The Busy Planet

Season to be recycling.

This year instead of my usually trip to the over packed shopping centers to get gifts more my loved ones my wife and I decided to put our money where our mouth is and actually do some good in the world.

Some weeks before Xmas we had received a flyer in our mail box.  (Action on this problem coming next month)  anyway the flyer arrived and it was for Care Australia.  It enabled me to go online and purchase items for families in need in some of the poorest places on the plant.  When I made these purchases I was sent a card and could give the card to the person I wanted to give the gift from.

So from my mother she gave a family in Africa a Goat and a Student Starter pack.  From my friends I gave mosquito nets, desks and buckets.

The recipients where more than pleased to have not received any tangible gift other than knowing they had helped someone less fortunate than us.

Vite Care Australia for more details. http://www.careaustralia.org.au/

Best wishes for Xmas and remember;

To reuse your old shopping bags when Christmas gift and food shopping.
That aluminum foil can be recycled as well
That foil containers can be washed and reused again
If your house is now crammed with new toys, make someone else’s year by donating your old toys to charity

Bet you didn’t know that…

Leaving a fluorescent light on when you go out doesn’t save energy – switch off if you’re leaving for more than a few minutes.

For each unit of electricity we use, two units of energy are wasted as heat loss from the power station!

On a hot summer day, the heat coming through an unshaded window (1 metre square) is about the same as you’d get from switching on a single bar radiator! Curtains cut the heat by around 80%.

A household that dries all its clothes in an electric clothes drier generates over a tonne of greenhouse gas each year. That’s as much as you’d produce driving a small car from Sydney to Cairns and back!

For more ways to save the planet visit www.abc.net.au

The basics of global warming are that we burn fuels that release a gas into the air. This gas traps in heat that is normally let back out into space.

All scientists now agree that we… that is you and me are the cause of global warming. The effects are far reaching and will affect most of us in our lifetime and definitely our children’s.

No one really knows just how fast it will happen but the effects are starting to show now with the melting of the polar ice caps and the earths temperature rising. This will displace hundreds of millions of people world wide and threatens our entire survival.

So what can we do as busy people of the planet? We can ride a bike to work or take public transport. Or you can do what I did and move closer to work. After all that is where I spend a lot of my time at the moment. On the weekends I do tend to drive but this has been reduced due to recently having my first son.

• Set the air conditioner to be not so cold.
• Set you heater to be not so hot.
• Set your tap water to be not so hot.
• Add better curtains to your windows or improve your homes insulation, keeping you warmer in winter and cooler in summer.
• If you do nothing else… turn the lights off when you don’t need them on.

As much of our electricity comes from burning coal to make steam that turns turbines to generate electricity every little bit of electricity we don’t use puts less harmful gas into the air.

Take a holiday locally rather than flying somewhere that on a plane that uses lots of fuel. How many things are there in your local area that you haven’t seen? I bet if you ask around you will find plenty of attractions in your own back yard.

Being raised in New Zealand and now currently living in Australia I know just how lucky I am to have been born in this area of the world. After all it’s really a lottery as to where you are born.

I want to give something back and contribute to the world in some small way so that everyone can have a chance to have a great life.

We so often think of the world as only having limited resources, be it food, fuel or money.  When there is little foundation to this myth.

As humans we have the ability to set our minds to a goal and achieve it no mater how steep the mountain may seem we will always find a way. Everest, the moon, the south pole are just a sample of what we have managed to achieve no mater what the odds.

While not all of us may be able to reach such heights or want to… there are little things that we can do that will make a difference.  Maybe not much of a difference but in some small way you will be putting your thoughts into positive action rater than just saying ‘what can I do’ you will be able to say ‘this is what I am doing’ and for every one you tell about what you are doing the odds of them doing the same and getting on the playing field rather than being a spectator in life will increase the effectiveness of your contribution to the world.

Over the course of this journey I will be talking about ways we can, feed the world, save the planet and help others.  A little action can make a big difference!

If you have something you want to contribute please feel free to post comments or if you would like to contribute your stories of how to help the busy planet please email me at me@saverpages.com