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A New Island in the World

THE FUTURE IS YOURS

‘They knew,’ says Mara.
Another surge of nausea hits her.
Fox leans closer. ‘It was a hundred years ago, Mara. It’s history.’
‘But they knew. They could’ve done something but they didn’t. They knew. They didn’t think about the future, did they? They never thought about us.’ (From ZENITH by Julie Bertagna)


SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Over the years, human activities have poured extra carbon dioxide into the upper atmosphere. Evidence is growing stronger by the day that this is adding to natural global warming, causing world temperatures to rise to a critical threshhold. If the Earth grows too hot it's likely that there will be more floods, hurricanes, storms, famines, droughts and disease. How you travel, what you eat, where you go on holiday, the energy you use, the products, cosmetics and clothes you buy - ultimately, all the small, ordinary things that you do today will have a huge impact on the planet and on the future.

RHINO-SIZED FOOTPRINTS?

Everyone knows their own shoe size. But do you know the size of your carbon footprint? Each person on Earth has a ‘carbon footprint’. It’s the amount of carbon dioxide we create every day of our lives.

*The average person in Europe creates a pile of rubbish each year that is the weight of a young rhinoceros. It all adds up to a 30 million tonne mountain of waste. Each festive season in the UK creates an extra 3 million tonnes of waste. Almost half of the UK’s ‘greenhouse gases’ come from incinerated waste or landfills of rotting rubbish.

*Most Europeans use about 160 litres of water a day - that’s two bathfuls each. But tap water is better than bottled as it does not use up the energy in road miles and packaging or create plastic waste.

*Over a billion people in the world own a mobile. In Europe alone, 100 million are dumped each year, creating 1000 tonnes of highly toxic electronic waste. A single phone battery can contaminate 600,000 litres of water. In a single year, more than 800,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water could be polluted by the batteries of the phones that are thrown away. Up to 90 million old phones could be lying forgotten in UK homes or binned. Fewer than 1 in 30 of unwanted phones are re-cycled. Old phones and other dumped electrical equipment, such as TVs and computers, send toxic gases into the environment.

*There are almost 500 million cars in the world. By 2030, that number is set to double.

*Ten thousand planes fly the Earth’s skies - that number is also set to double in the next twenty years. A single jumbo flight from the UK to Australia creates the same carbon dioxide as 400 small cars each travelling 16,000 km - the distance most Europeans drive in a whole year.

*Trees are the world’s lungs. They ‘breathe in’ carbon dioxide and ‘breathe out’ oxygen. One tree makes the same amount of oxygen a person needs to live. Yet the planet’s forests are being chopped down at an incredible rate.

It's a lot to think about. But the future is yours. What can you do to protect it?