Save the World, Green Thursday: Save our trees, Save paper

http://reducefootprints.blogspot.com/

Do you notice any difference with these letter boxes compared with other boxes? Is it the residents in these apartments are more meticulous with clearing their mail and junk mail? If you walk around your neighbourhood, is this the scenario or is it more likely that junk mail is shrewed around the ground surrounding the letter boxes. This was a pain when I was living in a high class environment in Singapore. Some residents emptied their mail boxes, took their mail and threw the junk on the floor. Others left them sticking out of the slots. This caused a lot of unhappiness among the residents. Eventually, the management provided a big box for people to throw the junk paper into.

In Auckland, we can put a sign, "no circulars", and no commercial mailers or flyers are to be deposited in these boxes. If they do, a phone call to the company will mean the sacking of the person delivering the mailer and ignoring the signs.

Thus we get a clean environment, and trees are saved.

The down side of this is young boys and girls are deprived of earning some pocket money, Below is a post I did based on Sam's experience.


In New Zealand, the youngest age you can be a paper runner is eleven. Sam, my money minded son couldn't wait to turn eleven so he could join the ranks of hundreds of little children delivering newspapers.

His was a free newspaper which some household would consider as junk mail. The week he turned eleven, there was a vacancy for a paper runner for a loop for three roads couple of roads away. He was all excited and feeling like an entrepreneur, and emailed his application. The agent rang back to confirm his age and gave him his job.

On the first day, by seven am, three big stacks of paper arrived at the letter box. Each stack was too heavy for me to heave. But as a doting mum, I did it for him, I folded the paper into three folds so that they would fit into slots of the letter boxes. And looking at the pile, I told him, I would help him do his run by driving him there, and deliver the other side of the road for him.

Sam came home feeling excited about his first job. It was a cold wet winter afternoon. It took us more than one and half hour each to finish the run. We were shouted at by those who didn't want this free paper. There were signs at some letter boxes which say, "No circular", but the news paper agent told us that his news paper were not circulars. Some people who regarded the paper as junk shouted at us. We were barked at by dogs. At the end of the day, he got less than US$2.

I thought it was child exploitation. I told Sam, he had his go at business venture. That was the first and last time he was going to be a paper boy. He was very happy, he would rather play with his friends or at the computer.

These kids were considered contract workers, and not protected by the union. In another paper run, the company decided to use adult workers, depriving what little money the kids can earn.

Save the world, green Thursday: To Dam or not to Dam

These photos are taken in a dam in Auckland. The stump in the water shows the death of trees when the water floods over the land behind a dam.




http://reducefootprints.blogspot.com/
http://workofthepoet.blogspot.com/2009/09/think-green-thursday_10.html

You would probably have guessed that I am a pro environmentist and a green activist. I care for the earth and am passionate about what we are doing and not doing to save the earth. Having been married to a water engineer has taken me first hand to many dams in New Zealand. While often it is necessary for dams economically for farmers and drinking water and power supply, it is important that the delicate ecology of the land is not ruin.

In the place of my birth in Borneo, the Rejang River has been proposed to have a dam built in one of the tributaries. The Bakum Dam has attracted international opposition. Once I traveled to another river which had a dam been built. I saw lots of little islands. I asked my guide and she told me that the islands were once hills. People have been dispersed and taught to become fisherman instead of their traditional farming.

Today, on our National TV, I watch as a group of Native Americans come all the way from California to call their salmon to go home. Their salmon are dying out when the Sacramento River was dammed. Our Maori people gave them a warm welcome.

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/native-americans-in-nz-seek-return-salmon-3426122?page=1&pagesize=5
A group of Native Americans have arrived in Christchurch on a spiritual journey which they hope will ultimately result in salmon being re-established back home.

The salmon in their own rivers are dying out but they are thriving in New Zealand after being introduced around a hundred years ago.

Twenty-eight members of the Winnemem Wintu tribe plan to perform a ceremonial dance next week by the Rakaia River to lure the fish back to California.

Tribe members also hope to take some salmon eggs back to California.

The Chinook or Quinnat salmon are native to the Pacific but are in short supply in northern California, mostly due to the damming of the Sacramento River.

For several years, tribe members have highlighted their cause and their connection with the salmon they have lost, but their voices have fallen on deaf ears.

New Zealand's Fish and Game though says they are fully in favour of helping the American tribe to repopulate the Sacramento River with the salmon.

"Some time soon those salmon will come home, when US Fish and Wildlife wake up and realise they are not a foreign fish," Chief Caleen Sisk-Franco of the Winnemem Wintu tribe says.

"It's OK to bring them back to their home waters... It'll be good for everyone."

Fish and Game say once the red tape is sorted out at the American end, exporting fertilised salmon eggs will be easy.

Save the world, Green Thursday: Be considerate where you leave the shopping trolley.

http://reducefootprints.blogspot.com/
http://workofthepoet.blogspot.com/2009/09/think-green-thursday_10.html

This is my pet peeve. I saw this shopping trolley abandoned in a creek where lots of volunteers had worked hours cleaning up the pollution to make it a clean creek.

When people abandon the trolleys, they don't think their idiotic action has a long chain effect. When supermarkets lost the trolleys, they just pass on the cost of replacing it to customers. Our food prices go up. Then there is the hidden cost of cleaning up as in this case, the creek. Some people leave the trolleys around, and an "invisible" driver drives the trolley and knocks against cars. The poor victim comes back to see a dent in his car.

I wrote the following article a few years ago. I used to, when I was a faculty wife spent every morning discussing social issues. I miss those sessions. Do give your thoughts on this issue.

Shopping carts or shopping trolleys are available in supermarkets for our convenience when we buy our groceries and cart them to our cars or taxi stands. We take them for granted and when we cannot find one available, our blood boils and our grocery shopping becomes more unpleasant. Some how, we feel that it is our right to have a trolley when we need it. How often, we get cross when the trolley is wobbly and has a mind of it own, and goes to a different direction from the one you want to.

Many years ago when I was in Singapore, the supermarkets decided to impose a S1 rental in order to use them. There is a small mechanism where you slot your dollar coin which will unchain your trolley from the trolley in front of you. When you have loaded your shopping to your car, you push your trolley back to the supermarket’s trolley bay, and retrieve your $1. Customers complained about this pettiness. It was inconvenient to wheel your trolley back to the bay especially when you had a taxi or a bus to catch. Who will watch over your purschases when you return the trolley?

Supermarket management were unfazed, the system helped employees from running about for shopping trolleys left all over the place, and worst still from being stolen by a small community. Each trolley cost them over one hundred dollars, and the supermarket management reported that many trolleys were stolen per week. The expatriate community wrote in to the forum of the news paper to complain, that no where in the world did shoppers have to pay for use of the trolleys.

This rental system has since been introduced in some European countries, though in USA, Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand, I can still use my trolley without this cumbersome system.

This reminds me of over thirty years ago, I was a student in a university in Canada. There was no public bus to the nearest shopping mall. Students used to push their purchases in the shopping trolleys and then dump them at the hostel corners. The supermarket management would send boys to retrieve them.

When I was in Singapore, I used to shop in a certain up market supermarket. If you purchase more than $150 of grocery, they will deliver without charging you a delivery fee.

I remember once, supermarket boys will push your trolley to your car, load it in your car boot and then take the trolley back to the supermarket.

In Australia, the supermarkets have storage facilities with freezer and chiller for your icecream or meat. The idea is you go to the mall, do your grocery shopping when you are less tired, go galliavanting in the mall, have a cup of coffee. Then you pick up your purchases without worrying that your icecream has melted or meat gone off.

It’s the same everywhere, in Singapore and in New Zealand. You walk around the neighbourhood. There are abandoned trolleys at every nook and corner. Some people use it for their laundry basket on wheels, others a convenient way to transport their barbecue meat. Some are blatant vandals, and dump the trolleys in creeks, beaches, landfill or other people’s front yard. Some leave trolleys so they run into cars. Such people have no social conscience.

Save the world, Thursday green, don't pollute the water

Western Springs is one of my favourite places in Auckland for myself and my visitors. You will read many posts in my other blog. Only yesterday, I took a friend I haven't seen for almost forty years and she loved it. Her husband was saying that perhaps all the junk food was hurting the geese which had funny feathers sticking out of their wings.
I did not dare to reveal this piece of news that was in last week's Central Leader. Apparently, the Auckland City Council was meant to put up signs seveal weeks ago to stop the public from throwing bread into the lakes to feed, zillions of ducks, geese, swans, pukekoes and eels. The park rangers report that the bread was causing botulism and killing the ducks.
But no official steps were taken, and when the rangers tell people not to throw bread in the water, they tell him to bugger off.
Lucky for the ducks, nature often rights itself. The rain came, the temperature went down, and botulism was reduced. We are all back feeding the ducks and no more telling the ranger to bugger off.
Seriously, if I go on a Sunday afternoon, when hordes of well meaning families have thrown loads of bread into the lake, the feathered friends are stuffed up to their necks. I do see the ducks not eating, because they have had so much food. The bread stay floating in the water. A very ugly sight.
Perhaps, people can be told not to throw bread in the lakes on Sunday afternoon. The water engineer sees another problem. The weir that water drains to the stream are filled with leaves and flotsum. If the weirs are cleared, perhaps the bread will drain off.
I remember another little pond at the Domain next to the Auckland hospital. I used to go and spend my lunch time feeding the ducks. In May when the official duck shooting is opening, you will see a zillion ducks seeking shelter in the tiny pond. You hardy see the water at all. Years later when I came back from Singapore, I found botulism had killed the ducks, and the pond was a smelly mess. The water engineer said this can be saved. In deed, some smart water engineer had widen the pond, put in a few fountains that pumped air into the water, and the pond is now a beautiful family and tourist attraction place again.
This phot was taken beginning of the month, the ducks and geese were very hungry. It was a Thursday. The geese were so hungry that they dashed towards us fifty meters away to greet us.






http://reducefootprints.blogspot.com/
http://workofthepoet.blogspot.com/2009/09/think-green-thursday_10.html

The first part of this post was done last year. Well meaning animals and bird lovers over feed the birds in the park. In the summer months, uneaten food pollute the water.

I am glad that this year, the authorities have put up a sign telling people not to feed the birds by throwing food in the water, but on the land. Even then, people ignore the sign, and the photos show signs of the death of a lake.