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. 

Internet piracy

There's been a lot of discussion about internet piracy. I don't see piracy as a bad thing because most of the people downloading stuff wouldn't buy it, though it isn't morally right. One thing a downloader could do is to buy the stuff he downloaded if he liked it. Most downloaders only use/watch the material because it's free. I personally think that taking internet piracy down isn't gonna really make the situation better. Piracy can actually give a little more credit for the material producers because more people can see the material because it has been uploaded free somewhere. Though when people download there is always loss in money for the producers. I believe that piracy will give fame for the producers.

Piracy is illegal in Finland. Uploading material in which you don't have rights is punished in some cases. Downloading is also illegal, but I only in one case have heard that someone got punished from downloading. I think that downloading shouldn't be punished. In my opinion it's okay if you download something for your own use. When you share something it's the situation where you break the copyrights.

One question for piracy is that should it be legal to download old material at some point. When something comes to the age that it has been forgotten and hardly being sold it won't damage anyone if it's downloaded. I think that it would make stuff more spread. That would also give fame to producers of course.

Piracy has been talked as a big problem and it takes from hundreds dollars to millions dollars from the producers. If it really would be that big problem, all the world famous musicians wouldn't be flying their private jets and buying new mansions every other year. Also I think that a method for antipiracy would had been made, such as share proof discs or something which would make the sharing impossible.

Cell phones

In my opinion cell phones are getting heavier and heavier for the health of environment. Making of cell phones spends environments resources. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be cell phones, I think that they are a great invention and they are very useful gadgets which are getting better and better all the time. But I think it's a problem that cell phone manufacturers have started this "smartphone competition". Nowadays manufacturers publish new smartphone models every month, with just small upgrades compared to the last model. Also the time that one phone lasts has gone down a lot during few last years. It means that people buy new phones way more often than earlier. Also nowadays a common cause to buy a new phone is the small upgrades. Not that the phone would be broken.

Smartphones make humans need phones that they don't really need. They just think that they must get the latest stuff. In many wealthy countries there are more than one phone for one person. I don't really see a point in having many phones. I bet that in many cases the person with many phones could continue his life with just one. Soon humans will drown to the amount of cell phones and environment will take a big hit because of that.

Smartphones have also done some good things. Nowadays phones are more than just phones, you can access internet anywhere and get useful applications which can help you in the daily life. It also seems that digital cameras are being combined with smartphones. Soon there is no need to create digital cameras because every phone will have something like ten plus megapixels in their cameras. Same with ipods and mp3's because you can download music to every phone nowadays.

Because smartphones are so useful and you can do so many things with them they are starting to ruin social moments. No tourist has to go ask help with a location because his phone will show the exact location and the route to location. I also have seen this phenomenon myself quite some times. I have gone to a bus and everyone is just sitting there with their phone on their hand. People walk around the city with their phone and don't even give a small look at anyone else. Person becomes a slave of his phone.

Melting glaciers

Glaciers are a big part of the global warming. Melting glaciers are probably one of the biggest problems that are caused by global warming. As the glaciers melt the water level raises. I think that raising water level is a big problem and I think that everybody can agree. I've seen some pictures about big floods around the world. Those pictures give you the harsh truth about what global warming can do. And it all starts from the melting glaciers. Also about the floods, they will get bigger and bigger as the glaciers melt. At some point land starts to drown under water for good.

Floods and raising water level isn't the only problem that melting glaciers cause. Animals living in the glacier are in big danger. I don't want to see beautiful animals such as penguings disappear. Also animals all around the world are in danger if the water takes over their homes. Though so are the humans. I see melting glaciers as the biggest problem in global warming. I think that everyone should read a little about global warming and then think if they can global warming stop. It doesn't have to be big actions. Start small.