever needed to take place to reach their goals is exactly what would take place. This was especially true with the boom of The Industrial Revolution. No executive or employee ever questioned what damage may come of dumping waste into the nearby waterway. The amount of smoke billowing from the smokestack was of no concern to air quality or the health of the people. It was not until they began to see the consequences firsthand that anyone surmised the possibility of the dangers and even then the almighty dollar reigned supreme over the well-being of a few ecosystems.
By Melissa Wright5 years ago in Earth