Love Parks Week!🌳

This week (from 23rd July to 1st August) is Love Parks Week. Over the lockdowns, people have been using their closest parks to do things from exercise to relaxation, and now that summer is here and lots of restrictions have been lifted, the use of parks will probably rise a lot more again. More than 40% of people said they noticed that visiting green spaces was really important during coronavirus. Keep Britain Tidy have done a whole thing on it, so that is where I'll be getting any facts or statistics I use in this post.

So, there are three different things to do: Love parks, Respect parks and Protect parks. 

Focusing on Protect Parks, in the first lockdown alone, an extra 57 tonnes of litter was collected on average. In 2020, Keep Britain Tidy created the Parks and Green Spaces All-Party Parliamentary Group to help protect the parks. You can take action by writing to your MP (click here to do so). Also, taking any time you have to pick up litter in the park that others have left is brilliant too. I know it's irritating to pick up after people who annoyingly don't feel like they need to take their litter home, but it's better than leaving it there to cause damage.

Keep Britain Tidy have made a list on how to Respect parks, which include: sharing the space and being friendly, taking your litter home if the bins are full, caring for the nature - do not cause damage to wildlife (this includes picking flowers), picking up after your dogs, and respecting those working in parks. Some ways to protect parks that I've come up with are: follow any rules which are said (for example, 'don't walk on the grass' or 'dogs are not allowed here'), if you have a kids playground, don't graffiti it... 

I love nature, it's something that calms me whenever I'm in it. I've written many blogs about it including Walking in Nature and Plogging. I'm really happy we have a Love Parks Week, and I hope you can get your park to take part too!

Violet

         xxx

 

The Effect on Marine Life🐟

I think we might all know the statistics like, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish, but what sort of affect does pollution have on marine life? I was researching, and I came across a website (click here to see it) with over 100 statistics on marine life and ocean pollution, so I thought I'd share some of them:

• 8.3 million tons of plastic are thrown into the the sea yearly, and 236,000 tons are microplastics (click here to read the blog I wrote about them). 
• Annually, plastic waste causes 100 million marine animals to die (whether that be the animals consuming them, or the animals being tangled in and/or strangled by plastic)
• Shockingly, 100% of turtles now have plastic in them. 59% of whales too. 
• When coral reefs come into contact with marine plastic, their chance of death goes from 4% to 89%. Considering they are homes to 25% of marine life, this is terrible.
• Coral reefs in the Asia-Pacific region have an estimated 11.1 billion plastic pieces entangled in them, and it's expected to increase by 40% by 2025. 

Why do animals die of plastic?

There are many reasons why an animal dies of plastic. For example; let's say our animal is a turtle, and let's name her Peggy😀. Peggy sees a plastic bag, which looks remarkably like a jellyfish (what turtles eat). So she goes ahead and eats the plastic bag, and, feeling full, she leaves. However, although she doesn't know, she is not full, because the plastic bag obviously did not have any of the nutrients Peggy needs. So, as she keeps obliviously eating plastic, she begins to starve and die. That is one of the ways animals are affected.

Why does plastic affect coral reefs?

One of the reasons is the fact that plastic can block light and oxygen reaching the coral, which are two of the most important things needed for coral to live. Plastics also bring in a lot of harmful pathogens, and coral - like us - can be wounded and infected, so when plastic cuts into coral, it's really easy to become infected. Marine biodiversity is affected too, because when coral is structurally complex it's eight times more likely to trap plastic. (I got these facts from Green Fins).

Also, plastic isn't the only thing polluting marine life, there are other substances and materials too, but plastic is the worst and has the most impact.

Thank you for reading! I hope you've learnt something from this post, and I've probably missed something, so there might be a part 2! See you next week!

Violet

         xxx

How to Make Paper out of Recycled Paper! 📰

Making paper out of recycled paper... It's fun! I've done it once before in school at Eco Club but it was quite a while ago, so I'm hoping to do it again over the summer holidays. So, now, I'm going to do a step by step of how to do it. Just so you know, this may take more than a day to make because you have to soak the paper, so keep that in mind when you start!

Things you will need:

• Old, used paper. Can be anything: newspaper, lined, plain... but I wouldn't recommend card because it takes longer to do the process. And if you use coloured paper, I'm not sure how light the colour of your recycled paper will be.
• A blender (however you may not be able to use that particular blender for food again... so you can get creative and use anything that will beat the paper to a pulp, it won't be as smooth but it will be enough)
• 2 large containers (that are able to hold water)
• Anything that can soak up moisture (a sponge, cleaning cloth, towel...)
• A mould and deckle. I understand not many people will have this, but it's quite an important part of the process. It's basically two frames, one empty and one with mesh over it. (to make a mould and deckle: get two picture frames that are the same size, one is your deckle so you don't have to do anything with that, the other, you need to find any kind of mesh - the finer the better, because the mesh will leave an imprint on your paper - you could even use the mesh that oranges or onions come in! Cut it big enough to fold over the edges, and staple it to your frame, making sure it's tight.)
• Cloth sheets/towel

Step by step:

1. Get your paper and rip it into small pieces (if you have a shredder, you could use that, but I'm just going to rip it), then put all the paper into your large container.
2. Fill your container with water so it covers the paper. You should then let it soak, the longer you leave it, the softer it gets so if you can't use a blender, you should leave it for longer so it's easier to mash later. The soaking could take from 2-3 hours to 24.
3. Once you think it's soft enough, you can turn it into a pulp. Make sure there is water in it while you blend. Strain the pulp into another large container, leaving a bit of water. Repeat this process until you've used the paper up (to make sure you're not using too much water, you can reuse the water you strained out of the pulp before and pour some into the blender). 
4. To actually make the paper, get the container you used to soak the paper, and add water. Then, add a large handful of the pulp and stir well. If you see any large chunks of pulp, keep on stirring.
5. Get your mould and deckle, and align them with the deckle on top and the mould (mesh) on the bottom. Place them in the water/pulp mixture (don't let go of them), swoosh them around a bit before taking them out again (holding it flat).
6. Let the water drain through the mesh, while the pulp spreads evenly. Then, take the deckle off and place it to the side. 
7. Get your cloth sheet/towel and lay it flat, before flipping the mould onto it and pressing it firmly on the sides of the frame. Use your sponge to soak up excess water on the back of the mesh. 
8. Pull the cloth tight while you lift the mould. Your paper should be there (still soaking wet, so don't touch it!)
9. Now, to dry them. You can hang them up, using two clothes pegs and connecting it to your cloth/towel, not the actual paper. Or you could lay them out to dry, but that might take a little longer. You could leave them overnight, or just wait a few hours. 
10. When they're dry, peel the paper off the cloth/towel. 
11. They may be a little curled up, so if you want to flatten them, just press them between some heavy books for a while.
12. Repeat the process. :) 

Here are things that could go wrong and what to do:

• If your paper is too thin, add more pulp to the water. 
• If it's too thick, add more water. 
• If you mess up while using the mould and deckle, just push the pulp back into the mixture, and try again. 

Thank you for reading through this! There are loads of videos on how to do it on YouTube, because sometimes it's easier to see someone doing it and not reading it. Anyway, if you try it out, I hope you have a fun time! Thanks for reading.

Violet

         xxx

'Mount Recyclemore'! 💿

I wrote a blog (just over a year ago now!) about the correct way to get rid of old gadgets, which, if you don't know, is not putting them in your normal bin - it would put many dangerous materials into landfill. Well, this post is going to focus a bit around that.

This is Mount Recyclemore!

You've probably heard of Mount Rushmore, in Dakota, USA? It's four of the US presidents carved into rock (you've probably seen pictures if you don't know the name). Anyway, in Cornwall, there is now something called Mount Recyclemore, and this is 7 scultpures of the G7 leaders made out of discarded electronics. It was created by musicMagpie, but individual artists created each sculpture, so they were all different in some way, and in the whole sculpture there is about 20,000 individual pieces/12 tonnes of e-waste. This article has a video you can watch about Mount Recyclemore, with the artists talking too. 

Its purpose is to highlight the importance of taking action about the increasing threat of e-waste on the environment. Out of 53 millions tonnes of e-waste produced each year, 15.9 million tonnes are created by the G7 nations alone (these are: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US). In 2019, the UK  23.9kg for each person annually, and that's the second highest rate in the world. The UN says that e-waste currently generated around the world each year will be the fastest growing waste stream worldwide, more than doubling by 2050. Did you know, 4 in 5 people who live in Britain don't know what e-waste is (basically it's a large variety of different electrical products that are thrown away after use) and 31% didn't believe or were unsure whether it harmed the planet. 

I got these facts and statistics from these websites. Don't forget to read my other post on how to recycle old gadgets (I put a link in at the start), and I hope you liked my blog this week! See you next weekend! 

Violet

         xxx