But the 60-minute power outages—scheduled for 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., local time—won’t be the results of a terrorist plot, natural disaster, or massive solar flare. They’re all part of Earth Hour 2011.

(See before-and-after Earth Hour pictures from past years.)

The organizers behind the 6th annual Earth Hour urge people to turn off lights and other nonessential appliances in a symbolic show of support for action against climate change and for energy conservation in general.

In 2010, 128 countries and territories took part in Earth Hour. Eighty-nine national capitals participated, as did nine of the world’s ten biggest cities, thousands of other communities, countless businesses, and hundreds of millions of individuals, according to WWF, the international conservation nonprofit, which organizes Earth Hour.

We only have one planet.  You can help protect it. Participate in the world’s largest single campaign for the planet: Earth Hour. It starts by turning off your lights for an hour at 8:30 pm on March 31, 2012 in a collective display of commitment to a better future for the planet.  Think what can be achieved when we all come together for a common cause.

Visit their site HERE to found out more ways to get involved

The post EARTH HOUR: LIGHTS OUT THIS SATURDAY appeared first on Green Jar.

FOR THE SKATERS: Find an i RIDE i RECYCLE shop near you and take your deck in for recycling. If you don’t find a shop near you, email them letting them know who your local skate shop is and they will contact them to get on board!

FOR THE SKATE SHOPS: Join i RIDE i RECYCLE. Skaters will bring their broken decks to your shop, you’ll ship those decks to i RIDE with pre-paid shipping labels that they will provide, i RIDE will make rad designs from the decks, and everyone wins!

The post ATTN SKATERS AND SKATE SHOPS: WHERE TO DONATE YOUR BROKEN DECKS appeared first on Green Jar.

The campaign was hosted on Crowdrise.com and benefits areas in Africa, Asia, Central America and South America where Water for People works. The international nonprofit organization aims to create a world where everyone has safe drinking water all while ensuring no one suffers or dies from water or sanitation related diseases.

We are so thrilled and thankful that we were able to surpass our $2 million goal. It was certainly not an easy feat, and we are tremendously thankful to all of our sponsors, fundraisers, donors and ongoing supporters,

said Ned Breslin, Water For People’s CEO.

CH2M Hill, one of the campaign’s sponsors and a global, full-service consulting, design, construction and operations firm, kicked off the fundraiser by donating $150,000.

Another devotee for the organization and who would probably be proud of the campaign’s success is actor Edward Norton. He is a huge supporter of access to clean water and filmed a PSA advocating for the cause.

Breslin also added,

The money raised has the potential to transform lives throughout the world and contributes greatly to our goal of ensuring everyone in the areas we serve has access to safe drinking water and sanitation forever. Our significant progress toward this goal is evidenced by our recent success of achieving access for everyone to safe drinking water in Chinda, Honduras and establishing systems to ensure this access lasts forever.

HIT FROM: ECORAZZI

The post WATER FOR PEOPLE’S ‘DONATE TO DRINK’ CAMPAIGN RAISES OVER $2 MILI appeared first on Green Jar.

What started as a brainstorming session over a kitchen table searching for a way to help the people of Burkina Faso, Georgie’s homeland, has now become a registered 501(c)3  through their various relationships and with the help of their director Max Crespo.

Currently Models 4 Water, through its partnership with Gilt, Modelinia, and The Water Project, is raising money to bring sustainable, clean water to the people in Burkina Faso.

We aim to keep our focus where the need is greatest, and where the impact of a clean water source will be felt the most.

The average person in Burkina Faso must walk several kilometers a day to access water from an unreliable and often unclean source. This lack of clean water creates hardships, especially for the women and children of Burkina Faso, whom the burden of collecting water falls upon.

Our goal is to provide everyone with a reliable source of clean drinking water near their homes, hospitals, and schools.

The first of a series of fundraising dinners to benefit The Water Project will be this Wednesday, November 16th at Tribeca hot spot Locanda Verde! Tickets to the benefit dinner start at $350. Get your tickets here! 100% of your donation will go straight to The Water Projects and their water programs in Burkina Faso!

The post Supermodels To The Rescue: Heide Lindgren and Georgie Badiel Start “Models 4 Water” appeared first on Green Jar.

The New York rapper has teamed up with New York Yankees’ Robinson Cano and New York Jets’ Ahmad Bradshaw for his first annual Three Kings coat drive.

We just started the foundation, the Fabolous Way, and the winter was coming and we wanted to kick off the foundation with something where we’re giving back to the people within the inner city

explained Fab of the initiative during an interview with Pix11.

The winter is coming and it’s getting cold and people need coats and people don’t have the opportunity to go out and buy themselves coats. So we wanted to encourage other peole who have coats to donate or donate winter gear. There’s plenty of people with two or three coats in their closets that they never wear.

Fab also touched on the Nets coming to his stomping grounds of Bedford Stuyvesant, adding that it’s a very “exciting” move and said that the one piece of advice he gives the kids is to “stay in school.. Even being a rapper you need an education,” he said. “Some of the ways I write my raps is from my vocabulary I learned in school.”

Fabolous concluded the interview by saying that he is currently in the studio working on his next music project.

HIT FROM: XXL

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Recycling is an environment friendly activity. Recycling helps to reduce damage done to the environment due to excessive non-composing waste and excessive production. However, there are some items which are harmful to the environment if recycled. The things we will talk about in this article are the ones prohibited by most municipal systems and are or no use to commercial recycling industries as well.

Here are the 15 environment enemies which should never be recycled.

1. Wet paper

It sounds a little hard to believe how can paper and a little water be of harm to the ecosystem! But paper soaked in water can cause contamination as the fibers are severely damaged. That is it is easy tear wet paper. Most recycling industries reject paper items which have been soaked in water.

2. Batteries

General non-rechargeable batteries, should not be put to recycle especially through regular trash. Because most dumps are not developed to handle the toxic materials that leak out of such batteries. They should be dumped at the hazardous waste collection centers. Recycling rechargeable batteries, however, that contain lithium ion or nickel-metal hydride, may be profitable to recycle.

3. Diapers

Dirty diapers are harmful for the environment. Disposable diapers are a great health risk as they contain Dioxin traces, which is an extremely toxic by-product of the paper-bleaching process. This chemical is carcinogenic, it is listed as the most toxic of all cancer-linked chemicals by the EPA and it is banned in most countries. Disposable diapers also generate much more solid waste and use up much more raw materials, like crude oil, wood pulp etc.

4. Aerosol cans

Even though Aerosol cans are general metal but spray cans contain propellants and chemicals and should be put in the regular dumps. Most municipal systems across the world treat them as hazardous waste material.

5. Brightly dyed paper

Strong paper dyes or any other brightly dyed paper is considered as a hazardous waste. The white middle papers are okay to recycle. These kind of dyed papers are generally sorted out and burned or landfilled.

6. Ceramics and pottery

Ceramics include coffee mugs, cups, tiles etc. Pottery includes all sorts of clay materials. Clay can be recycled if dried, slaked, and dried again to soften. Ceramic materials are quite illogical to recycle as they can serve other purposes.

7. Household chemicals and motor oils

All sorts of household chemicals, motor oils, liquid coolants etc. are considered hazardous waste materials and they are usually handled separately from regular dumps. Motor oil is recyclable but cause noxious fumes causing suffocation.

8. Glass

Glass from household things like the light bulbs, window panes, mirrors etc. might contain small amounts of mercury. Regular water bottles or kitchen jars are excluded from this list. But beer bottles etc are a abrasion danger to trash handlers. Glass may also cause operational problems in incinerators.

9. Disposable medical equipment (DME)

Disposable medical equipment like injection syringe, tubing, scalpels are biohazardous material and should be dumped at the hazardous waste collection centers. The medications left inside these items are also prone to produce harmful chemicals.

10. Mixed Papers, tissue, magazines, and office paper

Napkins, tissue papers and paper towel are absorbed in germs and should be considered for composting rather than recycling. Also these kinds of papers cause litter problems. They cause uncontrollable fire and burning them may release dioxin or metals from the inks, carbons etc.

11. Pizza boxes

Surprising? It’s true, pizza boxes absorb all the grease which drips off the pizza. This oil is most likely to contaminate the cardboard boxes, thus making it impossible even after recycling, to produce clean paper from it.

12. Plastic bags or grocery bags and wraps/Bottle and Jar Lids/ Plastic screw-on tops

If possible, clean and reuse the bags. Do not dispose of them in regular waste dumps. These plastic bags and wraps can cause a lot of littering problems. They do not degrade and burning them creates toxic smoke and they do not decompose or compost.

13. Textile

Textiles and clothing like shoes, linen, rags, and carpets etc. are prone to rat infestations and insect breeding. And burning of polyester clothing or plastic clothing like raingear, rubber shoes, gumboots, nylon rags and carpets can produce toxic fumes which can cause serious health risks if inhaled.

14. Styrofoam

Styrofoam or polystyrene, which is made of plastic and is commonly used for padding in packaging delicate appliances, takes a long time to break down and may also be ingested by animals resulting in blockage to their digestive tracts and death by starvation.

15. Food wastes

Food scraps, fish wastes, solid and liquid fats, hide hair etc. attracts insects and animals, creates bad odor and also produces harmful gases. They also slow down decomposition and may even settle after decomposition. Consider composting rather than recycling these.

The post 15 THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT RECYCLE appeared first on Green Jar.

Now, the actor/activist will be leading a campaign by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) raising awareness of endangered elephants. IFAW’s Animal Action Education program features a campaign each year during Animal Action Week. This year, October 3-9 will be all about elephants and how you can help protect them ivory poaching, a serious and continuing threat to elephant populations. The organization’s Animal Action page provides several ways young activists can get involved with the campaign including collecting petition signatures, submitting artwork, and educational videos.

DiCaprio says,

In the past century, the number of elephants in the wild has declined by 50 percent. Their disappearance could devastate ecosystems and have a lasting impact on the biodiversity of our planet. I hope this program will inspire and empower you to help protect elephants worldwide.

IFAW has expressed their enthusiasm at having Leo on-board and hopes that it will get the elephants the attention and help that they need.

To give you an idea just how serious and horrifying ivory poaching can be, it usually involve decapitating the elephant or cutting off the elephants trunk. These are not like teeth people. When an elephant is poached for it’s ivory, it usually involves killing the elephant or death results shortly after. Here are a couple images below just to make this a little more real to you. If you do your own research you are sure to find a collection of graphic photography I chose not to put up on the site.

Here’s a great article to learn more about the grave effects of ivory poaching

The post LEO DICAPRIO TO LEAD IFAW’S ELEPHANT CONSERVATION CAMPAIGN appeared first on Green Jar.

Mark Ruffalo, Adrian Grenier, Orlando Bloom, Serena Williams, James Cameron, Billy Morrison, Mark McGrath, Kevin Bacon, and Kyra Sedgwick are just a few of the celebs that make appearances. The initiative is meant to keep climate change in the public dialog – in particular, the predicted devastating effects rising sea levels will have on people living near coastal areas.

Global Green’s I AM Campaign is tackling one of the most critical threats facing our cities and the people who live in them, said Mark Ruffalo. I AM empowers people to show why they care about their cities, and what they are doing to help fight global warming. If everyone can join together to help put a face to the American victims of these pending disasters, we can help show our leaders why they must act now.

GG is asking people to get involved via photo submissions to their website – with one lucky supporter winning a trip to walk the green carpet at the annual Pre-Oscar bash. Check out the PSA below – or to learn more, hit the official landing page here.

HIT FROM: ECORAZZI.COM

The post SERENA WILLIAMS, MARK RUFFALO, ORLANDO BLOOM + MORE LAUNCH NEW GLOBAL GREEN CAMPAIGN appeared first on Green Jar.

A plastic school might sound like it’s better suited for Barbies than for people, but the technology—developed by the Guatemalan nonprofitPura Vida—is actually quite clever and allows for schools to be built for less than $10,000. The plastic bottles are stuffed with trash, tucked between supportive chicken wire, and coated in layers of concrete to form walls between the framing. The bottles make up the insulation, while more structurally sound materials like wood posts are used for the framing.

One added bonus of the nonprofit’s work is educating local children about the environment by helping them gather the bottles that end up in their schools’ walls. “They create the school that in turn creates opportunities for them,” Hug It Forward staff write on the group’s website. A two-classroom schoolhouse built by Hug it Forward in Granados used up 5,000 bottles, which otherwise would’ve kicked around the town’s street or ended up in a trash heap. Hug it Forward has already built 12 schools around the country, with four more in the works.

Photo courtesy of Hug it Forward

HIT FROM: GOOD.IS

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Challenge: Leaky faucets that drip at the rate of one drip per second can waste more than 3,000 gallons of water each year.

Solution: If you’re unsure whether you have a leak, read your water meter before and after a two-hour period when no water is being used. If the meter does not read exactly the same, you probably have a leak.

Challenge: A leaky toilet can waste about 200 gallons of water every day.

Solution: To tell if your toilet has a leak, place a drop of food coloring in the tank; if the color shows in the bowl without flushing, you have a leak.

For more information, read about the WaterSense annual Fix a Leak Week.

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