Welcome to Kids Stuff. Today’s column includes a belated salute to Earth Day. April 22 has become the designated date to celebrate our planet. The special day goes back to 1970 by Gaylord Nelson, an environmentalist and U.S. senator from Wisconsin. Earth Day is intended for all of us to recognize how we influence our limited resources from our planet.
Join your fellow Philadelphians, as well as other Pennsylvanians across the state, and for that matter across our nation, in cleaning up litter along our roads, streams, parks and neighborhoods. If you do not want to clean, maybe you want to plant?
Here’s a recycling project for kids: In September bury a piece of fruit, a piece of construction paper and a cup or plate made of Styrofoam. Mark the area with a stick and the date.
On Earth Day, dig up what you have buried! You can see how the fruit decomposes and the paper is falling apart; however, the Styrofoam remains in intact. Now you have a reason to teach kids why it is important to use eco-friendly materials and try to recycle as much as possible.
Here’s a project for parents: Watch your home’s temperature levels, turn off hoses after watering the lawn, take canvas bags to grocery stores and use more glasses and plates than paper and Styrofoam.
I personally thought this was interesting and decided to print a few laws that have been passed over the last three decades to protect our environment.
This information came from http://www.epa.gov/earthday/history. htm on the Internet:
1970: • Twenty million people celebrate the first Earth Day.
• President Richard Nixon creates the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the environment and public health.
• Congress amends the Clean Air Act to set national air quality, auto emission and anti-pollution standards.
1972: • EPA bans DDT, a cancer-causing pesticide, and requires extensive review of all pesticides.
• The U.S. and Canada agree to clean up the Great Lakes, which contain 95 percent of America’s fresh water and supply drinking water for 25 million people.
• Congress passes the Clean Water Act, limiting raw sewage and other pollutants flowing into rivers, lakes and streams.
• Only 36 percent of the nation’s assessed stream miles were safe for uses such as fishing and swimming.
1973: • EPA begins phasing out leaded gasoline.
• EPA issues its first permit limiting a factory’s polluted discharges into waterways.
1974: • Congress passes the Safe Drinking Water Act, allowing the EPA to regulate the quality of public drinking water.
1975: • Congress establishes fuel economy standards and sets tail-pipe emission standards for cars, resulting in the introduction of catalytic converters.
1976: • Congress passes the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, regulating hazardous waste from its production to its disposal.
• EPA begins phase-out of cancer-causing PCB production and use.
1978: • Residents discover that Love Canal in New York is contaminated by buried leaking chemical containers.
• The federal government bans chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as propellants in aerosol cans because CFCs destroy the ozone layer, which protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation.
1979: • Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident near Harrisburg leads to increased awareness and discussion about nuclear power safety. EPA and other agencies monitor radioactive fallout.
1980: • Congress creates Superfund to clean up hazardous waste sites. Polluters are made responsible for cleaning up the most hazardous sites.
1982: • Congress enacts laws for safe disposal of nuclear waste.
1986: • Congress declares the public has a right to know when toxic chemicals are released into air, land and water.
1987: • The U.S. signs the Montreal Protocol, pledging to phase out production of CFCs.
• Medical and other waste washes up on shores, closing beaches in New York and New Jersey.
1988: • Congress bans ocean dumping of sewage sludge and industrial waste.
1990: • Congress passes the Clean Air Act Amendments, requiring states to demonstrate progress in improving air quality.
• EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory tells the public which pollutants are being released from specific facilities in their communities.
• President George H.W. Bush signs the Pollution Prevention Act, emphasizing the importance of preventing — not just correcting — environmental damage.
1991: • Federal agencies begin using recycled content products.
1992: • EPA launches the Energy Star Program
1993: • President Bill Clinton directs the federal government to use its $200 billion annual purchasing power to buy recycled and environmentally preferable products.
1994: • EPA launches its Brownfields Program to clean up abandoned, contaminated sites to return them to productive community use.
• The EPA issues new standards for chemical plants that will reduce toxic air pollution by more than a half-million tons each year — the equivalent of taking 38 million vehicles off the road annually.
1995: • EPA requires municipal incinerators to reduce toxic emissions by 90 percent from 1990 levels.
1996: • Public drinking water suppliers are required to inform customers about chemicals and microbes in their water.
• EPA requires that home buyers and renters be informed about lead-based paint.
• President Clinton signs the Food Quality Protection Act to tighten standards for pesticides used to grow food
1997: • EPA issues tough new air quality standards for smog and soot.
1999: • President Clinton announces new emissions standards for cars, sport utility vehicles, minivans and trucks, requiring them to be 77 percent to 95 percent cleaner.
2000: • EPA establishes regulations requiring more than 90 percent cleaner heavy duty highway diesel engines and fuel.
2003: • President George W. Bush signs the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, helping to prevent forest fires and safeguard and preserve the nation’s forests.
• More than 4,000 school buses will be retrofitted through the Clean School Bus USA program, removing 200,000 pounds of particulate matter from the air over the next 10 years.
To see how you can help: Call the Great Pennsylvania Cleanup Hotline: 888-548-8372 or 717 214-7901 or go to the Web site http://www.keeppabeautiful.org/index.asp on the Internet. ••
Columnist William Feldman can be contacted by e-mail at wmkidscolumn@aol.com