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Showing posts with the label earth day

Make Your Own Paper Beeswax Drinking Straws. Say No to Plastic! (paper straw templates)

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Earth Day is Every Day! I hate plastic drinking straws. My children both have been taught  to say NO to the straw when we go out to eat. It isn't a perfect scenario. I understand that some people find it easier to drink out of a straw so here are some options to kick the plastic straw habit. 1) Get in the habit of saying No to the Straw . I have to remind myself to ask for "no straws" at a restaurants. It's a work in progress. 2) Purchase reusable stainless steel straws. I keep a container near the fridge where my children and their friends can grab a straw to use around the house. I also have one in my bag and a few in each car's glovebox. To solve the issue of plastic outside the house, I looked into purchasing paper straws. Though inexpensive, the packaging and shipping can be an issue. 3) Make Your Own Paper Drinking Straws: It seems making paper straws would be a simple enough, and it is. Below are a few templates to make things easy for you. I

A Happy B'Earth Day Cake

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HAPPY EARTH DAY! This is my daughter's favorite cake to make. It doubles as an Earth Day/Birthday celebration. If anyone is interested in making it, what I did was quite simple. 1) Make your favorite cake recipe. I used the one-bowl chocolate cake from Craig Claibourne's New York Times Cookbook . You have to make two batches for each half of the globe. 2) Find two bowls of the same diameter. Oil and flour the insides of both. 3) Cook as directed and when finished cool and use a spatula to pop the cakes out of the bowls. 4) Frost. I made a no-cook butter cream frosting. Frost the two halves together forming the globe. 5) Put a light coating of blue-dyed frosting over the sides leaving a small area on top for the polar ice caps.* 6) Lastly use a globe as a guide, with a different color frosting "paint" on your continents. 7) Go for a run. That butter cream frosting is just that, butter. *I couldn't find my blue dye and berries made the "world" too pu

Earn Money For Your School: Recycle Candy Bars

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Get your school or non-profit involved.  Earn money and help eliminate waste! TerraCycle is on a mission to eliminate the idea of waste. Each waste collection programs (each one is called a “Brigade”) for previously non-recyclable, or difficult-to-recycle, waste. The collected waste is then converted into new products, ranging from recycled park benches to upcycled backpacks. Select Your Waste To get started, simply sign up and join a Brigade program for which you want to collect. There are currently more than  40 Brigade programs  that range from food packaging (like drink pouches and candy wrappers) to office supplies (like pens and tape dispensers) to personal products (like cosmetic, beauty and diaper packaging). You can join as many Brigade programs as you like. Collect and Send

Adirondack Education: Children and Earth Day

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My daughter and I are bonding over our annual Earth Day celebration by cleaning up the parking lot for Ampersand Mountain. After donning her gardening hat and gloves she announces that she really doesn’t enjoy cleaning up other people’s garbage and would prefer ice cream. I tell her the ice cream will be a good treat to celebrate our job well done. She is not buying any of it. She is rather insistent with her garbage-picking protests. It’s not like I am asking her to wear the stuff like a hair shirt but just hoping to increase her awareness. She is sometimes oblivious of those little scraps of paper that escape from her hand. I finally am able to encourage her to join me, letting her know that even if she can’t go down the hill to get the garbage I need her help with the detection of it. She makes a game of “I-Spying” the trash with me retrieving it. Today she has X-ray vision for spotting cups, wrappers, bottles and bags lost under leaves and thrown over the embankment. The c

Adirondack Earth Day Outings: What to do with kids for Earth Day!

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By Diane Chase If you are looking to make Mother Nature’s job just a bit easier here are a few ideas of events and activities in celebration of Earth Day.  For anyone in Essex County that wishes to “dump the pump” on Earth Day, the Essex County Transportation Bureau is offering   free bus rides   for everyone on April 22nd. On April 23rd, Judy's Computer Support will be at the   Adirondack Daily Enterprise 's parking lot from 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. as part of a Community Computer Recycling Day to collect used computers, printers, laptops, monitors, faxes and computer cords. Read More

Adirondack Earth Day: Free Bus Rides in Essex County

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Family Fun: Adirondack Green Circle and Earth Day

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My family's Earth Day tradition is cleaning the trailhead of one our favorite hikes. We have found some crazy things tucked along the edges of the parking lot of Ampersand Mountain. Some have been personal items that I had difficulty explaining to my son, which only reinforced the importance of wearing gloves. The deer carcass would have been easy to justify in nature, except its remains were still wrapped in a plastic bag. Beer cans and cigarette butts are sadly a normal sight. Read more

Leaving a mark on the world

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I hope we are teaching our children to treat the earth with respect all year round. (There is only one, my son tells me.) I know we can always do more, learn more and be an even better example. As with everyone else we try to do little things all year, using canvas shopping bags, composting, gardening, car-pooling, and recycling. I even attempt to pass off my thrift store obsession and used bookstore passion as me saving the world one vintage cardigan at a time. It’s the free roadside furniture compulsion that my husband believes that needs intervention. I know I can fix whatever orphaned bureau sits on the roadside with the huge FREE sign attached to it convincing myself I am freeing the landfills of dressers. My husband wishes for me to make a smaller gesture. All jokes aside the kids know we are really just scratching the surface. Every year we have taken on the job of cleaning up the Ampersand Mountain trailhead. After the first few years of trying to convince my children that its