Archive for October, 2009

Help to Sustain Our Environment…FREE!

I have heard about this Website for a long time from many of my friends that use it and have been going to blog about it many times but it seems that each time I was going to blog about it something else came up and they had to take a back seat!

I am speaking about the Freecycle Network. They started out in 2003 as a nonprofit organization that provided recycling services to downtown businesses and also provided transitional employment to the good people of Tucson, Arizona.

Soon after starting out they began to see perfectly good re-usable items being thrown away and found themselves calling and driving around to local nonprofit organizations to see if they could use any of the items.

After seeing how much time and fuel was being used doing this, the founder, Deron Beal, came up with an idea of an easier way of doing this and set up a Freecycle e-mail group that enabled Everyone in Tucson to give And receive and at that point ‘freecycle’ took off!

Now 6 years down the road, ‘freecycle’ has spread out over the entire World touching 85 countries and growing every day. There are thousands of local groups and millions of people helping people by…

“changing the world one gift at a time”

At this time they are also keeping approximately 500 tons a day out of landfills which amounts to 5 times the height of Mt. Everest in just one year alone.

Freecycle is a FREE, no strings attached network for giving and receiving, it also instills a sense of generosity, strengthens community ties and it promotes environmental sustainability and reuse.

People from all walks of life are joining together to turn their trash into treasure and if you have a bit of “treasure” that you would like to give Or if you are looking for a bit of “treasure” then I would suggest checking out the Freecycle Network and seeing if there just might be something you can give Or use to help sustain our environment!

freecycle

That’s all for me today, I hope to see you back here again soon for some more…

Make Due With What You Have!

I saw an article on the news a few days ago about a zoo located in Gaza City. I was sitting on one side of the room working on the computer and looked over my shoulder to see that the zoo had gotten two new zebras and the children were having a fun time looking at them.

It wasn’t until I actually started listening to the words that I realized that these zebras were not zebras at all but they were in fact donkeys that had been painted by a professional painter made to Look like zebras!

Now I do not know if the children that were viewing them Knew they were zebra donkeys or not but from across the room, Until I actually listened and heard they were Not zebras, they looked pretty convincing to Me and I have seen a few real zebras in my day!

It was very ingenious if you think about it, but in fact the story behind it was a sad one!

It seems that they the zoo did in fact have two zebras in the zoo until they were neglected and died of hunger earlier this year during the Hamas War in Gaza City. When the zookeepers tried to replace the zebras they found that it was just too expensive and came up with the idea that if they bought two cheaper donkeys instead, they could be made to Look like zebras!

I suppose sometimes you just have to make do with what you have!

The zoo also has a few other animals by the way, an aging tigress, a camel and a few monkeys, birds, rabbits and cats. Not quite the type of zoo that I have ever seen, but the children seemed to be happy with what they had.

Donkey Zebras

That’s all for me today and I hope to see you all back again soon for some more good old fashioned…