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World Ocean Day

Tuesday, 23 June 2009

Monday June 8th was "World Ocean Day" and communities around the world were celebrating our ocean! We had the opportunity to go out to Leadbetter beach for a beach clean up organized by HOT (Healing Oceans Together). Also there were representatives of Ocean Futures, Channel Keepers, Surfrider, and more. We had a great time out there, and beside getting to clean up our local beach we also learned a lot about how we can make a difference in our community. Did you know that Americans buy more bottled water than any other nation in the world, adding 29 billion water bottles a year to the problem.

In order to make all these bottles, manufactueres use 17 million barrels of crude oil. That�s enough oil to keep a million cars going for twelve months. Imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way up with oil. That�s about how much oil was needed to produce the bottle! Plastic bags aren't much better ether. Each year across the world some 500 billion plastic bags are used, and only a tiny fraction of them are recycled. Most of them will have a short lifetime with a consumer they'll be used for the few minutes it takes to get from the store to home and then they're thrown away. The average person uses 500 -700 plastic bags a year. It's little things we can do like using metal or re-usable water bottles and getting a fabric bag that can be used again and again when you go to the grocery store. Think about that. If one person started using a re-usable grocery bag they could save 500+ plastic bags a year. Now if they could get another person to do the same it's 1000+ plastic bags. If you can get a whole community to follow we can really make a huge impact on the environment! Make a pledge with us to do your part to get rid of single use plastics and lead by example. We can change our world one person at a time.

Sources: http://www.alternet.org/ http://kids.nationalgeographic.com