A round-up of this week’s environmental, green and ecofriendly news and updates.
Imagine a kindergarten – without toys! Some German pre-schools (age 3-6) no longer have toys – but for an astonishing reason. It’s said to prevent drug addiction in later life!
No toys means no squabbles over sharing, and promotes creativity. But more importantly, it is said that children will learn important skills that will better prepare them for life, and prevent addictive tendencies as they age.
Children are said to learn empathy, creative thinking, problem solving, and understanding and liking oneself – all skills that can help adults to avoid drugs.
Kids’ days there are completely unstructured, so they develop games and decide whether or not they want to play as a group or do something on their own. They are in control. They are not rushed from one activity to the next but instead are allowed to play any game for as long or as little as they like. After just 3 months, children are said to be less stressed, more focused and have more confidence in themselves and their interactions with others.
I love this idea – it’s very green and ecofriendly (no horrible plastic toys) and provides natural life skills – perfect!
I like optimistic people. Do you?
What if you’d like to be more optimistic, but find it difficult?
Here are 4 ways (well, 5 actually) to help – and (best of all) – there may be health benefits to optimism! Find out here.
As if ice loss due to our greenhouse gas emissions wasn’t enough for the Arctic, now our trash is ending up there too. And most of it is of course, long-lasting plastic rubbish – a huge threat to animal and marine life.
We all know about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (and similar ones in the other oceans) but because the Arctic is so remote, it wasn’t realized that it serves as a “dead end” for hordes of marine debris drifting through the North Atlantic. Even though very little plastic waste is discarded within the Arctic itself, it’s still carried there — and then stranded — by ocean currents.
How would you like to go and pick fresh produce, and even catch a fish – all from your garden or yard? (Or garage or kitchen).
That’s what you can do with aquaponic gardening – and the good news is that it’s easy to start it up. Find out more here.
Global Green News:
Everyone loves panda bears. I was privileged to travel to China and while there I visited the Giant Panda Breeding Station in Chengdu. It was incredible to see so many pandas, and of course, especially the cubs. The theory is that some of the bears would be introduced into the wild. This is problematic around the world – how do you “train” an animal raised in captivity to fend for itself? New evidence shows that it may be working. A female panda released in 2013 is not only thriving, she has also moved onto a different protected reserve. Conservationists are delighted, because this shows that she is able to navigate her way in the wild successfully. Hooray! You can read more at National Geographic if you wish.
Next time you use GPS to navigate your trip, or to stamp the location on your photo so Facebook can track where you are, remember how we’re able to do all that. Thousands of machines surround our planet so we’re covered in most places – but many of them don’t work any longer; they just spin around out there and we just hope they don’t crash into something.There are at least 500,000 pieces of space junk out there, according to NASA. Scary!
US Green News:
The New York Times has recently expanded its climate change coverage, recognizing the urgency of our current situation. Now, suddenly, they’ve employed a climate denier as an op-ed columnist. Bret Stephens once described climate change, institutionalized racism, and campus rape as “imaginary enemies.” Oh boy.
Don’t forget the People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C. this Saturday, April 29. (Do you remember the People’s Climate March in 2014 in NYC? That was AMAZING!)
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
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