April 21, 2011

White Dog presents Thinking Cap Thursday…a Special Earth Day Edition. Tomorrow, April 22, is Earth Day.

A $20 donation to the charity of your choice for the winner of today’s quiz:

1. Every hour, Americans discard (2.5, 5, 0r 25) million plastic bottles.

2. What is the most recycled item in the U.S?

3. True or False? The US population discards 16,000,000,000 diapers each year.

4. An estimated 80,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space -- that's almost (how many) football fields. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.

5. Who is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year? This means that 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste.

6. About (one-fifth, one-third, or three-quarters) of an average dump is made up of packaging material!

7. True or False? Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper.

8. List one good way to reduce, reuse, or recycle or replenish:

White Dog’s Bit of History: Tomorrow, April 22, is Earth Day, the anniversary of what many consider the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. The idea came to Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Inspired by the student anti-war movement, he realized that if he could infuse that energy with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution, it would force environmental protection onto the national political agenda.

As a result, on the 22nd of April, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values. Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts." On March 21, 1971, the UN Secretary-General signed a proclamation establishing Earth Day as an official international holiday. Now people all over the world are learning about environmental issues in their communities.

The movement has grown so that now 5,000 environmental groups in a record 184 countries reach out to hundreds of millions of people. But the message is still the same and the most effective change is still achieved at a grassroots level. We, the everyday average people make a VAST difference by doing simple things like recycling and conserving resources.

The White Dog Army encourages everyone to step up to the challenge of making a difference. The fight for a clean environment continues in a climate of increasing urgency, as the ravages of climate change become more manifest every day. We invite you to be a part of Earth Day and help write many more victories and successes into our history. Discover energy you didn't even know you had. Feel it rumble through the grassroots under your feet and the technology at your fingertips. Channel it into building a clean, healthy, diverse world for generations to come.

HAppy Earth Day! Love our planet...it is the only one we have!