MyEnviroMind

Halloween is creeping up on us! Time for some sneaky snacking and bloodcurdling baking. We all need a break every now and then - Half term for me hasn't come a moment too soon! Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that we should all forget our morality and ethics. Raise your hand if you are also a culprit of buying cheap, last-minute sweets and dishes in a rush. Once, twice. Maybe a couple of hundred times. We've all done it. And with Halloween being famed by kids for its opportunity to go reckless with sugar, the number of unsustainable, unhealthy and immoral sweets flying of shelves is the true horror of October. By 'unhealthy,' I don't just mean because of the sugar - everyone who is anyone knows that all sweet treats have sugar in them and, like I said, Halloween is a time of year to let loose and run wild! (within the law.) Nah I'm talking about those slightly dodgy products. Those unheard of, unregulated items that can be found in any place, ...

NASA has revealed that, as predicted, this year is holding some record-warm months - and there's no stopping here. It's not just September's heat that's triumphed this year; August & July this year have both tied as the hottest months ever recorded.  Not recorded since the 1900's. Not recorded for 50 years. No. The hottest months ever recorded.  Is it just me or are you getting a bit hot & bothered by this news too? The threshold of only a 1.5 degree C increase became almost in reach during February 2016 where temperatures were 1.34 degree C above normal. If we go beyond this mark, life on small islands will conclusively be flooded out. A higher population density will occur in cities as land will be lost and homes destroyed. I'd like to point out that this isn't just about loosing nature and protecting biodiversity. Ultimately, that is a major consequence of our ever-increasing temperatures. However, for those who may be more af...

You may or may not be aware of this. Recently our family, your relative, my friend, the Bornean Orangutan has been classified as 'critically endangered'. The critically endangered Indri This is the final stage  for any species before extinction on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List. Now why might this be? Everyone knows about the orangutan, unlike many of the other lesser-known species on the Red List such as the Indri or the North Brown Howler. They are a popular species too; if one is walking round zoos or researching wildlife examples for kids to learn, they are bound to stumble upon the Orangutan a numerous amount of times. So what has gone wrong? Well it all boils down to their habitat. As many budding biologists will know, Orangutans live within the rain-forest. As well as this, commonly lurking around the rain-forests in Borneo are Mahogany tree fellers, palm oil exploiters dirty businesses all round, and, as you...

This. Bill Nye, what a guy. I used to watch Bill Nye the Science Guy in my Year 3 Science class. Hearing him again brings an essence of nostalgia. It feels like an age. It makes me realise how long we've known about our world's danger, and pushed its screams to the side. How many opportunities we've had. How many times we've ignored. How many times we've 'tried'. But, no more negativity! Now is our chance to take what we've learnt and DO SOMETHING about it. Let's cease this one and last opportunity. Our only opportunity to make right what we did wrong. We can do so many things and make so many changes to our lives. It only takes a small nudge of positivity within us.  We're not that far but we are getting further and further away from a stable world. H _ M     :) Bibliography: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/climate-101

I've never been a history fanatic. I'll admit, every now and then I feel like checking out a museum or watching a documentary, but it's never been of important interest to me. Needless to say, that doesn't mean I can't appreciate an explicit, colourful and humorous timeline when I see it. Earlier today, I was checking out my Twitter feed and this popped up on my feed; 'Two charts show carbon pollution will end the era of stable climate. Only one is funny.' Now whomever created this was one of those clever, intuitive type. A bit long, I grant you, but just hold out until the end. You'll be grateful you saw it. I'd never seen any presentation of our situation like this before - what a fantastic way to do it! If only more people knew about it. Perhaps you could print it out, stick it in a classroom or pin it in the workplace. Just to get it seen. In busses, magazines, newspapers. It's eye-catching look & witty comments will grab the ...

'TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF AND MAKE A CHANGE' Ever feel like you're not being yourself? Like you're following a social consensus in order to feel self-assured and 'normal'? It's what the famous ones do, what the government allow. It's OK...? Well no. It's not always 'OK'. The fact is, nobody knows  what's right and what's wrong. That is why there's so much debate and confusion. So much anger, so much hate. We have juries for this exact reason. An example of mine is energy. The exponential population growth has resulted in an ever increasing demand in fuel for heating and electricity for appliances such as kettles, TV's and phones, which are now becoming part of routine life. Now don't get me wrong, I don't want to prevent economic development and, believe me, I don't want to go back to medieval life where people just  survived  and struggled to live through the freezing Winter months - that is definitely not...

OK . So, in the news this week: 'MPs call for a ban on plastic microbeads.'  What are microbeads I hear you ask? What do they do? Why does it affect me? Microbeads can be seen here in toothpaste credit: www.medicaldaily.com Microbeads are small pieces of plastic, smaller than 5 mm, commonly made of polyethylene or even other crude oil products such as polypropylene and polystyrene. These beads provide shape and abrasion to products that need to scrub off dead skin, dirt and food. They are used in a vast range of cleaning & cosmetic products that we all use daily and their minute size means they can easily pass through our drains and water filtration systems until they float right out into the ocean. A single tube of Johnson & Johnson’s Clean & Clear facial scrub can contain up to 330,000 plastic beads. 100,000 microbeads can be washed down the drain, from some products, in just one application. So what's all the fuss about? I've never had ...