Green World

Hi Everyone! You may be aware that Wednesday was International Women's Day, so today I wanted to share a book review for a book written by one of the most inspiring women of our generation: Greta Thunberg. She is, of course, the legendary creator of the Fridays For Future movement and has inspired thousands of children to skip school on Fridays to protest for the climate. She recently compiled a book, simply entitled: The Climate Book. Here are my thoughts. This is a compilation of articles and essays from the best climate scientists, activists and high-profile people, which makes up, in my opinion, the climate bible . It quite literally encompasses everything you may want to know about the climate crisis, from the science, to how it affects us, what we've done and have yet to do, and so much more. This book is everything. I have not yet read the whole thing, because let me tell you, this book is HUGE. It's also of course very den...

Welcome to December! We thought it would be cool to find 10 ways you can use a plastic bottle even after you have refilled it gazillion times, so you don't waste all the plastic . Because, even if you try to avoid plastic bottles at all costs, you will inevitably end up using hundreds of them throughout your life. The impact on the environment is undisputed, from the land animals to the creatures of our seas, plastic bottles can have a detrimental impact. But we can reuse them in lots of fun ways, here are our ten favourites. Have a good December and a great new year, you'll hear from us! 1. Bird Feeder At one of our blog meet-ups, we actually made a bird feeder out of an old plastic bottle, so this is definitely one we can vouch for. It's super simple, as long as you have some good scissors to cut the bottle and a suitable place to hang it. Below is a photograph of ours for some inspiration, and there are plenty of resources online to ...

For all the TV lovers, Recently I have been getting more into watching inspiring movies and TV shows, and I started a list of environment-themed ones I want to look at. I spent a lot of time just exploring and the ones below are the ones I found. I actually haven't seen most of them, but if you have watched any of these, post a comment to let us know what you thought of it and if you would recommend it. Have a lovely weekend! 1. Tales by light - 3 Seasons This series follows the Australian photographer Darren Jew in his travels and lets the viewer explore untold stories, not all of which are nice and pleasing to look at, but nevertheless important. I saw episodes 1 and 2 of season 3, they are called "Children in Need" and are very eye-opening. 2. Into the Wild - 2 hours and 22 minutes I haven't seen this movie, but it is about a young man giving up everything and exploring new ways of life. It is based on the true story of Chri...

Hi everyone! Alongside my passion for caring for our environment and the world around us, a lesser-known fact about me is that I am also obsessed with both knitting and crocheting, and can almost always be found sitting in the corner with my latest project and a ball of yarn. Both of these crafts are naturally pretty sustainable, so long as you buy your materials from reliable sources. However, these yarns and wools are often at the higher end of the price spectrum, and it is often tempting to reach for the cheaper options, where you get a lot more for what you pay, especially if you are on a budget. But they aren't very sustainable and often contain a lot of unnatural dyes and chemicals. This creates a bit of a problem, when if like me, you want to do what has had as little as possible impact on nature, but can't really afford to be constantly buying them. I had heard about making t-shirt yarn a few times before but had never tri...

Hi everyone, Today we wanted to talk about Marjory Stoneman Douglas, a writer, and conservationist who lived from 1890 to 1998. To find out more about other inspirational environmentalists, we already have posted about  Dara McAnulty ,  Wangari Maathai ,  Sir David Attenborough ,  Maria Sibylla Merian ,  Rachel Carson , and  Jane Goodall . As stated above, Marjory was born in 1890, in Minneapolis, USA. In her childhood, she was a passionate reader, which lead her to study English at University and to become a journalist for a newspaper her father ran. Through this job, Marjory was able to spread awareness about issues she cared about: politics, civil rights, the suffrage movement, and of course, environment conservation. In the early 1940s, Marjory became interested in the Everglades in South Florida. At this time, very little was known about them, so she spent five years researching their history and ecology. The book she w...

Hi, Today, I'm going to talk about a young naturalist from Northern Ireland. We haven't had one of these for quite a while (the last one was Wangari Matthai in late August 2021 ), so I'm really excited to write this new one about the inspirational naturalist Dara McAnulty! General information Dara McAnulty was born in 2004. He comes from Northern Ireland, where he lives with his parents and siblings. He is a writer, blogger, activist and naturalist. Dara, his mum and his siblings are all autistic and Dara says that this is the reason he sees the natural world as he does. Books and blogs Dara wrote his blog ' Naturalist Dara '. His first book ' Dairy of a Young Naturalist ' (which we reviewed here ) was published in 2020. It documents a year in his life and how he connects with nature. His second book, ' Wild Child ': A Journey Through Nature' came out in 2021, it again describes nature, this time 'go...

Hi guys, A while ago I learned a bit about Biomimicry and thought it would be interesting to share. It's a very interesting and touching idea that tends to come up in science class a lot. Basically, it is studying nature and taking ways nature does things to inspire our own ideas. It is taking nature as a role model for us to be more sustainable and efficient, and copying nature to fit in better. It is a way for scientists to solve great problems environmentally friendly and go back to a sustainable way of living. Many smart people around the globe take a close look at what nature does to solve a problem they may have encountered and adapt nature's ways to their own ideas to make them efficient, sustainable, less toxic and clean. There even is a whole organisation for biomimicry! I checked out the home page quickly, it's beautifully designed and you can really see what good it can do. Below, I will link the video I was shown when introd...

Eco Bricks Are they the key to the world's plastic pollution problem? Or at least a helpful factor if they became a permanent solution with no disadvantages? But what are they anyway? How are they useful? And how can individuals help every day? Here are some tips for everyone wanting to save plastic and help the earth. Eco bricks are plastic bottles, filled densely with hard and soft plastic that make a bottle so hard and sturdy that they could be used to build houses. Which in fact, they are. To make an Eco-Brick, you need a clean and dry plastic bottle, a long stick and lots of plastic. All plastic must be clean and dry, so it should be washed and dried or hung up to dry before usage. Now the bottle can be filled with layers of soft and hard plastic alternately that is pushed down with the stick to fill every corner of the bottle. That is done until the Eco-Brick is entirely stuffed with plastic and hard as a brick. The advan...

Hi Everyone! Today we have another inspirational naturalist! We haven't done one of these in a little while and this time it's Wangari Matthai! I first heard about her in a magazine so I'm really excited to write this post about her. I would also love to know if any of you have heard of her because I did an eco day at school and I was the only one in my class who knew who she was! Wangari was born in Kenya in 1940. It was at this point still a British colony. She grew up helping her mother and learning to cultivate the land. She became more and more fascinated and interested in nature. But like the majority of girls in Kenya at this time, she didn't go to school. Her mother realised that this was unfair as her brothers and cousins all went to school. Wangari just wanted to learn. She wanted to know everything and at 18 she was selected to study in the US. This was a huge opportunity for someone from a small community driven village in...

Hi everyone and welcome back to Green World, Today we want to talk about one of the most inspiring naturalists of our time. It is, of course, David Attenborough. Today (08.05.2021) is his 95th birthday so we seemed it fitting to publish a post about him today. Over his lifetime, David has won more than 40 awards for his work and was named among the 100 greatest Britons in 2020. David first joined the BBC in 1952 as a producer for the Talks department which looked after all non-fiction broadcasts. Since then, he has worked on lots of different programs and documentaries such as The Life Series, which was first made in 1979. More recently, he has presented Blue Planet and Blue Planet II. The latter had the most views recorded for a single program in 2017. David also gave the Royal Institution's Christmas Lecture in 1973 on The Language of the Animals. David Attenborough is still presenting documentaries to this day. He now lives in Richmo...

Hello, Today we wanted to tell you all about Maria Sibylla Merian. Maria was born in Germany on 2nd April, 1647. Like many young girls at that time, she loved to paint. Every day she would gather flowers from her garden and paint them. Sometimes, the flowers would have caterpillars on them and she would paint them changing, day by day, into butterflies. At that time, not much was known about insects, and people thought that butterflies magically sprouted from the mud. Maria knew from what she had seen while she was painting, that this was not true, but no-one believed her. As time went by, Maria became a great watercolour artist. She wrote about her discoveries, but scientists only took books written in Latin seriously, and Maria wrote hers in German. When Maria and her daughter were living in Amsterdam, Maria found display cases in museums filled with exotic insects collected from South America. Maria thought that if she could study the bu...

Hi Everyone! I thought I would share the transcript of Greta Thunberg's inspiring speech from the UN Climate Action Summit. The phrase we remember is 'How dare you!'. But what did she really want us to take away from it? She wanted us to act, so watch the video using the link below and take action because the world isn't just going to heal itself. Greta Thunberg's speech at the UN Climate Action Summit video "My message is that we'll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic g...

Hi everybody, Today I am going to tell you about a really inspirational environmentalist. Her name is Rachel Carson. I hope her story inspires you to be more careful about pesticides. As a girl, Rachel adored writing stories about animals. She got a degree in zoology but had to go home to care for her ageing mother. She wrote a series of radio shows about fish for a living. Rachel's program, called 'Romance Under Waters', was a big hit. Her ways of writing were different to anyone else and no one had made that sound so interesting before. It proved that she was talented in not only science but also writing. She wrote two books called 'The Sea Around Us' and 'The Edge Of The Sea'. When Rachel moved to the countryside, she realized the impact of pesticides. At that time farmers sprayed chemicals on their fields a lot to protect them from animals that may want to eat them. Rachel worked out that they were killing pla...

Born: 1934 When Jane was a little girl, she loved climbing trees and reading books. She dreamed that she could go to Africa and see the wild animals there. So Jane flew to Tanzania determined to study chimpanzees in their natural habitat. When she first arrived, none of the chimpanzees would let her get near them. They would always run away at first sight. Jane kept coming back until they let her come closer. However, Jane wanted to become friends with the chimpanzees.  So she started the "banana club" which meant that she would share bananas with them every time she visited the chimpanzees.  She discovered that chimpanzees have rituals, that they use tools, that their language comprises at least twenty sounds and that they are not vegetarians. Once she rescued an injured chimpanzee and nursed it back to health. When she released it back into the wild, the chimpanzee turned around and hugged her as if to say, "thank you and goodby...