Kids for Earth

Going green is easier than you think. There are little things you can do every day to help reduce greenhouse gases and make a less harmful impact on the environment.Here are a few steps to save the earth. 1.­ Pay attention to how you use  water.The little things can make a big difference. Every time you turn off the water while you’re brushing your teeth, you’re doing something good.2. Leave your car at home. If you can stay off the road just two days a week, you’ll reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 1,590 pounds per year.Combine your errands — hit the post office, grocery store and shoe repair place in one trip. It will save you gas and time.3. Walk or ride your bike  to work, school and anywhere you can. You can reduce greenhouse gases while burning some calories  and improving your health. If you can’t walk or bike, use a bus  or carpool. Every car not on the road makes a difference.Lastly,Recycle.You can help reduce pollution just by putting that soda can in a different bin. If you’re trying to choose between two products, pick the one with the least packaging.

This Tuesday marked the beginning of the building of the final Yangtze dam, the final of 12 which have been built since 1994. Despite some very positive reports from Chinese news agencies, many believe that the dams are a serious environmental and social damage.

The building of the last dam destroys the last 2000km of natural river; with the completion of this last dam, the whole river will be split into sections, contained within the dams. This has lead many environmentalists to say the many endangered species which reside within the natural park that are the 2000 km of river will have no where to survive – Jun Ma, and environmentalist who has been campaigning against the dam for two years, said there would be ‘no space for fish’ – and the nature reserve which these 2000 km of natural river currently are hold around 40 species of fish – however, the Chinese newspapers, backed by government statements, claim the environment of the river will be given full attention; People’s Daily online claims the wildlife of the rivers have been ‘brought to safety’ in areas where flooding will occur.

Where many rely on the Yangtze and its tributaries as a source of water, the building of the dams may cause the water to become severely polluted. Because of the dams, environmentalists claim up to 10 million tonnes of plastic bags, bottles, animal corpses and trees, which would have otherwise flowed out to see, get trapped in the river. And massive build ups of rubbish in the Yangtze river are not unheard of, as this Daily mail report shows. However, the People’s Daily report claims the river ‘surpasses drinking water standards’.

Although there are definite problems with the building of the dams, its impossible to ignore the potential they have to produce energy without releasing greenhouse gasses. But are the other environmental costs too high?

Rachel Beckwith was critically injured in a car accident on July 20th. In a tragic accident involving 2 trucks, she passed away 3 days later in hospital. She was 9 years old. We have become incredibly blase about suffering now; its common on the news to see images of horrific suffering, but many of us pass over it, without spending a huge amount of time contemplating it. Its a disgusting attitude, and we’re lucky to have people like Rachel to remind us how privileged we are, and what we can to with these privileges.
Already, at age 5, Rachel became involved in charity work, when she cut of her long hair to donate it to Locks of Love, a charity that uses donated hair to create wigs for children who have lost their hair, often because of a medical condition with no known cause and cure called alopecia areata.
Then, when she was 8, she heard of an organisation called charity:water through her church. Rachel was shocked to learn that many children didn’t have access to clean drinking water, but unlike many of us, she decided to take action to help those children. So Rachel’s 9th birthday was slightly different from your conventional 9th birthday. She didn’t ask to be showered with gifts. Instead, she asked her friends to donate $9 to charity water. Her target was to raise $300, which would help 15 people get access to clean drinking water. Unfortunately, she was $80 short, and raised $220.
Rachel vowed to try again next year, but then, there was the accident. The pastor of Rachel’s church decided to keep Rachel’s page on charity:water open, and church members and friends began donating to reach Rachel’s goal of $300. But the donations didn’t stop at $300. Soon, the donations surpassed the tens of thousands of dollars, and eventually hit one million dollars. Now, more than 1.2 million dollars have been raised.
We live in an age where the youth is often viewed (sometimes correctly) as selfish and self-absorbed. Rachel though, has proved this wrong, and hopefully will inspire others to continue to prove this view wrong.
This is a tragic story, but Rachel has done something incredible, touching and helping more people than many of us will ever do. But Rachel’s selflessness should not be as unique as it is, and I hope it will be continued beyond just charity:water to inspire a new generation of philanthropists.

If you want to donate to charity:water, you can do so here

The Eco Ark is a building designed by an architect named Arthur Huang. It was designed for the Taipei International Floral   Exposition. The Eco Ark is not an ordinary building. It has a steel skeleton and the walls are made out of 1.5 million recycled bottles. The bottles are fed into a machine and are transformed into a shape inspired by the honeycomb design of the beehive. This way they fit very nicely into each other. However, there were many problems when it came to convincing the board to go forward with this idea and in construction. Arthur Huang and his team had to buy a second hand machine, as there was no time to build one from scratch, to mould the bottles into the correct shape. The team also had to create their own moulds. There were many problems with the bottles itself as well. It took many attempts before the bottles were strong enough to support the Eco Ark. A benefit of the Eco Ark is that it can be taken apart and put together again easily, a bit like Lego bricks, so that it can be moved from country to country easily.Eco Ark on Channel News SEco Ark on Channel News AsiaEco Ark on Channel News Asia

My Grandad isn’t big on the environment. It’s understandable; he’s worked hard all his life, and has never had time to develop a consciousness for the environment, or to learn about how he can help save the environment. Luckily, he hasn’t  needed to: Taiwan’s done it for him. The building he lives in has organised the bins, so that, without trying, he has to recycle; there is no one bin to put all the trash in.

The introduction of the environmental protection act boosted the recycling from 6 % to 32 % in 10 years. This has worked because the public has supported the idea of recycling; its been presented not as a burden for the public, but as something that will economically benefit the public: instead of just having a worthless can or bottle; now, their can is worth money that was previously not there.

Thanks to this recycling scheme, recycling is no longer something exceptional in Taiwan; much more, it is considered the norm. Taiwan is an example to the rest of the world; if recycling can leap so much for Taiwan, there’s nothing to suggest it can’t leap for the rest of the world.

The two nuclear reactors in Japan blowing up has put into perspective our dependency on energy; for a long time, we thought that nuclear power was the answer to our addiction to coal and oil; the only bi-product was water, and more amounts of energy could be gained from significantly smaller volumes of fuel. Now though, after decades of nuclear waste and these two recent accidents, I can’t help but wonder if there needs to be a new alternative to coal. Renewable energies all have flaws that prevent them from taking over the energy market; solar panels, on top of being (for now, at least) very expensive, are filled with silicon which requires a special gas to clean: sulfur hexafluoride. The thing about sulfur hexafluoride is that it is the most dangerous and potent greenhouse gas. To put this into perspective, one ton of sulfur hexafluoride is equivalent to 25 000 tons of carbon dioxide.

Wind energy is also carbon neutral, but it is also accused of many problems, the first and foremost being the sound produced as the turbines turn. This has driven away wildlife around turbines put in the sea, and many people living near turbines have complained about it.

I’m not saying that these may not be the answer to our energy problems, but right now, there are some flaws holding them back.

Enter the (potential) answer: biomass

Or more accurately, a type of napier grass named SEC 1: Super Energy Crop 1. This is a cross breed of four types of grass to create, essentially, a ‘super crop’. A crop that, in the space of 50 days, can grow up to 5 metres. A plant that can grow on ridiculously infertile land, which grows all year around, and has a very high harvest per hectare. A plant which grows with just more than half the fertilizer and without pesticides, and so doesn’t pollute the ground it’s growing on. A plant which carbon neutrally creates energy: all the CO2 released is absorbed by the plant as it grows. SEC 1 can grow in high water and salt levels, and no deforestation is required for it to grow.

And it doesn’t stop here: the grass can be grown in rural areas where local communities do not have access to electricity. So by growing the grass, turning the grass into biomass and building a biomass power plant, locals can gain access to electricity, and, if they have excess electricity, can sell it for extra income.

Essentially, you have an environmentally friendly grass that is also grown in a very socially responsible manner. And it doesn’t end here!

That’s pretty cool.
This is what my dad has been working on ever since he has left the banking industry. If you would like to know more about it, don’t hesitate to drop me an email at gabrieltseng@kidsforearthasia.com or my dad at williamtseng@jwkeystone.com

Earth Hour was on Saturday 26th March 2011 and is where every one all over the world turns off their lights for one hour. It is so simple to do and hardly affects your life. Over 126 countries did this. Unfortunately, I couldn’t because I wasn’t at home. Although WWF takes credit for it, another guy invented Earth Hour in Sydney, Australia by turning of his lights, which started the trend.

Earth Hour Logo

Did you know that if everyone did this, then a lot less fossil fuels, which are used to make electricity, will be burnt. Burning of these fuels creates greenhouse gases and global warming.  Turning off your lights will result in less global warming.  Oil, which is a major fossil fuel, is non-renewable and  we should preserve it. Did you know, we will run out of oil in 70 years? Which means no more cars or electricity!! When that happens, its back to the Dark Ages!

During the Gulf oil spill, as well as the five million barrels of oil that were released, a lot of methane was released.
However, Mother Nature helped clean up our mess: within just four months of the spill, the amount of bacteria has increased greatly, and has consumed the methane.

We were lucky: without the bacteria, the methane could have been released into the atmosphere, and, with methane being one of the most potent greenhouse gases, and huge amounts of methane in the atmosphere could increase global warming.

However, now that the methane consuming bacteria has gotten rid of most of the methane, scientists are curious as to what will happen; if they will dissipate, and if they will ever go down as low as they were before the spill.

Perhaps, now, the Gulf is ready for any future oil spills.

Everyday, we use the Internet, which is now as normal as driving a car, or eating at a restaurant. However, the Internet is in fact, harmful to our environment.

Every time the Internet is being used, Co.2 (Carbon Dioxide) is produced. Although the amounts are small, since at least 2 billion people use the Internet and very often too, that’s a lot of Carbon Dioxide your looking at.

Did you know, that 1 google search produces the amount of Co.2 equivalent to driving your car 3 inches (0.2 grams of carbon dioxide). And with the minimal amount of 260,000 Google per month = O_o

However, spam messages are even worse. Not only are they very annoying, and dangerous, every time a spam message is sent, 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide is produced, and with the unfortunate amount of 62 trillion spam messages being sent each year, that’s about 19.6 trillion grams of carbon dioxide being produced.

Hopefully, in the near future, scientists find a cheap and reliable way to make the internet carbon dioxide free, and to destroy spams forever.

The space shuttle is launching on one of its final missions soon, and this article looks at the environmental impact of the shuttle launches.
Although when we first think of the space shuttle, we think of huge launches, with lots of smoke, that create a huge amount of damage to the environment. However, the space shuttle has been very beneficial to observing the earth’s atmospheric conditions as well, and astronauts have been warning us about the fragility of the earth.

Furthermore, the smoke created by the shuttle launches exaggerates the pollution caused by the launch: the shuttle’s main engine is fueled by super cold liquid hydrogen. This reacts with oxygen to create a ‘high speed stream of gas’ to push the shuttle. This gas is composed of water vapour, so it doesn’t harm the environment.

However, the shuttle launch also produces hydrochloric acid, which produces acid rain. When acid rain falls in lakes, it can change their pH, thus killing the wildlife in the lakes. Also, there has been a reduction in the amount of wildlife around Kennedy Space Centre, an effect of the shuttle launches.