Green Options

300 volunteers in Pakistan planted 541,176 mangrove trees by hand in a single day, setting the Guinness World Record for tree planting.

The volunteers, using no mechanical equipment, planted the mangroves in the Indus River Delta wetland ecosystem in the Southern Sindh Province of Pakistan, beating India in a friendly competition which seeks to preserve endangered forests and help temper the global warming effects of deforestation.

Mobile phone service, kajeet, innovates by rewarding customers for choosing refurbished phones by planting trees. Win-win for kajeet, customers, and our planet.

Peru’s Ministry of Agriculture has launched an ambitious project. The goal: plant 40 million trees in 3 months to help deter the effects of climate change.

According to Peruvian news source Andina, the Ministry hopes to complete the project by February 20th of this year. They started working on December 13th of last year. That will mean that an average of 512,820 trees will be planted each day over a three month period– an astounding and inspiring example for other countries to follow around the world.

From action steps to green your child’s school to kids actions inspired by green media games and eco-focus, today we’ll continue where we left off in Part One of our Eco Child’s Play Green Media Mini-Series, honoring kids’ green media that embeds positive cues and meaningful play, and turning that inspiration into action.

At left is Dizzywood’s celebration of Wildwood Glen’s reforestation, where kids planted 15,000 trees in online to offline eco-parity, partnering with The Arbor Day Foundation. I’ve added a slew of other tree-planting ideas and sites at the end of this piece to get ready for 9-22-08, worldwide Tree Planting Day coming up in the next couple weeks. In keeping with the green media theme of hope, promise and eco-renewal…here’s more from my interview with Scott Arpajian, Co-Founder of preteen virtual world, Dizzywood…

Carbon offsetting has been around for a while now, giving you the opportunity to reduce your “carbon footprint” by trading cash for your personal carbon output. In most cases, this quid pro quo occurs through a donation to an organization that plants trees of some sort in some place where, hopefully (but not always), they are both needed and helpful to the original habitat. In theory, these trees then sequester carbon dioxide in the air–a major cause of global warming, acid rain, and other current environmental problems.

Let me say upfront that so far I have been skeptical of carbon offsetting. However good the underlying intentions, this sort of tradeoff can be used as an excuse to keep on stomping around on the Earth and avoid making real changes in our lifestyles. If we pay for the things we step on, then that absolves us from guilt or responsibility, right? If we can buy our way out of guilt, then we can buy our way out of changing ourselves, right?

Also problematic is the fact that many offsetting programs may or may not be reliable; it is often hard to tell how trustworthy one organization is or how true its claims are about its use of funds. Even if the organization does use offsetting donations to plant trees or do something similar, how can we be sure that the measures employed are indeed helpful overall (e.g., the right types of trees are planted, needy/imperiled habitats are targeted, sustainable methods are used, etc.)?

In light of this skepticism, I am surprisingly excited now that The Nature Conservancy has launched its own Voluntary Carbon Offset Program. I find this to be a really noteworthy venture for TNC, since it is a global leader in habitat and species preservation, research, advocacy, and general stewardship–or, as its new motto puts it, “Protecting Nature. Preserving Life.”

The Conservancy’s Program is actually going to involve a collection of individual projects focused on restoring and preserving specific areas using the funds contributed through voluntary carbon offsets. The first is the Tensas River Basin Project, which seeks to restore and preserve a key tract of land in Louisiana encompassing forests once populated by ivory-billed woodpeckers (hopefully there are still a few of these flying around!), Florida panthers, and Red Wolves.

Recycling as an everyday practice has become more and more common these days. But what about all those gadgets you accumulate? What happens to them? There are many options out there, but for most, they involve more cost, effort, and time then our busy schedules or motivation will allow. Sure, there are some newer options such as Second Rotation, the company I profiled in January that quotes you a value for your product based on the condition you claim it’s in, then they inspect it, and either give you that amount, or a different agreed upon one. But even there, with the free shipping and the possibility of getting cash rather then spending it to recycle, it’s based on current market value, a wildly fluctuating amount, as the new half price twice the speed iPhone exemplifies.

What if you could guarantee exactly how much you’d get, based on how long you’ve owned it, at the time of purchase? This is now a reality, via the company Tech Forward. You can buy a product at any store you like, then purchase their Guaranteed Buyback service, which covers a wide range of electronics, from MP3 players to desktop computers.

Editor’s note: Is planting trees a valuable tool for fighting climate change? Or is it a feel-good activity without much effect? Our friends at Eco-Libris point to another study which argues tree-planting can work in sequestering carbon dioxide. This post was originally published on Friday, May 16, 2008.

There is an ongoing debate on the effectiveness of trees planting operations as a tool mitigate global warming. A new research from Australia adds more input into it, showing that agroforestry and reforestation are an important carbon sink.

The research, as reported on The Age, was conducted by researchers from Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA), Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence, and Queensland Department of Primary Industries & Fisheries. It was presented to an agriculture, greenhouse gases and emissions trading conference on the Gold Coast.

Dr. Beverley Henry from MLA, who presented the research, showed that different forms of land management had a variety of effects on soil carbon. She said, according to the article, that researchers, analysing data from 74 publications on land-use changes, had made several conclusions:

Today is Arbor Day. Founded by J. Sterling Morton in 1872, National Arbor Day is celebrated to encourage tree planting and care. Here are five ideas for celebrating Arbor Day with your children:

Plant a Tree and Give it a Name

This is the classic Arbor Day activity. Whether you plant a native tree or an ornamental in your yard, children love to plant trees and monitor the tree’s growth in comparison to their own. In our family, we name our trees, such as Maggie the Magnolia. This little bit of personification causes children to become attached to the their tree and provide it with lots of loving care.

Make Your Own Field Guide

Take your children for a nature hike or just a walk around the neighborhood. Collect a few leaves from the trees you see, then take them home. Identify the trees, attach the leaves to pages, and create your own field guide. We did this my first year teaching for all of the different oaks that grow in our valley. If you don’t have a book that can help you identify the tree species, you can also look it up on the internet.

Looking for Earth Day activities in Florida? Following are some of the events scheduled in communities across the state:

In Pensacola, the University of West Florida (UWF) will host a day of environmental symposia at the University Commons Auditorium. Among the topics speakers will tackle: “The Gulf Coast Main Ecosystem Partnership: A Story in Large Landscape Management,” “Small-Scale Wind Turbines: A Joint UWF/University of Florida Study” and “Climate Change: Facts, Fantasies and Solutions.” Following Mike Papantonio’s keynote address on “The New Art of Fighting Back,” attendees will be able to view a screening of the film, “Sacred Planet.” All the programs are free and open to the public.

It’s official: There’s a full fledge Great Copy Machine Epidemic in our children’s schools. American schools are asked to help combat the epidemic by joining a national day of action to stop global warming on April 17th. To participate, schools need to put their school photocopiers under quarantine and pledge not to make or use any photocopies on that day. To participate:

1. Put together a team of the most creative, fun-loving, eco-conscious students and friends that you can find.

2. Perform a proper medical inspection to “diagnose” your copy machine and determine what disease you believe is making it chew up paper at such an enormous rate. Unfortunately, creating paper uses lots of energy, so it creates lots of CO2 that’s contributing to global warming and making the planet sick.

3. Send an email to the copy crisis team at copycrisisteam (@) gmail (dot) com confirming that your school photocopier has been struck by the disease, and include the name of your school, town, state, and the number of teachers and students who are being affected by it.

What makes the energy consumption survey at Bosquevirtual.com unique–if you can get past the Forest Gump theme song in the site’s video promo–is the ambitious, tech-heavy cyber-activism sponsored by the survey’s Spanish creators, Union Fenosa.

For each person who takes the survey, Union Fenosa donates 1 Euro to Acciónatura, a Spanish organization that uses the money to reforest the Atlantic Forest in Brazil.

Bosquevirtual, or “Virtual Forest,” has also teamed up with Second Life, a 3D web Mecca for internet socializing. Along with the actual donation to reforestation, then, every two surveys completed generates the planting of a virtual tree in a virtual forest in the Second Life 3D world.