Adopt a honey badger

Since I already talked about adopting highways, I thought, why not continue with the adoption talk – just with a little different object. This time it's not highways, but honey badgers that need help.

Honey badgers are members of the weasel family, and they are related to skunks, otters, and ferrets. They are curious, wide-ranging nomadic animals that rarely show fear. Honey badgers have thick, tough skin loose enough to allow for escape from predators, and a scent gland at the base of the tail that expels a smelly liquid they use to mark territory or to warn others to stay away. They are fast, and utilize this asset when ambushing much larger prey and even attacking poisonous snakes, relying on their thick skin to protect themselves.


Honey badgers cause a threat to beekeeping productivity by doing beehive damage, particularly around protected areas. Farmers have been persecuting them since the early 1800’s, and this problem has escalated since 1990. Most problems occur in the Western Cape. 83 percent of honey badgers killed in the Western Cape were killed by beekeepers that hadn't made an effort to protect their hives. In some areas surrounding beekeepers, farmers have been encouraged to kill honey badgers to support beekeepers.

Anyone can protect honey badgers and their habitats, and support WWF’s global efforts by adopting a honey badger. WWF offers three different honey badger adoption kits: a $25, $50, or a $100 kit. The kits include gift bags, photos of honey badgers, gift boxes, soft toys and adoption certificates.

They may be tough, but they need help...

Adopt a Highway

When I was in America last year, I kept on seeing some weird signs on the sides of highways, but I just never bothered to find out what the signs meant. The signs said, “adopt a highway”. Why would someone want to adopt a highway? Well, now I finally found out what this strange adoption means.

The Adopt-a-Highway program, a.k.a. Sponsor-a-Highway program, is a promotional campaign that U.S. states, provinces and territories of Canada, and national governments outside North America have undertaken. The program encourages volunteers to keep a section of a highway free from litter. An organization is allowed to have its name posted on a sign in the section of the highways they maintain in exchange for keeping the road clean.

James Evans, an engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation, started the program in the 1980s. Evans saw trash flying out of a pickup truck bed, and since litter cleanup by the city was expensive, he sought the help of local groups to sponsor the cleaning of the highway. Quarterly cleanup cycles, volunteer safety training, the issuing of reflective vests and equipment, and the posting of adopt-a-highway signs started due to the efforts of Billy Black, a public information officer.

The first group to volunteer was the Tyler Civitan Club. In 1985, the club adopted two miles along U.S. Route 69. The program was very successful and it has spread to 49 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Japan.

Some states allow both Adopt-a-Highway and Sponsor-a-Highway programs. In both programs, an organization that takes care of the maintenance of the highway is allowed to post its name. The difference between these two is that while an adopting organization provides the volunteers who do the litter pickup, a sponsoring organization pays professional contractors to do the work. Sponsor-a-Highway program is more typical in highways with a lot of traffic due to safety concerns. 

Two birds with one stone

H&M has started accepting used clothes in the line’s stores worldwide this spring. Since February, people have been able to bring their old clothes to the stores - regardless of the label and condition of the clothes - and get a 15 percent discount coupon for each bag of clothes they give away. One person can bring two bags of clothes per day at most.

The first H&M stores to start the collecting of used clothes in Finland were in Helsinki, but the system is expanding to stores around the whole country.

In its bulletin, H&M said that it is the first company in fashion industry that encourages starting these kinds of collections in a large range and this way strives for decreasing the amount of clothes that end up in waste. According to the company, even 95 percent of textile waste ending up in landfills could be reused or recycled, depending on the condition of the clothes.

I:Collect, a partner of H&M, collects the clothes, sorts them, recycles them as wipes or insulation material for car industry, or takes them to power production.

Critics say that it would be better to buy fewer clothes instead of buying more and giving them to H&M, and buying more clothes again, lured by the discount coupon.

I think it’s good that it’s possible to get your old and used clothes recycled and reused, and getting a discount coupon for giving the clothes away. I see this as some version of flea markets: in this case, you can get rid of all the clothes you don’t need anymore, and get something back …unlike in flea markets where it’s not up to you what you’ll get rid of. So for me, who’s been unsuccessfully trying to sell a huge pile of old clothes, this is a great piece of news! Now I can just walk in an H&M store with bags of clothes and get 15 percent discount coupons instead of desperately trying to get the clothes sold. On top of all this, H&M happens to be one of my favorite clothing stores, so I can kill two birds with one stone: I can get rid of the clothes that are filling my closet for nothing, and get a discount coupon to a store I like. 

I Will If You Will

I Will If You Will is an Earth Hour Campaign. The campaign’s goal is to encourage positive action for the environment, beyond Earth Hour. The idea is that someone makes a promise to do something if a certain number of people commit to take an ongoing action for the environment. The action can be big, like something that leads to a political change, or small, like a lifestyle change. It may require many people to do something, or just a few. The point is that anyone can inspire their family, friends, colleagues and communities by sharing what they are willing to do to protect the Earth.

I Will If You Will was launched last year, and since then it has involved many individuals, governments, businesses, and organizations make Earth Hour inspire people to do something more.

Anyone can get involved, and the best way is to create a challenge by filming an I Will If You Will challenge. Another way is to accept a challenge, and this way help the environment and the challenger to complete their end of the dare. The challenges can be accepted on Facebook, You Tube and Twitter. 

Earth Hour

Earth Hour is an annual worldwide event organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). It encourages households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour to raise awareness about the climate change and the need to take action on it.

The first Earth Hour was held in Sydney Australia on March 31, 2007. Over two million people and 2,100 businesses participated, and plans were developed to make Earth Hour a national event in Australia. International interest was also high and cities began signing up to the next Earth Hour campaign.

Earth Hour 2008 was held internationally on March 29, 2008, marking the first anniversary of the event. Earth Hour 2008 was celebrated on all seven continents in 35 countries. Landmarks all around the world turned off their non-essential lighting. A Zogby International online survey showed that there was a 4-percentage point increase in awareness of environmental issues after the event.

Earth Hour was held in Finland for the first time as a national event in 2009. 105 communes and hundreds of organizations participated, and according to a survey made by the WWF  51 percent of Finns switched off their lights. The event saved approximately 100 megawatt-hours of energy.

Earth Hour 2013 was celebrated on March 23, 2013. Earth hour 2014 is scheduled for Saturday, March 29, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. during participants' local time.

I think Earth Hour is a great way to both reduce power consumption for a while and raise awareness about the climate change. In fact, I don’t think it would hurt to organize the event even more often: maybe twice a year, for example.