The Girl Who Silenced the U.N. for Five Minutes
July 1, 2008 | 3 Comments
This is an incredible video of a Canadian girl who spoke to the United Nations and left them completely silent and speechless for five minutes. Her name is Severn Suziki, and her speech was given at a U.N. assembly in Brazil when she was twelve years old. She had raised all the money to travel to the delegation, five thousand miles from her home, herself.Speaking about the hole in the ozone layer, pollution, the devastation of the forests and extinction of so many species, Severn charges that we adults have no idea how to fix these things, in fact can’t fix them, and that we must change our ways. “If you don’t know how to fix it, stop breaking it,” she pleads.
Severn continued to say:
“I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am here to speak on behalf of starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I’m only a child and I don’t have the solutions…but neither do you. I am only a child, but I know we are all part of a family five billion strong; in fact, 30 million species strong, and borders and governments will never change that.
Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to share. We are afraid to let go of some of our wealth. Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent some time with children living in the streets. This is what one child told us:
‘I wish I was rich. And if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicine, shelter, love and affection.’
If child on the streets who has nothing is willing to share - why are we, who have everything, still so greedy?
I am only a child, but I know if all the money spent on war was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty, and finding treaties - what a wonderful place this world would be.”
And here’s the kicker - this speech was given in 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. How much is still relevant today? All of it. And the more important question is: How much has been changed, accomplished, since Severn spoke that day?
Years later, Severn wrote a piece for Time magazine in which she said: “I spoke for six minutes and received a standing ovation. Some of the delegates even cried. I thought that maybe I had reached some of them, that my speech might actually spur action. Now, a decade from Rio, after I’ve sat through many more conferences, I’m not sure what has been accomplished. My confidence in the people in power and in the power of an individual’s voice to reach them has been deeply shaken…In the 10 years since Rio, I have learned that addressing our leaders is not enough. As Gandhi said many years ago, ‘We must become the change we want to see.’ I know change is possible.”
At the age of nine, Severn founded the Environmental Children’s Organization (ECO), a group of children dedicated to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. Today, Severn is an environmental activist, speaker, television host and author. She has spoken around the world about environmental issues, urging listeners to define their values, act with the future in mind, and take individual responsibility.
She co-hosted Suzuki’s Nature Quest, a children’s television series that aired on the Discovery Channel in 2002. In early 2002, she helped launch an Internet-based think tank called The Skyfish Project. As a member of Kofi Annan’s Special Advisory Panel, she and members of the Skyfish Project brought their first project, a pledge called the “Recognition of Responsibility”, to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002.
Click here to watch the video and hear her incredible speech.
Fresh Bread
May 19, 2008 | 1 Comment
It is interesting to me how the whole “green lifestyle” thing can grab you and take you places you never thought you’d be.
For example. two years ago, after I decided I wanted to consciously do things to help the environment, I did things like change lightbulbs, be even more cautious about saving water and recycle more. I didn’t let myself stop there. I read books and studied newspaper articles and did web research. By last summer, I had started a vegetable garden in the backyard. This year, I am baking my own bread.
I thought that lightbulbs would be enough.
To me, if you’re really researching and thinking about living green and fully trying to understand the impact of how we currently live our lives, you can’t help but want to run into the hills and just start over. Now I’m researching how landfills work and realizing that we are mummifying tons of trash each week on a planet with limited space. And we are feeding ourselves and our children food grown with chemicals and processed with chemicals and packaged with chemicals that are not only bad for the environment, but for our whole bodies - our brains and our reproductive systems. What else is more important to a human than the ability to think and reproduce?
About a month ago I had asked my 5-year old son to tell Daddy that Mommy wanted an ice-cream maker for Mother’s Day. It was an experiment to see if I could channel my desires through my child straight to the other purchasing power in the family in order to get what I wanted instead of the same gift he’s given me every special occasion for many years! It worked - I got the ice-cream maker. I also got a bread machine.
The ice-cream maker is still sitting in it’s box.
I am currently waiting for the 5th loaf since last Sunday to finish baking. We’ve enjoyed French Bread, Potato Bread, Hawaiian Bread, Buttermilk Whole Wheat Bread and tomorrow - Maple Buttermilk Bread. It is fresh, chemical and preservative free. It wasn’t packaged in plastic or shipped on a truck. No - I don’t live on a farm and Yes - the ingredients were packaged and shipped, but in much more environmental ways than grocery-store bread. The organic flour
companies tend to use more recycled content packaging than the more commercial brands. And the ingredients use much less packaging than the 2-3 loaves of grocery-store bread I used to purchase each week.
I made a point of not purchasing bread this week - I wanted us (and me) to have no other option but to make bread. And it went well. All week, I approached each day eager to look through the bread machine recipe book and choose something new. It was fun. And bread machines are so easy. You basically load the ingredients into the loaf bucket, put it in the machine, choose your bread cycle and press Start. It really is that easy - and the cleanup is great. Just some measuring cups/spoons and a little spilled flour from the countertop.
The best part is the smell and taste of fresh, warm bread. And this old-fashioned feeling that I am doing something right.
Clean Up Challenge!
May 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment
On Sunday, we grabbed the kids and a neighborhood friend and we took a walk around the neighborhood. It was amazing to see the amount a trash we picked up in our “clean suburban” neighborhood.I knew we were doing the right thing when Z Man (the 5 year old) said,”We are doing something that is good for the earth.”
I was filled with pride and all I could say was, “You bet, buddy!”
May 2, 2008 Weekend Challenge
May 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Put the Cycle in Recycle
April 18, 2008 | 1 Comment
It’s a new explanation of the idea of recycling that I heard on TV recently. A huge part of Recycling is the Cycle. If you purchase a product and its packaging and they are manufactured from virgin material and then you toss what you can of the packaging into the recycling bin - IS THAT REALLY RECYCLING?
Those arrows we are so familiar with create a loop. The first part of the loop is consumers placing recyclable materials in a special bin, not the trash. The second part of the loop is manufacturers purchasing the post-consumer waste to be re-purposed into a product or packaging. The last part of the loop is that we as consumers need to purchase products made of recycled material to show manufacturers that we appreciate their effort and to help keep them in business.
Just because I send a full recycling bin out to the curb every week does not mean that I am helping the environment. I need to be more careful about making sure to purchase products and packaging that are MADE of recycled material (it is usually proudly listed on the back of the product/packaging). It seems a daunting task. I purchase so many products, where do I start? Here is an idea (I found it on the BRBA Australia website):
- Identify one product you purchase
- Identify a similar product that uses recycled content
- Purchase it, if you like it, keep it, if not continue searching
- Start at #1 again with a different product you can replace
When you look for products and packaging made from recycled content, don’t just look for the triple looping arrows symbol. There is not really government regulation regarding the symbol. Look for wording near the symbol like “Contains Recycled Content”, ” Made from Post-Consumer Waste” and “Made from Pre-Consumer Waste”. Sometimes a percentage will be included. Obviously, the higher the percentage, the better.
I was giving myself a free pass to purchase plastics just because they had a recycle symbol on them.
Not all things recycle neatly into the same thing, as do glass and aluminum. Plastics are a good example. They don’t recycle as well as natural materials and most of it may end up in a landfill anyway. I was able to download a plastic packaging resin code chart from the American Chemistry Council’s website. A good example would be the plastic bottles used for water, made from PET/PETE (Polyethylene Terephthalate) can be recycled into, among other things, fiber for carpet. Bottles for milk, plastic bags and cereal box liners are made from HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) and it is usually recycled into bottles for non-food items and plastic lumber. Plastic products are made from non-renewable natural resources. A plastic product that is remade and then possibly not recycled after it’s end use will still end up in a landfill. This ends the cycle, instead of completing the loop of recycling. The unnecessary purchasing of products and packaging that use non-renewable resources is like throwing those resources away.
It may be a little more work until you get used to it, but by purchasing recycled products you are:
- supporting recycling programs
- creating jobs
- conserving natural resources
- saving energy
- reducing waste and pollution
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