The text that goes with the video reads:

Narrated by Academy Award-winner Jeremy Irons, this “mockumentary” video, hammers home the stark reality of California’s plastic bag pollution situation.

Learn more at http://www.healthebay.org

You can make the difference.

The reason for this particularly large forest, in an age when logging is increasing throughout the world, is that the Senonches forests are very well kept, due to careful planning of all areas of the forest by the ONF (Office National des forets), and by Forest Rangers balancing the exploitation of the forests with the replanting. What this means is that rangers often plant or take care of trees which they will not be able to cut, and thus benefit from. Its a system that works very well, and implimenting it around the world would be very useful in sustaining the planet’s forests and jungles.

I myself have seen the online magazine and find it very intresting.

The hyperlink is as follows :

http://www.emagazine.com/

P.S.: You can just click on the large red texts to see the article.

Just something I thought would be nice to share .

So its been a full year of Kids for Earth (actually, a bit more).

First of all, and most importantly: sorry to everyone who participated to the YTL Climate Change workshop; I have been unacceptably lazy in putting anything up I’ve had a lot going on, but I hope you are all keeping to date with the list! Myself and my sister are going to France for the next six weeks, but you can contact us on this website, or you can email me at gabrieltseng@kidsforearthasia.com

Next, after a year at work, we’ve got a whole line of products, which we’ll be putting up on the ‘our products‘ page. This includes our ‘Billy the Plastic Bag’ book, which was launched during YTL’s Climate Change Week, with Ms Ruth Yeoh.

As well as working with YTL, we have also worked with astro to create a one minute video that is on astro TVIQ ( channel 552). We plan to create four more fillers with astro.

Now, we have shown the Billy the Plastic Bag presentation to around 2000 children, not counting everyone who saw it on astro TVIQ. We have published a book, and now sell 6 different bags. We’ve been on several newspapers, and we have been interviewed live both on TV and a radio: TV3 and BFM 89.9. Also, we have hosted 2 workshops, one in cooperation with Leo club of Raub, and one in cooperation with YTL’s climate change week.

It has been a great year, and thank you for everyone who helped us and supported us.

This month’s Spotlight is all about Tim, Moby and the BrainPOP UK team going on a rescue mission so we looked far and wide for some green inspiration. And, thanks to Ian Pittman (@IPittman) from The Alice Smith School, Kuala Lumpur, we found it!

It began with a tweet…

The Alice Smith School is a keen BrainPOPpping school in Malaysia. So we jumped at the chance to talk to the Kids who choose to go green.

We’re glad to say that Gabriel and the Kids for Earth team were very happy to answer a few questions from us and spread the word about their great efforts in the name of saving the planet. If you can believe it, there are only 6 of them, aged 11 to 15.

Kids For Earth’s vision is to inspire children and teenagers to become active eco citizens for the future of our world. A simple presentation about the life of Billy the plastic bag has led to the Kids for Earth team presenting their message to hundreds of children in local schools, a constantly updated blog, and even national media coverage. They’ve certainly inspired us and we hope you enjoy meeting them!

What inspired you in the first place? Was it a lesson on looking after the environment that made you think, “we have to do something!”?

When I was smaller, we lived in Europe so we regularly visited our grandpa, in France. He is a very outdoorsy person and he has his own garden, where he plants vegetables and fruits. Every time we visited our grandparents, we therefore spent a lot of time outside, with our grandpa lecturing us on how organic and home grown foods were better for the environment and healthier than foods grown on fertilizers. I think its from that moment that we really began to feel a connection with the environment. After that, lots of lessons on topics such as environmental chemistry really spurred my passion for the environment.

What came first – Billy the plastic bag or Kids for Earth? Why did you decide to promote reusable bags?

I created Billy the plastic bag after watching a video called Message in the Waves, which showed some videos of albatross chicks rotting, and you could see all the plastic they had eaten in their stomachs. After that, I really felt the urge to make a larger impact and try to influence the environment in a positive manner.

After making the presentation, I founded Kids for Earth to be able to expand the presentation and be able to encourage the children to keep on acting after we’d shown the presentation in their school; Kids for Earth has allowed me to conduct competitions between schools that would have been more difficult if I’d just had the presentation.

How much support did you get from your teachers and parents? Did your teachers suggest you create the Kids for Earth blog?

My parents were very encouraging, right from the beginning. They have been helping me and my sister lots and it would have taken us much longer to get this far if not for their encouragement and guidance. Similarly, our teachers have been very helpful, especially in organising talks in schools.

For example, one of the teachers here at my school, Alice Smith, really encouraged me to do the talk in front of my year group, despite me being very nervous. If not for his encouragement, I doubt I would have gone through with the talk.

How did the national media find out about your campaign?

Our parents encourage us to look for sponsors when we require extra means and resources to realise our ideas and projects for Kids for Earth, and this is the reason why we started to talk to corporates and medias, and gained attention from some of the medias in Malaysia, such as the inflight magazine of Malaysian Airlines, the BFM ratio, and Astro, Malaysia’s largest cable TV company. Astro has an educational channel called TVIQ and they were planning for a “Kids Go Green” week.

We were referred to them by the father of one of our members. After our Billy the Plastic Bag presentation, they have decided to turn our presentation into a minute long filler. We have also agreed to help them come up with ideas for 3 more fillers and jointly conducted workshops in 3 local schools, in addition to the press conference we had with them.

Wow! How are you adjusting to your recent celebrity status?

We’re not celebrities! Though we are really reaching out to kids, it is the presentation that they remember, and not the people who showed it. What we want to show is that, as children, we can make an impact on how we treat the environment, and as sons and daughters, we can impact the way our parents treat the environment. Therefore, we really are playing an important role in preserving the environment. Who we are is not important. However, I must admit that getting recognition for what we do is very gratifying and makes us strive to perform better.

What’s next for Kids for Earth?

We’ve printed our presentation into a book in collaboration with YTL corporation. It is going to be released on the 22nd May, duringYTL’s Climate Change week. Also, like I mentioned above, we are working with Astro TVIQ and they started airing our filler today…However, the next thing we really want to do is reach out to children and expand by getting children passionate about preserving the environment and wanting to spread the message. Kids for Earth is an open platform and we welcome kids who care about our Earth and would like to take care of it to join us. Please visit our website at www.kidsforearthasia.com or email me at gabrieltseng@kidsforearthasia.com

If you hadn’t heard about Kids for Earth before then we recommend you read about what they’re getting up to on their website. We’re going to be watching Kids for Earth very closely from now on – we’re pretty sure they’re on their way to being future world leaders – and we’d love to hear even more inspirational stories from schools in the UK.

Thank you very much to BrainPOP for giving us this special opportunity.

The oil spill happened just 64 kilometres from the coast of Louisiana, and is threatening the livelihoods of many shrimp farmers who live along the coast.

Also, the growing oil slick is threatening many bird species who live along the coast, and some oil dispersing chemicals may be harmful for wildlife in the area.

It is estimated that it will take years for the ocean to recover from the spill; currents may blow it into the Atlantic and a sudden growth in microbes used to consume oil could reduce the oxygen in the water.

Already, oil is hitting the fragile marshlands of Louisiana, and with scientists unable to plug the leak, more is coming.

Oh yeah, there is also going to be an eco bazaar running throughout most of the day. Kids For Earth will be selling bags and books there.

Recently, I and two new recruits, Neerav 12 and Divesh 9, did a presentation on plastic pollution “Billy the Plastic Bag” at our spiritual camp in Eagle Ranch Resort, Port Dickson.   We stammered a bit and even stumbled on words even though we practised every time we had free time and before we went to bed. We did this presentation in front of a small crowd, 63 kids and 15 adults including a very spiritual person.  We started of extremely nervous but as we progressed through the presentation we weren’t so nervous, in fact, we were having a bit of fun. Every presentation counts because in the end everyone thought we were so good that there was a discussion on plastic bags. Hopefully they will stop plastic pollution.

By  Gautam Jethwani                                                                                                               

Suffocation

Infants and young children have died as a result of playing with plastic bags. Every year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission receives about 25 reports of plastic bags-infant death.Because of the thin,airtight material,infants can easily block their mouths and nostrils with the plastic bag and suffocate.

Effects
If not carefully disposed of,plastic bags can be devastating to animal life. “DEFRA”(Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)reported that 1,678,900 tons of plastic bags do not decay easily,they stay in environments longer,causing more build-up up on the nature stay landscape than a more degradable like paper would. The Marrickville Council reports that over 100’000 whales,turtles and birds die every year as a result of plastic in their environment.

Prevention/Solution
Abstaining from plastic bag use as much as possible will reduce the chances of accidental infant death, and it will reduce the amount of plastic waste in the environment.

A plastic bag is also reusable,though. it does not necessarily have to be thrown away after a single use. Try to use each plastic bag for as long as possible.
This will help reduce the number of plastic bags in circulation.

Watch this space …. we’ll up load it soon here !