Ocean of garbage

September 20 was Coastal Clean-up Day. But, is one day enough to clean up our coastlines? Over 80 per cent of plastic that is found in the seas has been washed out from land. a visit to the coast will give you an idea of the scale of the crisis

A study conducted in the Netherlands found that 95 per cent of sea birds in the North Sea had plastic inside their stomachs; one bird in Belgium had 1600 pieces of plastic in its stomach. Nearly 600,000 tons of discarded plastic is believed to have settled at the bottom of the North Sea.

There is so much plastic waste that is floating on our seas that researchers, scientists and regular ocean travelers refer to these as continents of plastic; a single plastic continent could weigh over three million tons.

One only needs to do simple ‘garbage in oceans’ search on the Internet to actually find out the scale of the problem that we have created. Tens of thousands of pages of shocking information and pictures about the state of the oceans that cover 70 percent of this planet. It is important also to bear in mind that this is a problem that is essentially created by humans. Over 80 per cent of the plastic that is found in the seas has been washed out from land – from our landfills, from our garbage cans – the plastic that we use and carelessly throw away day after day.

All of us may not have the opportunity to see what is happening in the far away oceans, a visit to any of our coast lines that is piled up with waste of all kinds gives us a good idea of the scale of this crisis.

Coastal Clean up day was on September 20, and was one effort at dealing with the problem when a large number of organizations and volunteers all over the world came together to clean up the coasts. The magnitude is such, that efforts like this can only make a small dent. A much better and long term solution, experts point out, is to adopt the 3R principle – Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. That might be the only way out, because how much ever we clean up, the waste is not going away if we continue to generate it at the pace and quantities that we are presently doing.

Importance of Lake

There was a lake in pallikaranai. This is the largest natural rainwater harvesting system in the region which is linked to the Bay of Bengal through a network of backwaters and outlets. This lake serves two important function — flood control in the hinterland areas and ground water recharge.

We also came to know that this lake was once home to 45 species of fishes, 10 species of frogs, 21 species of reptiles, 110 species of birds and 10 species of mammals.

While testing the samples of soil, air and water, revealed that a total of nine dangerous chemicals in the ambient air exceeded permissible limits and they are known to cause dangerous diseases.
Then the village community was called out and a team of students had put up a street play on pollution telling them that the future of this lake is in their hands.

The play highlighted the uses of the lake, causes and effects of pollution to the environment and the preventive measures to be taken to put an end to it.

Manage your time

Every day there are many things you have to do. You have to get ready for school, eat breakfast, and catch the bus. Then when you come home, there is home work and tuition and little tasks mother might want you to do. You may like playing with your friends, watching TV or playing computer games better than doing homework. You may have dance classes or tuition. You may have a hobby or like playing with your brother or sister or pet. Can you do all these things as and when you want to? No, you cannot.

Everything has to have a special time, if your life is to go smoothly. If you play with your pet and sit up late for your homework, you may do it very untidily, or fall asleep in the middle and not do it at all. If you don’t get your diary signed at night when mother also has time, you may forget to ask her in the morning. So what do you do to fit everything in?

You need to make the best use of your time. To do this, you need to think about what is important and what is not. What needs to be done everyday and what can be put off till the week end? When you get home from school, give yourself some time to relax and have something to eat so that you are not tired. Then have a bath and plan your evening till dinner and bed time.
A good idea would be to draw a large timetable and divide it into three. Under each section write down what you have to do and when you should do it. There are certain things that need to be done at the right time. Your school bag is best packed at night before you go to sleep. If you leave it too late, you will rush around and forget something. The same applies to your clothes and shoes.

So think of what you would put under each column. When you plan your activities and keep to routine and good timing, you will find that you will also have time to talk to your parents and family members and perhaps even time to read your favorite story book. . You will feel happy when you go to bed that everything is done well.

Information about Disk Drill

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Disk Drill for Windows, Disk Drill, Disk Drill data recovery, etc. All opinions are 100% mine.

If you worried or frustrated of deleting files by mistake or looking to retrieve important documents from a lost partition, then make sure that you check out best data recovery software out there in the market. Recently I came across this interesting software, which would be relief for most people in the country, who were worried of losing files from a lost partition or accidental deletion, known as Disk Drill. The Disk Drill is one of the stand-alone application out there in the market that can scan and recover data from virtually any storage device - including internal hard drives, external hard drives, cameras, iPods, USB flash drives, Kindles, and memory cards. In many cases, Disk Drill can even read your device even if it is failing, unreadable, or has lost a partition. People could just give Disk Disk Drill for Windows a try, as the software is FREE and would help in recovering sensitive data and important files from the lost partition.

Tree of Knowledge

Where do you go when you need to find information on a particular subject? Today, the answer, most often, is the Internet. With computers taking over the knowledge arena, reading has been relegated to the back seat.

But a new magazine, which calls itself “the encyclopedia for every school child”, is indeed attractive enough to warrant a peek between its covers. Tree of Knowledge, a fortnightly magazine, is split into five sections: The Living World covers biology; Visiting the Past is obviously history; Science Explained focuses on physics and chemistry, Our Planet combines geography with a bit of science; and The Human Factor takes you through the arts and culture.

Going by the first issue, which hit the stands on September 10, this is one magazine that will be more popular with parents; what the kids think remains to be seen. The production is excellent with fabulous photographs, fact boxes with extra information, maps and illustrations. The section on the tsunami under Our Planet tells you all you want to know about these giant waves by focusing on the devastating one unleashed by the 2004 earthquake off Sumatra. The Science Explained section takes you into the astronaut’s suit and uses pictures and more pictures to give you all the info you need on why people going into space need those special suits.

The only grouse is that the text could be more child-friendly. While the general appearance of the magazine seems to target the 7-12 age groups, the text seems to be addressing an older group. Also a couple of typos (Gandhiji’s wife’s name is spelled Katurba) could have been avoided.