GoodGym x Earth Hour - A Good Planet is Hard to Find..So Please Be Gentle to this Planet of Mine

News

• This week Goodgym are helping to promote the Earth Hour message which highlights the changes needed at a global level to help protect nature. The task this evening was to help spread the ‘Only Rain Down the Drain’ message and on Saturday we will be over at the Hilton T5 in Colnbrook potting plants, helping to spread the Goodgym message and also supporting their dimming lights campaign. As well as a few drinks afterwards seen as it is a Saturday night

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/earth-hour-potting-plants

• Huge well done to Ricky and Sandy on their half marathon success at the London Landmarks Half Marathon. Sandy’s second half marathon and Ricky’s 2nd of his 4 he is doing in 2019.

• Goodgym seeds - Everyone who attends a session with us this week will get a little envelope of wild seeds to plant. These have been made up by one of our superstar runners and eco-warrior Harsha. Please do take the time to plant them outside. Plant the seeds…save the bees

Let’s Not be Shellfish

Our task this evening was to help Claire from the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust with a signage and leaflet drop task. We were helping to highlight that the storm drains are only for rain water and not other everyday pollutants. Claire and her team of volunteers do an amazing job in Slough helping to transform our streams. Check out their website to find out more about their work

https://www.wwt.org.uk/our-work/projects/sloughs-urban-wetlands/

After our welcome brief and warm up, we took the short 2.5km to Manor Fields to meet Claire. Thank you to Ricky for back marking today. We took the scenic Slough Half Marathon route out today, much to the delight of Sara (sorry Sara…next time we will take the back streets of Slough)

On arrival Claire gave us a brief of the task and it was great to have Claire don her trainers and join us in this task today! We always love having our task owners get physically involved

Did you know that pollutants such as paint, oil, cleaning chemicals, rubbish (especially plastics) and even milk get down our storm drains and make their way to our local rivers and lakes and eventually to the sea. This eventually kills the fish and other wildlife. In Manor Park all the waste that goes down the storm drain makes its way to the Salt Hill Stream. If this Stream is full of pollutants then the revival of it will be very difficult to attain

There is no PLAICE for pollutants. Our TUNAVERSE needs our help and we need to stop being SHELLFISH and clean up our act.

Let’s Give a Dam

Prior to starting the task, the Goodgym hero’s stopped to help a damsel in distress (broken down car…bit of pushing…upper body workout done for the day)…First good deed done!

We then divided into four teams of three runners each..with each team going off to cover a different area in Manor Park. One person on gun duty (glue guns!), one on plagues and one on leaflet drop.

I did pre-warn the team that the black glue was sticky…but did they listen? …I was very Pacific with my instructions

We set a time frame of 30 minutes to get as many drains done. With each team covering at least 8-10 drains that pretty much meant every drain in this area is now the proud owner of a plaque.

Hopefully these signs will get the local communities thinking of what they pour down the drains and help with the change in mind-set needed to create the wave of change.

Would you like a 5p bag with that apple?

I’m going to go all David Attenborough on you now and give you some facts that may help you make some changes to your lifestyle that will help you save your planet. Lets face it…if there is one change we can all make it’s with our use of plastics

1. Since the 1950s, around 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced worldwide. (and only 9% of it has been recycled)

2. In some parts of the world, using plastic is already illegal. Kenya introduced one of the world’s toughest laws against plastic bags in 2017. Now, Kenyans who are caught producing, selling, or even using plastic bags will risk imprisonment of up to four years or fines of $40,000 (£31,000)

3. 73% of beach litter worldwide is plastic. You know what you need to do next time you are on a beach holiday Goodgymers!

4. A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute. Less than half of the bottles purchased in 2016 were recycled — with just 7% of those collected turned into new bottles, and the rest ending up in landfill sites or the ocean.

5. Worldwide, about 2 million plastic bags are used every minute. New Yorkers alone use 23 billion plastic bags every year, according to the New York City Department of Environmental Conservation (which is why it’s so great that the city is getting a ban on grocery bags).

6. 90% of plastic polluting our oceans is carried by just 10 rivers 10 rivers across Asia and Africa carry 90% of the plastic that ends up in the oceans.

7. Plastic is killing more than 1.1 million seabirds and animals every year. According to the United Nations, ingestion of plastic kills an estimated 1 million marine birds and 100,000 marine animals each year. Additionally, more than 90%of all birds and fish are believed to have plastic particles in their stomach. It’s because plastic breaks up into tiny pieces in the sea, which are then consumed by fish and other sea animals.

8. The average person eats 70,000 microplastics each year. That works out to about 100 bits of microplastic over the course of just one meal

9. The average time that a plastic bag is used for is … 12 minutes. and then take up to a thousand years to decompose.

10. Over the past 50 years, world plastic production has doubled If plastic consumption increases at its current rate, according to National Geographic, by 2050 there will be 12 billion metric tons of plastic in landfills

I’ll leave you on that note to ponder about your plastics

Have a great week and hopefully see some of you on Saturday