Nature

We often take nature for granted. Actually, we almost always take it for granted. It is not until it is gone that we realise what we once had. Nature is such a wonder and it comes in many shapes and forms. For one we have our natural environment which is always around us. All the trees, animals, birds (why I added that after animals I will never know) and plants that make up our natural world are often taken for granted until they are all gone. As the popular adage goes; you do not know what you have got until it is gone. Without even one of these parts of nature our world would be completely different and unrecognisable. If one of these were to simply cease existing of whatever reason then a majority of the world would die.Without trees and plants there would be no photosynthesis and therefore no fresh oxygen which billions of living creatures require for life. Without birds and animals whole portions of the food-chain would fall apart which would affect nearly all living creatures on Earth.

Source: http://cauldronsandcupcakes.com/2012/10/12/self-growth-nature-oracle-a-reading-to-guide-your-current-energies/

Nature is also a very resilient thing. After all the destruction we put it through on a daily basis it still manages to thrive and adapt. How many plants have you seen grow around pillars? How many times have you seen weeds growing through cracks in the pavement? This is nature adapting even though we have been struggling with this for years. Of course, we are quite adaptive at times but nature is even more so. Just look at the picture above. We created a boardwalk through this nature which would have involved a lot of destruction. However, nature regrew and became what we can now see. It truly is beautiful. After the Black Saturday fires of 2009 nature was devastated and scorched. However, if you return to the places worst effected today you would find new life and a nature completely different to what it once was but in a beautiful way. In this way (and in fact most ways) nature is a very resilient thing. We destroy and destroy without even thinking of the consequences and whose homes we are destroying to create our own. Sometimes it takes a beautiful day like today to remind us of how lucky we are to have nature all around us. It would be very hard to live in a world without it and I for one am glad that I do not.

Nature is something we should nurture and not just toss aside like most of our lives, see you tomorrow.

A Green School?

The school I go to claims to be a 'green' school but we all know that this is only partially true. A 'green' school is one in which little paper is used (and wasted) and things are mostly done on computers to save this paper. I will admit that our school does save a lot of paper through what we do on our laptops but there are many cases I can think of that go against this 'green' school ideal. I mean just a quick trip through some of the parts of our school would make you question it. Of course, there are lots of recycling and, more specifically, paper recycling bins around the school but there is a whole lot more paper that could be saved by my school. My school is certainly not a perfectly 'green' one.

Image Source: http://eurogrouprecycling.com/website/

The first major amount of Paper that could be saved around the school is the bits of paper that have our school values on it of "Respect, Aspiration and Contribution". You may be thinking that a few bits of paper with those words on it is no big waste of paper but I do not think you understand the extent of it. On every board around the school there are these pieces of paper on it with one value on each in large letters. Sometimes there are even two sets on the one board or an extra bit of paper nearby that has them all on it. It would save so much paper if it was just these posters everywhere around the school, four sheets of paper would be replaced by just one in all the different locations around the school. Then there are some of the worksheets we get in class which could just have easily being done on the computer with much less effort from the teacher. Of course, some of this does happen but a majority of the time it does not. So, as you can see, our school does waste a fair bit of paper and that is not even the end of it.

Image Source: http://www.thesocialleader.com/2011/03/counterproductive-compassion/

We only just received a Science assignment which is the biggest waste of paper I have ever experienced. Working in groups of 3 (there are 200 students in Year 10 and all are doing the assignment) we are to make an approximately 7 metre long timeline of the evolution of plants and animals with a scale of one centimetre for every one million years. Of course, this would be alright except on top of that it has to be in A3 paper and be three rows. That is exactly what is on the task sheet. Yeah, 3 rows of A3 paper which works out to 51 sheets of paper. That is 51 sheets per group! That is the biggest waste of paper I have known so far. They are only going to display the best from each class but due to the size the possibility of even that is slim. So all these sheets of paper are going to go back to the people who made them which, in turn, will promptly end up in the bin. What a massive waste of paper! It is the worst Science assignment ever, it would make more sense to do it all electronically but no, the Science teachers had to choose the dumbest option they could find. So, as you can see, however 'green' my school claims to be, there are many areas of improvement.

Wasting paper is wasting our future, see you tomorrow!