More and more homeowners are using rain barrels to conserve water while collecting soft, non-chlorinated rainwater to nourish grass and plants.
This weekend, in Calgary, Canada, Clean Calgary Association, in partnership with the City of Calgary, will hold its 8th AnnualRain Barrel Sale.
With spring coming, local residents there are thinking about their lawns and gardens. Water usage in Calgary doubles in the spring and summer due largely to lawn irrigation.
At the same time as Botswana bans hunting close to its reserves and Kenya uses Maasai hunters to protect its lions, Uganda introduces commercial hunting into its Pian-Upe wildlife reserve in Uganda hoping to improve conservation.
Hunting to Conserve in Uganda
Edyau Echodu, the warden of the Uganda Wildlife Authority’s Pian-Upe wildlife reserve, introduced the hunting plan. He said that hunting would help get rid of old animals that attack human settlements, killing and injuring people and damaging crops. He acknowledged that it was also aimed at increasing earnings from tourists.
The current slow economy can actually bring children and their parents closer to nature, says REAL School Gardens. It suggests parents slow down, take a deep breath, and step into the backyard or a local park with their child.
“Connecting with nature calms and soothes both children and adults, and it is something that both children and adults can do for a wealth of benefits, for free”, says REAL School Gardens.
SAB Ltd, is funding water saving projects to compensate for its potential water consumption of 14 billion litres a year in South Africa. WWF (World Wildlife Fund) is facilitating the “water neutrality” process with a South African Government Project to ensure that this is not just a multinational greenwashing.
SAB Ltd is the South African subsidiary of SABMiller which is the second largest brewery in the world .
“The concept of water neutrality, based on its carbon equivalent, has been used loosely over the past years; however, until now no-one has been able to quantitatively justify these claims. We believe that our scheme is the first in the world that allows participants to truly claim to be water neutral.”
Participants will replenish water supplies, by investing in projects that quantitatively supplement water supplies equal to their water usage.
Note: Water neutrality has taken on a form in certain areas that is significantly different to the process introduced here by WWF.
Over one billion people - 18% of the world’s population - lack access to safe drinking water worldwide. Only 56% of Africa’s 800 million population have access to clean water. About 700 million people in 43 countries are affected by water scarcity, according to the UN.
In another few years - in 2025 to be precise - the number could swell to 3 billion driving back gains in the fight against poverty and under-development, otherwise known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
For many people around the world, safe drinking water is a scarce resource and out of necessity, they resort to what’s available - polluted water.
But contaminated water isn’t just dirty—it’s deadly. Some 1.8 million people die every year of diseases like cholera, caused by poor sanitation. Tens of millions of others are seriously sickened by a host of water-related ailments—many of which are easily preventable.
Christopher and Kerri are a couple and social justice teachers out on a mission. Since the beginning of September 2008, they have been on a unique 30-day experiment on food choices, consumerism, waste, poverty and social psychology - trying to live on a one dollar a day diet.
But this insightful challenge - in their own words - to help us better understand and teach about a variety of concerns, could have been more interesting if it was broader in perspective.
Instead of trying to spend just a dollar on food daily from their comfort in Encinitas, California, where a tub of toothpaste costs $4.99, they should have enlisted a family in, say, Chittagong, Bangladesh or Turkana, Kenya, and asked them to survive on a dollar a day.
The average man living in forest-prone areas and who depends on meat from endangered apes and other wildlife for his proteins plays the role of a carrying agent for the hundreds of infectious diseases that humanity is suffering from.
Now experts are warning of the danger to humanity this lifestyle may be posing. Most of these diseases, identified in medical terms as zoonotic because of their ability to jump from animal to man, have been labeled as “emerging infectious diseases” or EIDs.
Over 60 percent of the 1,415 infectious diseases currently known to modern medicine are capable of infecting both humans and animals. Most of these diseases originated in animals and now infect people and include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and helminths, with 175 pathogenic species associated with diseases considered to be ‘emerging’.
A Kenyan schoolgirl has revealed how she hid in a forest habited by elephants as she made an escape from a marriage suitor two and a half times her age.
She gathered all her inner strength and courage to cross a crocodile infested river near her home deep in the arid Masai warrior tribe country with her father and her wannabe husband in hot pursuit.
Betty Lason, now 17 and still in primary school, said recently that she vividly remembers the incident six years ago because she executed her plan one evening after returning to her new husband’s home from day-long sheep and goat herding in the bush under the scorching sun.
It is official, and the pronouncement was made by none other than the head of state himself: albinos in Tanzania are an endangered species and must be protected!
President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete recently ordered a massive police crackdown on witchdoctors who lure and kill albino people for body parts to be used in ritualistic healing sessions with their clients as a talisman for good luck.
Woe unto you if you are an albino in this poor east Africa nation of 39 million people. The government says 19 have been murdered in 2008, but activists claim the figure could be as high as 60, in a country where more than 160,000 are said to suffer the genetic condition in which the person lacks pigmentation in the eyes, skin and hair.
How far can one go for charity, especially the artistic types like those who design tees? Even if it is a worthy fund raising project for genocide victims in Darfur, Sudan or, say, a children’s global cancer awareness campaign?
Well, this question can better be answered when you consider that charity knows no copyright, especially when it involves a fashion icon like Louis Vuitton and one of the French fashion house’s creations.
For 26 year old Danish art student, Nadia Plesner, being slapped with a copyright infringement lawsuit demanding “$7,500 for each day she keeps selling the product, $7,500 for each day she displays Louis Vuitton’s cease-and-desist letter and $ 7,500 for each day she mentions the name ‘Louis Vuitton’ on her website” has never overridden a good cause and she is as defiant as ever.
Those sums and more - legal costs for the suit and another $15,000 for related “other expenses”. But what would Louis Vuitton do with the money if their lawsuit succeeds? Of two guesses, only one can suffice; either to fund further research for a hyped luxury product or give away to victims of the war in Darfur.
Do you have a rain barrel for your home?
