Regeneration-2012 13-Fall Winter
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Promoting lifelong health through patient-centered dental care 457-2922 www.woodstockdentistry.com ...Come to our Anti-Cabin Fever Dinners The Change the World Kids fabulous Anti-Cabin Fever Dinners have begun! On Wednesdays until the end of March, a local chef, many from VT/NH Upper Valleys best restaurants, offers a delicious meal. These dinners are FUN, plus they subsidize costs for the Change the World Kids annual work trip to refor- est Bosque para Siempre, the migratory rain forest habitat in Costa Rica that they are helping to conserve and reforest, and that supports our New England neo-tropical migrants, as well as native rain forest species. Dinner is at 6:00 at the North Universalist Chapel in Woodstock, and costs $9 for adults and $5 for children. Reservations suggested: 802-457-2622 or [email protected]. Come dine, laugh, and beat the winter blahs and blues! Why Should You Buy This Coffee? o Because its Coffee for Conservation! o You preserve critical migratory corridor habitat. o You help farms stay in the hands of local farmers! o You promote environmentally sound growing practices! o With every pound that you buy, you donate to conservation, education and social programs that bene½ t the Monteverde community and forest. o Farmers receive a fair market price! o And you get delicious coffee! Fall / winter 2012-13 Issue 8 Regeneration Stuff — Contents — 4 Defi nition: Stuff 5 A Slice of the System 7 It’s Not Just a T-shirt 9 Eco-Thrift 11 To Get What You Need 12 Wrap It Up 14 Activity 15 The Flip Side of Saving 16 Keeping Cool 18 Tiny Homes Make a Big Bang! 20 Bosque Para Siempre 22 Summer in a Jar 23 DIY 24 Recipes changetheworldkids.org 1 A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words. 2 Regeneration Change the World Kids Who We Are REGENERATION REGENERATION is the magazine of Change the World Kids. The mission is to promote an ecologically and socially responsible lifestyle, and to encourage local and global environmental activism for future generations. Change the World Kids Change the World Kids is a group of youth in middle and high school dedicated to making the world a better place through humanitarian and environmental projects. We are an independent, 1046 Atwood Lane diverse, teen-run non-pro t organization. Our work enables us to learn life-skills and offers Woodstock, VT challenges that have changed our lives, our families, and our communities. 05091 (802) 457-2622 Over the past twelve years we have provided tens of thousands of hours of volunteer service, locally and globally. For example, we help individuals in need by stacking wood, weatherizing homes, making Chief Editor: emergency meals, digging ditches for solar power, Katherine Tucker installing clotheslines, working with special needs children, helping people with serious illnesses get back on their feet, baking cookies while keeping someone Staff: company, repairing substandard housing, doing yard Anna Ramsey work, providing free baby-sitting, offering community dinners, and more. We work for free. Asa Waterworth Finn McFarland Through our project Bosque para Siempre, we are conserving and replanting a migratory rain Kristin Ramsey forest corridor in Costa Rica, critical to the survival of indigenous species and neo-tropical migrants Peter Wilson from the United States and Canada. Towards this effort, we have raised over $215,000, and planted Spruce Bohen 1,065 trees in one day! Internationally we have a number of humanitarian initiatives. The largest is Teale Bohen Teens Connecting Continents, helping children in Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Columbia to overcome the challenges of poverty, violence, and disease by building Violet Spann youth programs; providing quality education, supporting health initiatives, and promoting hope in rural and urban communities. We are gardeners, techies, musicians, state champions at sports and academics, honor students, valuable employees, published writers, artists, class of cers, scouts, theater players, and more. We have a wide variety of interests, talents, and personalities, and go to different schools, but we share a dream. Design Editors: REGENERATION is published two times a year and distributed as a free magazine. Caitlyn Lowe Elizabeth Kamb Contact us to request reprint permission: send SASE for guidelines, submissions, and inquiries. Art Director: REGENERATION is printed by Stillwater Graphics Inc. Nika Meyers on recycled paper using eco-friendly rubber-based inks. www.changetheworldkids.org [email protected] changetheworldkids.org 3 Defi nition: Stuff Stuff. Deeply and dramatically, its the essential elements and substance of the universe. The essence of anything is its stuff. Its the raw materials from which things are created, the possessions of our lives, and, interestingly, the basic essence of ones character and nature. We are such stuff/As dreams are made. (Shakespeare) Take a trip. Packing bags can take days, because we care about having our stuff with us. Stuff helps us feel comfortable and prepared. Move from your home. Decisions about what stuff to bring can make the move feel overwhelming. Particularly about stuff that you arent using, but are saving. For posterity. Material goods can change life for the better. And yet, getting what you want versus getting what you really need can be a complicated dilemma. Printed, broadcasted and online merchandising encourages us to purchase. The newest trendy items are featured in store after store. Are they actually bargains or burdens? The developed world has a culture of consumerism. Governments are greatly in uenced by the producers of stuff, ! the movers and shakers of commerce. We are in uenced by '*-&*()'+-, 2013 the multitude of producers and marketers that encourage us to consume more stuff. Sometimes even people in the ". government tell us to shop for stuff as a response to an emergency. "!! The global economy is driven by stuff. Production, promotion, packaging, policy, and procedure. Gadgets and goodies. Stuff propels societies but de es socio-economic logic. !"% ! $ "!" ! Retail and resale. Second-hand or new. Hand-made or manufactured. Home-preserved or big-business processed. %.% Minimalist or super-size. Will a revolution against a throw-away mentality and need-more philosophy result in a sustainable solution to the objects in our lives? # ""!% $ Stuff is a global superstar that has changed the biodiversity, topography, and human cultures of our earth and that plays a huge role in our future. !! / 7024563871 4 Regeneration A Slice of the System I am a green rubber band. My existence began on school year. The next morning, I bounced in the bus to school. a rubber plantation in the tropical forests of Thailand. There I jostled around in the darkness of the boys pencil case until the workers harvest rubber from hundreds of para rubber just before lunch, when the boy pulled me out. Looping me trees. This is done by cutting a gash into the side of a tree and around his thumbs, he stretched me, pulling one of my ends collecting the milky sap that falls into coconut shells cut in half. back, and then aimed me at a nearby boy. When he shot, I ew Its a natural process at my beginning, but after that? Judge for through the air, but instead of hitting the boys target, I sailed yourself! right past, straight into the trash can. There I was stuck, and no Once collected, the natural rubber from which I am one jumped to rescue me. My owner never came to get me, made was shipped to 25 factories nor any other person. in South Africa. Unfortunately, I realized I would never be rescued, the workers who unpacked me never be used for any of the were not very gentle, as they purposes for which I was created. were forced to work in horrid Someone tied up the trash bag and conditions. The factory stank carried it outside, inging it into the of something awful, and the refuse dumpster. Later that day, a workers worked painful 12 hour smoky machine dumped the bag days, averaging about 60 hours a into the garbage truck. The hydraulic week. In that factory, multicolored arms in the truck squeezed the trash synthetic pigments were added to together, compacting it until I was the rubber to create all sorts of so stuck that every bit of me was hues. Our batch, a bright green, compressed. I was mashed against a was extruded through a long tube, shattered iPhone. forming a 40 foot long hollow The truck came to a stop at the noodle. The rubber was sliced San Francisco port, and our compact into hundreds of thin sections of different lengths, making me. section of trash was loaded into a large shipping container. I From there, the other bands and I were packaged and sent heard the clank of a hook, and then felt the container swaying across the world via large freighters. in the air towards a freighter. There was a hard thump as we Millions of pounds of red rubber bands were sent were set down on the deck. The ship was loaded, and we to the US Postal Service to hold the mail together, but not were on our way. me. No, I was shipped off to one of the 1,500 Staples of ce For days we motored across the Paci c, until we supply stores in the US. There I languished for months, until stopped on one of the Hawaiian Islands for fuel. As soon as it was time for students to go back to school. Back to school we were lled up, we set out to sea again. For a day more, we shopping is when students and families respond to marketing cut a dirty wake through the ocean, and nally made landfall.