Hey Teachers!

Here's a great way to peak kid's awareness of the water cycle, and how it is linked to many environmental issues, by joining in with kids all over the world in conducting research. The Global Classroom Project (TGCP) is a collaboration of thousands of children from 15 countries around the world. Classrooms participate by monitoring, measuring and recording rainfall data. Registration is open for this project that lasts for one more week.

To learn more about the project and the water cycle visit tgcproject.org.

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The Obama Girls Go Green

On Tuesday, January 20th, their father will be inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States. But the Obama girls have already begun their new life in Washington, D.C., at the very green Sidwell Friends School.  In fact, the Sidwell Friends School is rated the greenest school in the world after a new environmentally friend middle school was constructed in 2006.  The sustainable design includes water-efficient landscaping, use of local and recycled materials like cedar barrels, a green roof, solar panels, natural ventilation, and solar trash compactors. They even constructed a wetlands to help clean waste water and reduce water use. Watch the video to learn more about Sidwell friends and maybe even discover a few ideas for turning your school into a green school.

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What About Water?

80% of the Earth is covered with water, yet only 3% of it is fresh water, and less than 1% of all water is ok for human consumption. The rest of the water is salty ocean water, or fresh water that is frozen in a glacier. And of that tiny 1% of fresh water that we can use, an even tinier amount is used as drinking water. There are many places in the world that are reaching the limits of their water supplies. As populations rise, and the climate gets warmer, more and more people will not have access to fresh water. In fact, it is predicted that 2 out of every 3 people with suffer from water shortages in the next few decades.

Here’s what you can do:

Did you know that every time you flush the toilet, it uses five to seven gallons of water? That means that in a year you will flush about 13,000 gallons of fresh water down the toilet! Luckily there is an easy solution if your home does not already have ultra–low flush toilets. Find a small plastic juice or water bottle, soak off the label, fill the bottle with water and close the cap tightly. Place the bottle in the tank of the toilet, making sure to position so that it won’t get in the way of the flushing mechanism. This is called displacement. The bottle will fill part of the space in the tank that water would normally fill. You will save 1 to 2 gallons every time you flush! Try this in all of the toilets in your home, and estimate how many gallons of water your family will save.

Other tips for saving water:

–Turn the water off while brushing your teeth, washing your hands and doing the dishes.
–Take shorter showers. See if you can get your shower time down to less than 5 minutes.
–If you help out with the dishes, fill the sink or a tub with hot water to wash the dishes in. Rinse the clean dishes in another tub of hot water or rinse them all under the faucet at once to reduce the time that the water is running. Make sure to only run the dishwasher when it is full.
–The same applies to laundry, only run your washing machine when you have a full load.
–Water your lawn and plants in the morning or evening. Water evaporates 4 to 8 times faster during the heat of the day. Use a watering can instead of a hose.

How much water does it take to...

-Take a shower or bath…17 to 24 gallons
-Brush my teeth…2 to 5 gallons
-Wash the car…50 gallons
-Use the dishwasher…8 to 15 gallons
-Run the washing machine 35 to 50 gallons for each load
-Watering the lawn with a sprinkler…210 gallons per hour

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The grass isn't always greener...

Do you find that you are running out of good excuses when your parents ask you to mow the lawn? They will be surprised to hear that using a lawnmower for one hour pollutes the air as much as driving in a car for 350 miles!

Lawns can pollute in other ways, too. A lot of water is used to keep grass green...in fact, almost one-third of all household water use–more than 7 billion gallons per day–goes to watering lawns. And to make matters worse, we in the United States use 580 million gallons of gas for our lawnmowers, spend $5 billion dollars every year on fertilizers made from fossil fuels and use 67 million pounds of synthetic pesticides for our lawns! Convinced? Good, now here's what you can do:

1) Use an electric lawn mower. They produce less than 1% of the smog-contributing carbon monoxide that gas mowers put out and 1/9000th the hydrocarbons. However, they only produce 6 less pounds of carbon dioxide.

2) So, better yet, use a reel push mower like one of these. With no electricity costs, zero on-site emissions and a much smaller price tag they are a great option.

3) Water your lawn only in the morning or the evening. Water evaporates 8 times faster during the heat of the day!

4) Collect water from downspouts to water your lawn.

5) And finally, turning your yard into a backyard habitat is the best way to make your yard really green. But we'll save that for the next post. So check back in to learn more...

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