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Want to Make a Difference?
For most, it's difficult to take advantage of someone who can't easily fight back especially when you have to look them in the eye. Whether through ignorance or intention, with no one looking or no one to defend her, the Earth has been mankind's dumping ground for thousands of years. Introducing Earth Mom, the new face of environmental accountability. She's both beautiful and vulnerable and it's up to us to protect her before she begins to fight back with powers we can't control. She offers unconventional solutions to the many problems plaguing our planet.
We encourage you to take part in helping us achieve solutions to one or more of the following challenges. The sooner we get going, the sooner we will see the type of results we can all better live with. You can choose to be part of a group, or head up a national committee to focus on one specific problem. Either way, we guarantee that you will quickly see the results of helping our organization speak to the masses with one voice.
Goal 1 - Education: "It takes a globe". Once you join our organization, you take on a personal commitment toward helping to preserve our planet for future generations to enjoy. To properly represent our organization on any level, it's extremely helpful if you attain some knowledge on the many ways our ecosystems are under attack. Under our Education (Enlighten) Link, there are 50 - 60 different topics for you to review at your own speed. We recommend you spend a few minutes at your leisure, investigating the various facets each topic. Chances are that several will take you in any number of interesting new directions. Within just a few sessions, your eyes will be opened to the importance of our mission and you'll amaze your family and friends with interesting new facts about our fragile environment. Upon completion, we encourage you to apply for your Education Merit Badge to display on your profile page.
Goal 2 - Accountability: As you are getting up to speed on the many factors affecting the environment, consider all the ways you can begin to lessen your personal and household impact. Under our Engage Link, we have devised suggestions consisting of hundreds of "Eco-Friendly" tips and ideas for you to begin to apply within your own household. Review these tips and ideas at a comfortable pace making note of those concepts you can immediately begin to act upon. Hold a "kick-off" meeting within your household to discuss your immediate, medium and long term goals where you can stress the importance of helping your household cut back on your environmental impact. Hold follow up meetings whereby you monitor your progress, set new goals and assign new responsibilities for you helping you achieve your goals. Check back to see freshly added tips as members suggest to us from time to time. Once you've made it through all your checklists and submitted at least ten fresh new ideas of your own, we invite you to apply for your Accountability Merit Badge.
Goal 3 - Empower Others: Attracting a membership capable of representing even a fraction of the global population is way more than enough to get the attention of every Fortune 1000 company on the planet. After getting up to speed and setting an example within your own household for others to follow, we encourage you to introduce our organization to family, friends and eventually to colleagues and management at your place of employment.
Goal 4 - Earth Mom Icon: Many business entities claim to be committed to protecting the environment. Very few have yet to place a link to their "Green Policy" directly on the front page of their website for all to view. We want to change the mindset of the entire business culture. Our goal is to see that every business on the globe takes the time to add an icon to their face page representing their written commitment to the environment. For entities that join as an Earth Mom member, they are welcome to the use of our Earth Mom icon. For others, we offer generic G or R rated icons, or they're welcome to create their own. The use and linking to one of these icons will indicate that they care about the environment and are willing to be held accountable in order to earn our business. While the addition of an environmental policy costs a business little or nothing, each new link adds a spark to our global cause and tends to positively affect the way global commerce approaches our environment.
Goal 5 - Celebrity Influence: Celebrity brands are highly sensitive to being associated with the image of third world sweat shops. So much so, that auditing agencies have sprung up to perform spot checks on the working conditions of remote factories in an effort to verify a number of minimum working standards are being met. Unfortunately, these agencies usually draw the line at the concerns of the workers, giving little to no concern as to the impact of their products on the local environment. This practice just like being associated with the use of sweat shops, could prove to be just as embarrassing to a major celebrity whose factories are poisoning the environment of these very same workers they are taking strident measures to protect. We applaud the measures of all celebrities concerned with working conditions and suggest that they consider taking the next step to insure each factory along with their suppliers are all in compliance with the same environmental standards that any global citizen should be entitled to expect. This one is another no brainer. We hope to enlist the endorsement of every major celebrity on the planet in insuring every factory involved in creating their branded items are in fact setting the standards in environmental compliance for global commerce to aspire toward.
Goal 6 - Community Clean-Up: There are areas in or surrounding your community in need of clean up. Some require low tech solutions involving clean up crews. Other require industry and political solutions. Generate a list in order of difficulty. Begin gaining credibility by organizing or participating in knocking out the easy challenges such as beach and park clean ups, while enlisting the power of others in a position to help achieve the more complex goals.
Goal 7 - Plastic Shopping Bag Ban: Aren't we all adults? Are each of us capable of purchasing and sticking a handful of reusable shopping bags in our trunks or back seats to insure we don't need to clog our environment with lightweight plastic shopping bags. Several cities have already banned the use of plastic shopping bags within their city limits. This is a relatively easy mandate to adopt. Let's solve this one world wide. Let's get these bags out of our environment and out of our landfills. Write to your local politician, promote the use of reusable grocery bags, start on line petitions. Get them out of your community, town city and eventually, your state. This is an easy fix. Entire countries are getting on board with this one. Let's be a leader on this one sooner rather than later. Instead of dragging our feet to make the change we all know is needed and one day coming, let's run full speed at it and get it fixed. Join the Plastic Shopping Bag Ban Committee.
Goal 8 - The Hydrogen Highway: Here's a no brainer. Let's stop forever poisoning our precious ground water in search of trapped gases deep in the earth. We're going to need that water some day to grow our crops, water our livestock and quench our thirst. Are electric cars really the answer? How is the bulk of our electricity produced? Nuclear, coal, gas, etc. One way or another, electricity and natural gas powered cars do not represent permanent solutions. If sea levels are truly rising with all indicators pointing that way, why don't we solve two problems for the price one. Let's use water to power our cars. We need to build a network of hydrogen cell stations to support the coming wave of hydrogen cars. As hydrogen technology continues to improve, we'll need to have a refueling network in place and ready to go. If we wait for the oil companies to provide this network, how soon do you think it'll happen? Never, so let's find a way to pool our resources in the short term to install and control our own hydrogen network. Then it's just a matter of convincing car companies to offer hydrogen options. Join the Hydrogen Highway Committee.
Goal 9 - Prescription Drug Disposal: Here's another problem with a simple solution. Every prescription sold should come with a prepaid return envelope back to the manufacturer. The practice of flushing old prescriptions down the toilet is leading to huge problems when traces of these powerful drugs show up in our fresh drinking water supplies. Let's make it easy and free to send back outdated prescriptions and impose large fines on those that choose to ignore the damage they're doing to the rest of us. Let's insure the
manufacturers are properly neutralizing these drugs and disposing them in a manner where they cannot be resold or re-enter the environment in any form.
Goal 10 - Clean the Clutter: Ever have a family member return from overseas and talk about how immaculate a certain city or entire country was kept? Regardless of where in the world you live, take pride in your community appearance. Keeping plastic, papers and other unsightly objects out of our environment helps protect the many species of animals that are injured or die as a result of a complacency we can easily change. Cities and states need more revenue. Let's raise the fines for intentional littering and start protecting the local wildlife.
Goal 11 - 100% Recycling: Every scrap of plastic takes hundreds if not thousands of years to fully decompose. Most plastics can be recycled but instead are being tossed into landfills to linger for generations to come. Amazingly, there are numerous landfills where aluminum, metals and other recyclable are still being interred. Sweden actually imports the garbage from other countries to process and mine. There's no excuse to allow politicians to ignore the many simple steps than can easily be taken to ease the pressure on the environment. Let's investigate every waste operation for efficiency and get them up to snuff sooner rather than later. We have the technology to make waste dumps a thing of the past.
Goal 12 - E Waste: Every year, billions of electronic devices are replaced with the latest new update. Every device is capable of either being refurbished and reused in developing countries or of being 100% recycled into it's basic components. Given their value, the only excuse for allowing even one more computer, phone, tablet or other electronic item to find it's way into a waste dump, is complacency.
Goal 13 - Product Ratings: One day while shopping, an app your smart phone or device on your shopping cart will alert you as to purchase options that may be best for the environment. You may choose to scan a bar or QR code or view an environmental rating printed on any product that will help you make an informed decision as to the purchase you are about to make.
Goal 14 - Pesticide Ratings: How many fruits and vegetables do you purchase each week? With pesticides designed to stick to the surface in order to survive rain and sprinklers, how much time do you take to wash your purchases? How do we as consumers know when our food is riddled with pesticides and toxic contaminants? Most fruits and vegetables are mainly liquid. What percentage of crops are grown using contaminated water that makes up most of the flesh inside the produce? What good does it do to ban harmful and cancer causing pesticides in the more evolved countries, only to import fruits and vegetables from countries that have yet to outlaw them? Let's ask the growers and grocers industries to adopt an effective internal solution. If unsuccessful, let's ask our lawmakers how they feel about the contents of next glass of vegetable juice when they are about to drink it. Let's see what companies or lobbies fight from having this important legislation from becoming law and convince them to act in our own best long term interest.
Goal 15 - BPA Removal: Are you aware that Bisphenol A is an additive to the lining of many food product containers? Are you also aware that BPA is a known carcinogen that we are ingesting each and every day of our lives? Why is this practice being allowed? Why aren't our lawmakers weighing in on this problem? Our first goal will be to find you alternative manufacturers to begin purchasing your canned goods through. Next we will work on ridding the global food supply of this carcinogen.
Goal 16 - Phthalate Removal: Phthalates are a group of endocrine-disrupting chemicals commonly used in render plastics soft and flexible. They are found in a wide variety of common products including plastics (e.g., children's toys), cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, baby care products building materials, modeling clay, automobiles, cleaning materials and insecticides. See Research
Goal 17 - Groundwater Contamination: What is the definition of insanity? Paying for plastic bottles that leach BPA into our water instead of turning on and drinking from the taps in our own kitchens. One day after all our rivers and streams become too polluted to use for crops and livestock, our choices will be acid rain and groundwater supplies. Keeping our drinking water clean is a huge challenge while natural gas fracking companies play Russian Roulette with our lives.
Goal 18 - Fresh Water For the World: Several organizations are already making huge headway on this problem but nonetheless still need our help and support.
Goal 19 - Basic Sanitation: According to a recent post, 2.5 billion people each day are left with no place to go. That's no joke. Untold death and disease arises from human waste when it needlessly contaminates public areas, water and food sources. Click Here for more information.
Goal 20 - Alternative Energy: Clean energy is within our reach. We as an organization can play a major part in it's expansion by purchasing clean energy cars and purchasing wind energy or solar panels for our homes.
Goal 21 - Plastics to Oil: There are claims of new processes that can turn plastic back into oil. If this is true, we should be outlawing plastics being disposed of in landfills and setting up processing stations around the country.
Goal 22 - Biodegradable Cigarette Butts: Ever consider what happens after that butt gets casually flicked onto the street, nature trail or beach? Wind and rain typically carry cigarette filters into the water supply where the same toxic chemicals the filter was designed to trap leaks out into the aquatic ecosystems thereby threatening the quality of the water along with many lifeforms including our own. Cigarette filters have been found in the stomachs of fish, birds, whales and other marine creatures who mistake them for food. The acetate filters can take many years to decompose.
Goal 23 - Country of Origin Labels: The USA having deemed certain chemicals and pesticides to be both dangerous and cancerous, have wisely banned their use in this country. That's not to say however that US chemical companies have stopped manufacturing these harmful compounds for sale to countries outside the USA. So neighboring and third world countries who lack any semblance of safeguards, are free to employ the use of these compounds to increase their production yields, be far more competitive that home grown alternatives and free to import tainted fruits and vegetables into the US for our children to consume. Lead is routinely found in children's products made in China. Is there a campaign to dumb down our kids? If you're not sure, search out the number of chemicals the Chinese are putting into the rubber duckies our young kids routinely chew on during their first few years of life. Chinese wallboard containing highly toxic chemicals are being discovered in thousands of US homes. What's up with that and who exactly is watching our ports for us? Melamine laced dog food from China has killed thousands of our dogs and has also been found in milk products. Clenbuterol has recently been discovered in several pig farms across China along with formaldehyde in condensed pigs blood which is used in several popular Chinese dishes. There's a saying about fool me once, shame on you. Do we really want to trust China and other foreign countries to provide chemical, toxin, bacteria free food for our tables? As consumers, we should be informed of any percentage of foreign produced food products contained in the foods sold here in the US. We also should know what federal agency is assigned to insuring all imported foods are free of toxins, bacteria and pesticides and what safeguards they're employing on our behalf. We should also be independently testing food ourselves. Regardless of the many governmental agencies in charge of safeguarding our health, contaminated products routinely find their way through our ports and onto our dinner tables. As a group, we can change this practice. We only have to ask a handful of companies to begin behaving in a highly respectable manner and the rest will have to follow. Or do you prefer to rely on corporation safeguards whose only concerns are short term profits. Or are you content with government safeguards shaped by the whims of lobbyists to watch over us as breast cancer and lymphoma clusters continue to spring up all across our great nation.
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