For a number of races now, have had folks query "why Earthwatch?" as well as suggest that if I associated myself with a children's charity or a charity with immediate human consequence, then I would raise more money!

London 2009, I was given the opportunity to run for visually impaired children. The charity "Look" was desperate to find someone to fill the position as they had someone drop out last minute. I took on the challenge and had 6 weeks to raise £1K. It surely was easy to do so, and in fact raised £1.7K.

Human impact is easy to raise funds for because it plays on our direct emotions.  We can "see" the suffering. Charities with a sustainability theme have more difficulty due to the apparent indirect visual impact on us!

For me, I see our natural environment has a direct consequence on our well being and the amount of social disharmony and degradation we have in cities due to a lack of surrounding nature. Our hunger for resources has got to get under control as our planet will not be able to sustain a one directional callous behaviour of consume-discard attitude. Our natural environment should be our number one priority.  Improve on that and I bet we'd improve on the amount of "poor health" we suffer in our environment.

I would love to see those who are unemployed to volunteer some hours doing restoration work in our natural environment, improving the wildlife areas around them so that others who are working and supporting the benefits system can enjoy and appreciate the care/rejuvenation. It is a win win win!!! (those who are interested, web search conservation volunteer work)

I support Earthwatch  for the education they provide and the opportunity they give to  ordinary folks to experience and watch nature in action with full time scientists.

It's not about the money I raise, it's about our environmental consequences and I want to help to reduce that impact that we have on our world by continually keeping this at the top level of our awareness and agenda!
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My neighbours were complaining the other day about the council introducing more bins in order for us to recycle plastic bottles, cardboard and food waste. "More bins - where would we put them all".

I looked at my neighbours disbelieving that they even thought about where the bins could go. They live in houses with gardens. I then asked then if they took their recyclables to the recycle centres. The answer was a mixture of no and sometimes. I reminded them that we are one of the worst boroughs for recycling, in fact we have only managed to increase our recycling habits to 27%. The UK itself only recycles about 33% of its entire waste. As a 1st world nation we have poor, lazy attitudes.

All paused to reconsider their whinges. Then one lady retorted, "I know of a family who live in a borough where they have to recycle their food waste, they say they suffer from maggots during summer". I responded, "I also have relatives who live in a similar borough, they wrap their food in paper and have never had a maggot problem. Perhaps rather than be against the whole idea, let's support it and work thru any issues that might arise"

What would I have to do in order to reduce my waste?

Shop Bought Goods
- Buy goods that will not have packaging that needs to be landfilled
- Buy good that will have packaging that can be reused or recycled
- Buy goods that will have packaging that is recycled and can be reused and recycled
- Grow your own veggies

So I wonder.....if we could all put in effort to reduce our waste by at least 80% what a different world this would be.
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