Let Us Handle It!!!

By the local correspondent Inaya Sinha

Waste is a problem for us all, but a few little actions can make a difference.

A few like, segregating garbage at your own house. Try to reuse and recycle at home for example a ketchup bottle, it can’t only be a ketchup bottle if you don’t mind why don’t you think of some other uses for a ketchup bottle. Some examples are a piece of art or a water bottle.

Back to actions we can take, another one, don’t take more than you need, like if you went to a restaurant and there were 6 cupcakes and you had 1 that’s okay, but if you ate the remaining 5 that’s not fair, someone else could have eaten it, but you order it but then you don’t eat it and you take a bite out of it, every single one, nobody else can eat it and the restaurant will have to throw it away and it becomes waste.

And don’t get fooled by colorful rapping, some companies rap it very colorful so children buy it, at the end of the day it is just plastic covered in ink. Have you ever seen a fruit loop box? Well they are very bright and colorful. I will give you an example, once I asked my mom can I have fruit loops? But when she gave me some I hated it, the box it came in, was bright and colorful that’s what tempted me, I didn’t really want it.

Eventually we will make trash - it is impossible not to make at least some, so we can do it in a sustainable way. For example, we can’t stop every one from making trash but we can stop it from our level, so we plant more trees like oak, maple and brinch trees. Those are the trees used to make paper, they won’t stay for long but at least you tried to help the environment.

Now plastic, paper and metal aren't the only things that pollute the Earth. We forgot about air pollution! Waste also causes air pollution. Some people burn trash and the smoke from the fire pollutes the air. And factories too, they produce a lot of smoke.

If we can recycle at home, then we can prevent items going to factories, then not as much smoke will be created. And we can do car pooling, so if twenty people are going to the same place, then instead of using twenty cars you can use a bus, fossil fuels like petrol make smoke, so all those twenty cars are creating extra smoke, so using a bus will create less smoke.

There are other reasons, like some people do smoking that also causes air pollution, through their mouths they exhale smoke. Air pollution also causes climate change.

We should not save the planet for Earth we should save it for ourselves! We can pollute our planet as much as we like - it won’t harm Earth it will harm us.

Let us handle it!

See you later friends!

Come Here, Compost…

By the local corespondent Inaya Sinha

First of all what is compost?

I have gathered the material and information for this post from a YouTube video. I have changed the lines and sentences to make them my own.

Well, compost is leaves, grass, kitchen scraps, wet coffee powder and natural things that you would find around your garden. After that, you put them in a pile together and over time it decomposes and mixes with the soil.

Now, how do you make compost? First, you need to gather some raw materials, like dry leaves and kitchen scraps, for example, egg shells. You just don’t want to have any meat or dairy in your compost. You can also put coffee grounds. The best way to get coffee grounds is to go to a cafeteria and ask them for some coffee grounds. They usually throw it away.

Also, if you trim trees in your garden, then you take the leaves and branches trimmed. Or, if you have a gardener, then you can ask them for it.

The first tip for making compost is to build a large pile. A large pile will get hotter. Hotter weather breaks down the compost faster, which gives you free black gold for your garden!

If you have a hard time collecting a bunch of materials at once, you can definitely build a small pile. Often small piles don’t heat up they stay cold and can take about six months, or even up to two years to break down into compost. And since we want compost fast, we need to make it big.

Now, the maximum size of a compost pile is about three feet wide and three feet tall. The second tip to make compost break down faster is to use the rights materials. Two main materials are browns and greens which doesn’t refer to the color of the material!

Browns are carbon rich materials and contain dry leaves and dry grasses, twigs from your garden. Greens on the other hand are nitrogen rich materials such as food scraps from your kitchen, clippings from your garden, coffee grounds including coffee filters and tea bags. These add essential nutrients and help your compost pile heat up.

Now, when the time comes to putting the materials into your compost pile, a good mixture is one part of greens and three to four parts of browns. Don’t get too carried away in doing this, it does not have to be exact.

Tip three. The smaller materials you use the better. For example, you can shred your dry leaves or you can run a lawnmower over it, you can put your food scraps in the blender if you really want to blend it.

Now that we have all our material ready and collected, we are just going to lay it out in a sack, if you have one. Or, you can put it in your yard - backyard, front yard, where ever you want. Just don’t put it in your balcony! If you do, it will really stink!

Now let see the layers of compost. First, you put a layer of dry leaves. Now tip four. You need to keep your material moist. In doing that, you can add some water to it. You do this so that when the compost is done, it will come out light and fluffy.

After that, you mix it in together. Now that we have our browns inside it is time to put in our greens. You need to put in the coffee grounds. Now you add a little more water. Then you put the kitchen scraps and the stuff that you trimmed in the garden.

Tip five is to give it air. There are little microbes in compost and air is like food for them and giving them air also does another job. It also makes it light and fluffy.

Now you keep mixing it all together. So you keep doing the same steps again and again. In a few days you check your compost - either with a compost thermometer or with a piece of rebar, to see if it is getting hot.

And that, my friends, is how to make compost,

Noise Pollution…

By the local corespondent Inaya Sinha

We all think that the lockdown is a bad thing. But that is not true! You all are probably saying it is a bad thing, but we never said who it is a bad thing for!

It is a good thing for animals, like birds. When there wasn't a lockdown, their ears would hurt with all the noise. But now, since no one is going out, their ears don’t hurt.

Our fire crackers and kites are all hurting them, but since there is no one to launch kites or burst fireworks, the birds are safe.

We may not like it, but the birds love it.

So if we stay tucked up right now, when the pandemic is over, there will be a whole new world of nature.