Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home is the new book that helps every parent “de-tox” their home and make a safer, greener environment for their children. It’s filled with simple steps and easy solutions you can implement in your home now. This guide covers all areas including indoors and outdoors, cleaning products, toys, and clothes, as well as cleaner air and water. There is even a chapter about […]
Today’s post is by Mel Peffers, a project manager in the Living Cities program at Environmental Defense Fund.
May 6 was World Asthma Day. Since car exhaust can lead to asthma as well as global warming, we thought it would be a good day to highlight the importance of not idling your car or truck engine.
What makes idling especially bad for health is that drivers tend to idle in gathering places - by sidewalks, schools, playgrounds, homes, and offices. Breathing in pollution close to the source is more dangerous than farther away.
Take a look at the evidence.
Is our educational system really working to promote positive progress?
The problems we are faced with today are the results of unethical leadership. Our business and political leaders have had the best education, yet many would sacrifice human wellbeing end the environment for the love of money.
Growing up in Soweto, near Johannesburg, South Africa has taught me to value “ubuntu,” or “I am because we are.”
This is National Public Health Week, and the focus is on the impact of climate change on our nation’s health. Knowing about the risks you face will help you better prepare for the dangers.
PHOTO CAPTION: An evacuated family driven from their San Diego home by the 2007 wildfires. Photo: Michael Raphael/FEMA
Because they are still developing physically, breathe faster than adults and rely on adults for care, children are more vulnerable. Watch out for:
In yet another sad commentary on today’s generation of children, researchers in the U.K. report that 25 percent of British children between the ages of 8 and 10 have never played outside without an adult close by. Meanwhile, in the U.S., too many children Click to Continue Reading
As you may know, blogging on ecolocalizer.com is relatively new for me. Its been fun, but hey I think it could be better with a little more back and forth. So I thought I’d introduce myself one post at a time as I talk about localization here in the Bay Area. And I invite you to ask questions, make comments, and tell me what you think needs to be covered. If you’ve got a localization project in the Bay Area and you want folks to know, post a comment or send me an email at daveroom (at) gmail dot com. I aim to please.
Without further adieu… My name is Dave Room (and that’s my daughter in the photo). I have been working on localization for the past four years. Sometimes it has felt like I am swimming upstream. Actually it still feels like that - the difference is that now the current is not quite as strong. As the financial underpinnings of our society unravel, as food prices soar, as oil prices regularly hit new highs - it seems like I am living a prophecy. Everything that is happening now has been more or less accurately predicted by a large International community of people who have been following our oil predicament. Another name for our oil predicament is peak oil, but its really all about the oil depletion and the coming imbalance between supply and demand. Sometimes I call these folks “the depletionista”.
For those with an appetite for cultural exchange, Seoul offers all the trappings of a cosmopolitan city: Starbucks, the ubiquitous Irish pubs, and, of course, the real gem of international cities–Mexican restaurants.
But hold on. You’re the type who wants to help make the world a better place. Frappuccinos, Guinness, and burritos are not the be all and end all of cultural exchange. Then you’ll be happy to know that environmental values are making their way into Korea as well.
Many Koreans are taking note of the global environmental movement, which is already in full swing in much of the world, with increasing interest.
This post reflects on the fourth week of my seven-part “Healthy Children, Healthy Planet” curriculum, a fantastic discussion group by the Northwest Earth Institute.
So far, our Healthy Children, Healthy Planet discussion group has tackled family dinners, consumer-free holidays, the over-programming of children’s activities, advertisements, and whether parents deserve a Bill of Rights, and what kind of moments can be used to pass down values. This week, the conversation turns to everyone’s favorite enemy: junk food.
Ah, junk food. It’s true what they say: we have become a junk food nation. We are a nation of processed food, of food in boxes, of omnipresent vending machines, of gas stations that stop selling gas, because the real money is in snacks.
A voluntary compact authored by the Illinois Lieutenant Governor’s office has elementary and secondary schools around Chicago putting their environmental priorities down on paper. Students, teachers, and administrators from the first six schools signed the compact at a ceremony hosted by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn in January.
Modeled after the Illinois Sustainable University Compact, which began in 2006, the new Illinois Sustainable Schools Compact sets out 12 achievable sustainability objectives for elementary and secondary schools. These goals focus on conserving energy, encouraging recycling, and practicing natural landscape techniques (including minimizing the use of chemical fertilizers, following a conservative watering schedule, using rain barrels, and planting drought-resistant native species). For complete list of the goals in the compact, click here (PDF).
This post reflects on the third week of my seven-part “Healthy Children, Healthy Planet” curriculum, a fantastic discussion group by the Northwest Earth Institute.
40,000 television commercials a year. That’s what the average American child sees. That’s around 100 ads for every 4 hours of television.
What’s that, you say? No TV in your house? Oh, but your kids will still see plenty of ads. There’s online adver-gaming. There are ads on school buses. Ads in the classroom. There’s product placement in movies. Not to mention billboards, posters, textbook covers, …it’s all fair game.
Week 3 of the Healthy Children, Healthy Planet series, the 7-part parenting discussion course from the Northwest Earth Institute, was all about ads. Namely, the pervasiveness of ads in our children’s lives, and whether it is even possible to create ad-free spaces in their lives.
What’s clear is that advertising is different in both quantity and quality than it’s ever been before. The amount of money spent on marketing to children — $2 billion annually — is close to 10 times greater than it was even in 1990. And the nature of it has changed, too — mostly, because there’s no place safe from it. Not schools. Not movies. Not even your daughter’s sleepover party.
Um. Look I don’t want to be an alarmist or anything. But. Um.
See, I’ve got kids? And, see…they’re kind of…energetic enough? I mean really, truly. Spend five seconds in my house and you will see: they are doing just fine bouncing off the walls of their own accord. So, I’ll thank the world for not encouraging them to bounce off the ceiling, as well.
Oh, but I can‘t thank the world, because apparently the world is instead choosing to fill them with caffeine when I’m not around.
As this great article from Metroactive explains, “these days, constraints on caffeine consumption for kids and young teens are nonexistent. Kids are having caffeine early and often.” It’s not just in their drinks, apparently. Candy bars? Increasingly filled with the stuff.
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