Crazy Crayons

Millions of broken crayons are thrown away every day! Now that we are nearing the end of the school year (yay!), you're probably getting rid of some of your old school supplies. Crazy Crayons, a Wisconsin-based company, recycles your crayons for you. Their website states the importance of crayon recycling:

"More than 12 Million Crayons are made in the US, every day! 100 new crayons equals about one pounds, lets do some math. 12 Million Crayons equals about 120,000 pounds. That's 60 Tons of Crayons made every day with petroleum based wax that eventually ends up in our landfills when they don't have to!"

The crayon recycling program has collected over 62,000 pounds of unwanted crayons since the program started. When the shipments of crayons arrive to be recycled, the boxes of crayons are sorted at a center that employs people with developmental disabilities. Then they get melted down, strained, sterilized, and hand poured into beautiful new crayons!

Set up a recycling collection box in your school, place of worship, or community center and join in this great recycling program. Or if you have a lot of old crayons, pack them all in a box and send them in!

To learn more, visit their website: crazycrayons.com

Why Not to buy Bottled Water

Would you buy something if you knew you could get an unlimited amount of it easily for free? Well, you probably have. Think about bottled water. Annual worldwide bottled water sales are estimated to be around $50 too $100 billion a year. But what’s wrong with bottled water? Well, here are 5 reasons:

1. Making the plastic bottles requires up to 47 million gallons of oil each year. 

2. The bottles travel from where they are bottled to you in a truck, plane, or boat - burning fossil fuels along the way. 

3. Less then 1/2 of the Fiji Islanders have a reliable source of safe drinking water. But a factory there produces millions of water bottles and ships them to the US (a country where water comes freely from the tap.)

4. Only a few of the bottles get recycled. Most of them sit in landfills for thousands of years. Or they sit in parks, beaches, forests, or sidewalks as litter.
5. Bottled water costs more per gallon than gas, as this poster shows:

So, why do people buy it if it's so bad? Most people's answers are that they think tap water is gross. Well actually...tap water is much more regulated by the government than bottled water. And if you'd rather be on the safe side, you can easily buy a filter to make sure your water is clean. Also, another argument is that bottled water is convenient. I must agree, it is convenient to have water readily available. But you can solve that problem too, buy taking about five seconds to put a reusable water bottle or two in your car.

So, if you are looking for one thing to do to help the earth, here's one: Don't Buy Bottled Water!

Happy World Fair Trade Day!

Today is a day to celebrate Fair Trade. Fair Trade is a system of trading that promotes more equal global trade, mostly to farmers in poorer areas. When you buy fair trade, you ensure that the person who grows and/or makes the product you buy has been paid a fair wage, is not a child, and used environmentally friendly ways of growing. There is fair trade coffee, tea, herbs, chocolate, fruit, vegetables, sugar, beans, grains, flowers, nuts, honey, spices, wine, apparel, sports balls, and more.

You may take for granted those standards (being paid enough to live on and not having child labor), but apparently not everyone consider them the standard. In 2000, a report by the US State Department found that in recent years, approximately 15,000 children aged 9 to 12 have been sold into forced labor on cotton, coffee and cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast (in Africa).

 

This may sound like something out of a history book, but it really is happening, right now. When you buy Fair Trade, you make sure that nothing you buy is made using child labor or any other unjust practices. Fair Trade certification also has standards which ensure that the farmers are environmentally friendly, by prohibiting some pesticides and encouraging composting and recycling. Many fair trade products are organic.

These are the symbols of the main Fair Trade certification organizations. If you see this on a product, it is fair trade.

This World Fair Trade Day, May 14th, is a day to try out Fair Trade. Start small with a chocolate bar! (They're actually quite good - I had a few for Easter.)  Every Fair Trade purchase you make tells companies that you support fair labor practices. Many Fair Trade stores offer discounts and activities to celebrate this day.

To learn more about Fair Trade, visit:
http://www.fairtrade.net/?id=361&L=0
http://www.fairtradefederation.org/
http://www.transfairusa.org/

Happy fair trading! :)