Earth Month

It's almost the end of Earth month! Oh no! Help celebrate while you can. Here's three things you can do to help the environment:

One: clean up right. Most light bulbs contain mercury. Because of that fact, we must properly clean up our light bulbs. If we don't, the mercury will get in the air and the water. Lots of fish have mercury in them, in fact, fish, out of all animals, have the most amount of mercury in their bodies. Mercury gets in their water and their food from toxic waste. The larger the fish, the more mercury the fish contains in its body. This is because a larger fish eats more than a smaller fish so it takes in more mercury. At our Earth Day celebration, I learned how to properly clean up a broken CFL light bulb you must:
1) Keep people and pets away from the breakage area - do not step on the area when leaving.
2) Open windows and leave the area for 15 minutes before returning to begin cleanup.
3) Wear rubber gloves and dust mask - put in glass container when finished.
4) Carefully remove large pieces and place them in glass container.
5) Using duct tape pick up all the remaining fine particles and put in glass container.
6) Wipe the area with a damp micro fiber cloth, then put the cloth in glass container but, do not rinse the cloth between uses.
7) Put all waste and cleanup materials in the glass container, seal and label it Toxic Waste Broken Light.
8) Wash your hands and face carefully with soap.
9) Remove glass container from the home.
10) Continue ventilating the room for several hours.
11) Take the glass container with the waste material to a facility  that accepts toxic waste.
12) Check http://earth911.com/ for a toxic waste facility near you.
13) If you have throw rugs, remove them and bring them to the toxic waste facility.
14) If the break happened on carpeting, cut the area of carpet were the breakage occurred particularly if the area is requested by infants, small children, pregnant woman, the elderly, pets, or people with compromised immune systems
Never:
Use a vacuum even one with a HEPA filter.
Use a broom.
Pour mercury down a drain in your yard or sewer.
Wash clothing or other items that have come in direct contact with mercury.
Walk around your house or yard if your shoes might be contaminated with mercury.

Two: think before you throw. Our front yard has been totally trashed by litter. We live on the end of our street and people throw everything on our yard. One time we found a bike behind one of our really big bushes. The sad part was at that time we had a rabbit living in another one of our bushes. About a month later he left. All this litter is killing our plants and animals. Throwing our trash away is no better. It's just being put in landfills which also hurt the environment. The best we can do is recycle so we can reuse what we already have. I have a poster on my closet door showing endangered animals of Arizona. There are 18 types of fish, 17 types of plants, six types of birds, six types of mammals, and one type of reptile on this poster. That's 48 types of almost extinct animals! I would think before I throw.

Three: no more oil(!) Recently, there was a large oil spill near the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, it's losing a few thousand gallons a day! Oil spills kill lots of animals and coat their fur in oil. The oil spills are more dangerous than you probably think. The oil pollutes the water that fish breathe, and it kills the fish. Once all the fish are dead, then the animals that eat the fish die. Then all the animals that eat those animals die out and so on until there's nothing else on this planet. It's definitely worse than you think. No more oil!

That's just some of the things you can do to help the planet. There's also one other thing you can do to help the planet without doing labor at all. Start a writing campaign or a series of shows on YouTube or another website that you can show to the public to help the environment. One last thing: remember, every day is Earth Day.