“Turn It Up Day”

What happens when you flip the switch? What happens when you walk away from your stereo, your computer, your TV, whether it’s on or even just plugged in? “Turn It Up Day” addresses raises awareness about some of these issues in the story, but it’s very important to get the facts straight.

The Wormulator and the Dragline

The Wormulator, our giant worm that eats Mt. Grande and tries to eat Mt. Tamalpais, is actually a combination of explosives (that blow up the mountaintop) and a dragline (that disperses the dirt and much afterwards). Much of it is then dumped into the surrounding streams and valleys.

What it Really Looks Like

In “Turn It Up Day,” our kids visit a mountain that looks more like a moonscape than some place on Planet Earth. In reality, mountaintop removal is like the moon…in that all signs of life is taken from a once vibrant mountain.

Please ask your teachers to consider teaching on this subject. We have included a curriculum that was created for us by the Earth Day organization. Please see the activities here.

We also found the I Love Mountains site to be very helpful in understanding this issue. Here are some interesting tidbits from their website:

What is Mountaintop Removal?

Mountaintop removal is a relatively new type of coal mining that began in Appalachia in the 1970s as an extension of conventional strip mining techniques. Primarily, mountaintop removal is occurring in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Coal companies in Appalachia are increasingly using this method because it allows for almost complete recovery of coal seams while reducing the number of workers required to a fraction of what conventional methods require.

Where is Mountaintop Removal Happening?

There are currently no federal or state agencies tracking the overall extent or cumulative impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining, and so no maps of the actual extent are currently available. Figures from the multi-agency environmental impact statement that was completed in 2003 estimated that more than 700,000 acres in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee had been impacted, but were based on permit maps provided by coal companies. Permit maps, according to studies by the West Virginia Technical Application Geographic Information System, can underestimate the extent of valley fills by as much as 40%.

What are the Effects of Mountaintop Removal on Families and Communities?

The impact of mountaintop removal on nearby communities is devastating. Dynamite blasts needed to splinter rock strata are so strong they crack the foundations and walls of houses. Mining dries up an average of 100 wells a year and contaminates water in others. In many coalfield communities, the purity and availability of drinking water are keen concerns.

How does Mountaintop Removal Affect the Environment?

Mountaintop Removal is occurring right at the heart of one of the nation’s main hotspots of biological diversity. According to the Nature Conservancy, the mountain region including southwest Virginia, southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and northeastern Tennessee contains some of the highest levels of biological diversity in the nation. This region is also at the headwaters of the drinking water supplies of many US cities. The maps below show hotspots of biodiversity based on a rarity-weighted index biological diversity produced by the Nature Conservancy, as well as the major river systems with headwaters in the Appalachian coalfields.

Read more at www.ilovemountains.org

“The Great Pacific Garbage Patch”

Here are some more facts about the North Pacific Gyre and plastics. Get your facts on and take action!

The Gyre is for Real!

There’s no plastic bag island where Hufflebot now lives, but there is a lot of trash floating out there.

Here are some facts to help you start learning:

The basics are just like Socket says. In the Gyre, a great vortex of ocean currents, there’s now a swirling mass of plastic trash about 1,000 miles off the coast of California, which spans an area that’s twice the size of Texas. This contains six times as much plastic as biomass such as plankton, jellyfish and other marine life. As the Gyre swirls around, plastic trash is broken into smaller pieces, just like a kitchen food processor.

Here’s a list with some more facts on plastics in the environment. Check out the fact sheet that the folks from Algalita Marine Research Labs came up with: http://www.algalita.org/pdf/plastic-in-the-environment.pdf

Plastic Bags are Bad News

It really is time to bag the bag. Here are some key things to think about:

Here on our little Planet Earth, over one million plastic bags are used each minute. Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags that they have mistaken for food.

Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade - breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest.

According to a story on Salon.com last year, only 1% of plastic bags are recycled worldwide. That number is about 2% in the U.S, and the rest of the bags find their way to landfills where they can take when discarded can persist for centuries.

Solutions!

A group of school kids in Hanover, New Hampshire are taking things into their own hands! Just like the Greenhouse Gang, Kids For a Cooler Planet are making waves and changing the tide of plastic bags.

In 2001, Ireland consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags, or 316 per person. But an extremely successful plastic bag tax, introduced in 2002, reduced consumption by 90%. Approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil have been saved due to this reduced production. Governments around the world are considering implementing similar measures. Pretty cool, huh?

San Francisco Bans Plastic Bags! Maybe this was from Scoot, and maybe it wasn’t. Click here to learn more!

Check out more info relating to plastic bag waste at these websites:

• Reusable Bag Facts
• We’ve Still Got a Long Way to Go
• Marine Litter Facts