Kids for Earth

1st July 2008: China bans the distribution of free plastic bags and of bags thicker than 0.025 inches.

China isn’t often viewed as an environmental role model, so this came as a surprise to a lot of people. The ban was made when a lot of people were becoming worried about China’s degrading environment.
Thanks to the ban, it is estimated China has saved 37 million barrels of oil of, as China calls it, the ‘white pollution’. China has also banned the production of thin plastic bags, shutting down the nation’s largest thin plastic bag manufacturer.
The move has sold millions of reusable cloth bags.

China threatened to fine and confiscate the goods of shops caught giving away thin plastic bags.

Even if we try to limit Global Warming to a temperature scientists view as ‘safe’, we are going to lose one fifth of our world’s species. Thats 20%. Scientists have discovered 2 million species. There could be up to 30 million. We’re going to lose species we haven’t even heard of yet.

The talks in Copenhagen showed that out of the 193 countries who have said they would do it, 100 have handed in reports, and not a single country has met their target to significantly slow down the loss of biodiversity, a target set in 2002. Not a single country.

In Copenhagen, it was considered that we limit the warming by 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrialized times. That means we only have 1.3 degrees to go before we hit that. But for every degree we get warmer, we lose 10% of our world’s species. 2 degrees: 20%.

When are we going to wake up?

Hey guys,

We’ve been online for nearly 5 months now, so time for an update;

The site’s growing! We’ve got nearly 50,000 views, and growing! We’re also up to 42 posts.

If there’s anyone who would like to contribute to our posts, you can

a) register (top right hand corner), log in, and write a post.

b) E-mail me your post at gabrieltseng@kidsforearthasia.com

Thanks

Here’s one of the videos that got me started against plastic bags:

Raphaelle learning the craft from Diana.

Pulau Carey. A beautiful island. Well, the part of it that’s not used up as Palm oil plantations. The large island, which is about 1/3 of the size of Singapore, used to belong to the Mah Meri. It was covered in lush forests where you could find anything up to medicines, food and bits and pieces you could use to build a home.Then, as usual, a bunch of greedy business men came along cutting down about 80% of the forest. Think about it, 100′s of food chains with predators as rare and wonderful as tigers and cheeky silver tailed monkeys and prey, exotic plants and birds. All this is cut down to ONE small chain: Palm oil fruit – Rat – Snake.

Luckily the Mah Meri are fighting for their part of the land. The parts they live on is barely enough land for the village. To earn money, some of the Mah Meri can weave astonishingly difficult patterns, bookmarks and boxes (trust me, they are extremely difficult!). Unfortunately, with their limited space and the many oil plantations surrounding them, it’s not easy to find places where they can plant the resources needed to weave.
Reita Rahim from Gerai Orang Asli does a lot of work to document and preserve the craft of the Orang Asli. You can look for Gerai OA on face book for more informations!

To buy things crafted by the Orang Asli, go to www.elevyn.com and you can learn more about the Orang Aa

Here are some worrying facts:

In South East Asia alone, we make 350 thousand tons of stretched film, the material used to make plastic bags.

In Malaysia, we produce 250 thousand tons. That means Malaysia produces more than 2/3 of the stretched film produced in all of South East Asia.

Most plastic bags are made from polyethylene plastic, which causes some problems;

The polyethylene can seep into your food, especially if it’s heated. Which means it goes into our bodies.
Also, the plastic melts. I can’t say exactly when, because, there are lots of sub sections to the plastic (imagine trying to recycle this!) such as high density plastic and low density plastic. But, they melt around the boiling point, 100 degrees Celsius.

Since plastic bags are largely a disposable item, that means nearly 350 thousand tons of plastic are thrown into the environment per year, from South East Asia alone.

Uh oh.

If anyone reads the Discovery Channel Magazine, they’ll recognize this ship. It’s the Earthrace. It smashed the world record for powerboat to circumnavigate the globe; it made it in 60 days, 23 hours and 49 minutes, 14 days faster than the previous record.
What makes the Earthrace so interesting is that, its powered by biodiesel. Earthrace wanted to draw attention to the potential of greener power sources; the captain of the boat, Peter Bethune, even donated 100 ml of his fat to be made into the biodiesel.
Now that the record has been broken, Earthrace has a new use; Japan’s whaling fleet is en route to hunt up to 935 mink whales, and 50 fin whales, classified as endangered animals. But the Earthrace, re names Ady Gil, will be waiting. The boat’s materials and paint makes it difficult to detect on radar, so Ady Gil has the element of surprise. Then, it plans to physically block the harpooning ships and blare music based on a Maori chant, enough to intimidate the toughest men. The Ady Gil is expected to spend more than 3 months disrupting the Japanese whaling fleet.

Peter Bethune expects Antartica to be a challenge, “It’s always cold and miserable, but then again, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it”.

Our  new cotton bags are ready!

They are really practical, small  when folded but big to carry all your stuff!

Raph sells bags!

The Christmas Bazaar was a very successful event, by any standards. For us, it was amazing; we sold over 100 bags, and we have made RM1488.

As promised, we will be donating all profits to the Malaysian Nature Society.

Thank you very much to everyone who helped sell the bags ( Marie, Jessica, Olivia and Alanyah), to Meng Wah (our bag producers) and to YTL, who sponsored the bags.

It was loads of fun, and I hope everyone who helped enjoyed it.

If I can gain permission, I hope to sell the bags in EP, some lunchtime.

The Christmas Bazaar is tomorrow, woohoo! Time to do your Christmas shopping and to buy Kids For Earth’s new grocery bags. With cool and flashy designs, created by Alice Smith students, we’re sure to sell plenty of bags. The bags will cost RM 10, as usual, but unlike the wine bags and most normal shopping bags, these are roll-up cotton bags, extremely convenient and easy to keep in your hand bag at all times (so you’ve got absolutely NO excuse for using a plastic bag now!). Hope to see you at the Bazaar at Alice Smith Jalan Bellamy tomorrow night! And if you dare use a plastic bag…