Whale Watching Season

It's officially my favourite time of year again- whale watching season!! Years ago, we lived in a place that had a 180 degree view of the ocean, meaning we got to whale watch every day through winter. I can no longer do that as we have moved, but now I head off to the local national park which has an amazing lookout for whale watching. Living about an hour North of Sydney, we have between 60 and 70 whales pass our coastline each day. My favourite whale, like most Australians, is our albino whale - Migaloo who passed our shore a few days ago, although I haven't seen him in person before. These whales are heading North to warmer waters for Winter.

I encourage all Aussies to head to their closest whale watching site, as it is such an amazing experience to see these enormous mammals in real life. Just remember to take your binoculars! You can use this website for recent whale spottings: http://www.wildaboutwhales.com.au

Until next time,
Keep loving the green life

Calculate your ecological footprint

Hi everyone, 

Here is an interesting website where you can calculate your ecological footprint. We are using so many resources that on average for our population to keep living like the average American, we would need 5 planet earths to sustain this level of living. So take the quiz see what you are at and figure out some small ways to change the way you impact our world:

http://www.myfootprint.org/

Image from: <http://dobigthingsblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/follow-these-green-steps-to-reduce-your-ecological-footprint/>

Until next time,

Keep loving the green life

Take 3 Campaign

The Take 3 Campaign is probably my favourite campaign at the moment. It involves simply picking up 3 pieces of rubbish with you each time you visit a beach, national park or coastline and placing it in the rubbish bin. This will make a significant impact if every person participates, as less plastic and rubbish will end up in the ocean. One of the top reasons marine life dies is due to consuming so much rubbish, leading to death. Australia alone has 4000 pieces of plastic rubbish floating in each square kilometre of our oceans. There is no excuse except laziness for throwing rubbish out the car window or leaving it behind, Australia has some of the best infrastructure in the world, meaning we have bins lining most streets. Imagine if someone kept leaving litter in your home, just like you leave it in their environment...

Here is their website if you want more information http://www.take3.org.au/main/page_home.html

Until next time,
Keep loving the green life

Muir Redwoods, California

The last national park which I visited in America was the Muir Woods National Park. We took a day tour from San Francisco to see the redwoods and would highly recommend to anyone who loves nature. The redwoods are ENORMOUS and are between 500-800 years old. It is an amazing sanctuary of trees so close to the city. Here are some photos:

Until next time,

Keep loving the green life

Mount Hood, Oregon

After we looked at the waterfalls in Oregon we went to Mount Hood. This is one of America's top skiing destinations and it was absolutely amazing. Mount Hood is a dormant volcano, but has a 3-7% chance of erupting in the next 30 years. I have read that this current snow season has a major lack of snow, most likely due to global warming, highlighting how important it is to be environmentally friendly. Here are some pictures that we took:

The Saint Bernard is the Timberline Lodge's greeter for guests and they were taking it for a walk in the snow.

Until next time, 

Keep loving the green life

The Importance of Bees

Many people believe that bees are just useless stinging insects, however these little creatures hold enormous importance in our food industry. The honey bees are the reason we can buy nutritious foods at the shops, as they pollinate 70% of agricultural crops, allowing fruit to grow. Just some of the delicious foods brought to us by the bees include:

• blueberries
• apples
• cherries
• melons
• grapefruit
• avocados
• broccoli
• carrots

<Image from: http://ucanr.edu/blogs/venturacountyucce/index.cfm?tagname=pollinators>

The process involves bee keepers tending to the needs of their bees. These bee hives are then rented out to farmers to use bee pollination to fertilise crops and grow food for the world. These little bees contribute $15-20 billion dollars worth of crops each year to our economy, with their value being approximately $200 billion dollars.

<Image from: http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21572733-encouraging-wild-and-diverse-insects-best-way-pollinate-crops-variety>

There are afew reasons as to why experts believe the bee population is declining so quickly. Colony collapse disorder is the main reason, this is due to the rise in pesticides worldwide, affecting the bees and killing them due to the toxins and chemicals. Other possible reasons for bee decline is malnutrition (from lack of variety of crops to feed on), toxins from genetically modified crops and climate change.

Some results of bees going extinct:

food prices would rise


farming would decline dramatically
the agricultral industry would collapse
have a small variety of fresh food limited to corn, bananas and pineapples
not have cotton to make clothing or coffee beans for our favourite beverages
it would be a pretty boring and unnutritious world to live in

<Image from: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Bees/bees3.php>

So, it is important to bring awareness to this important issue as we cannot live without bees. Some solutions are to minimise use of pesticides on plants and crops, plant our own vegies, fruits and flowers to encourage bees in our own backyards and even write to our government bodies in support of researching bees.

Until next time,

Keep loving the green life

The 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating Standards

Have you ever wondered how the chicken on your plate was raised or treated during its lifetime? Well I recently came across this amazing idea to encourage consumers to become more educated on the meat that we ingest. It is becoming more important for people to know where their meat has come from. Therefore, the American supermarket chain Whole Foods Market has partnered with the Global Animal Partnership to introduce a rating system for its meat depending on animal welfare. This allows people to understand the quality of life their product has had before we purchase it.

<Image from: http://blogs.citypages.com/food/2011/02/whole_foods_let.php>

As most of you know, the better the environment an animal is in during its life, less stressed the animal is, the less toxins it has in its system and the better tasting the meat. Therefore the higher the rating, the better the meat is. The rating system starts from 1, which Whole Foods still classifies as a breakthrough because it eliminates all crates and cages from the animals, up to 5+ where the animals have the same life of those that are on a farm.

I personally think Australia should introduce this sort of system at major supermarkets like Coles and Woolworths rather than just their regular meat and free range meat. It will bring more attention to the caged meat industry and hopefully increase the animal welfare globally. So next time you are buying chicken, turkey, beef or pork, if it does't have any information about its welfare, it is most likely from a crammed cage or shed environment. 

Until next time,

Keep loving the green life