Nature Conservation

Travel through Rumpke’s recycling center to find a plastic jug? Trash that can be recycled takes a ride on the conveyor belt to become something new! Try to find the milk jug on the conveyor belt! Trash at the factory goes through many machines to make sure it can be recycled. Can you guess what the milk jug will help make once it leaves the factory? What other types of trash go on the conveyor belt?

What happens to trash after the garbage truck picks it up? Where does it go? The problem of too much trash is hurting the planet. Recycling, reusing, composting and creating new ways to make less trash is a start! Learn to recycle old furniture, and how safer materials are being developed that can easily decompose. People are working hard every day on new ways to have a trash-free future! Are you?

Making a compost pile is a simple way to dispose of waste—like leaves, grass clippings, fruit, and vegetable peels—and turns them into healthy food for plants! Cece notices how nice Jane’s flowers are and wants to make a compost pile, too! Jane and Click show their friends how to make compost and you can learn too! What else is needed to help the compost decompose?

Yo helps his father recycle garbage and learns what types of trash go into the recycling bin. Yo learns his fleece vest is made of plastic and that special factories recycle the plastic and melt it down into new things like toys and his favorite fleece vest! Can you guess which trash goes into the blue bins? Yo wants to surprise his mother with a special present–knowing how to recycle!

Got a pair of old tights, an empty can or a plastic bottle that you plan to throw away? You can upcycle those old things and turn them into new items you can use! Upcycling is recycling in a better way! Learn how to make a decorative pencil holder, a draft dodger to keep the cold out, or turn plastic bottles into bowling pins. What things can you create to reduce the use of plastic and metal?

Did you know about 8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean each year? Learn about the Washed Ashore project that helps to clean up beaches through re-use of collected plastic—and then is recycled into art! Which sculpture in the project is your favorite?

Reusing your trash to make toys can be lots of fun–and decrease pollution and waste! Things we use around the house get old and we throw them away. What if you use them to make toys or gadgets that make life better? Experts think reusing things may be better than recycling! Learn how to make a piggy bank from a plastic can or a train with egg cartons. What things can you create by reusing?

The Reindeer Chronicles takes listeners on a global tour of Earth repair, with visits to unsung heroes who are pushing the boundaries of ecological restoration to show how even the world’s most wounded places can be revived. The book begins in China’s Loess Plateau, where a landmark project successfully restored a blighted region the size of Belgium, lifting millions of people out of poverty.

There is no animal in the world that can run faster than a cheetah. Yet, no matter how quickly they run from trouble, cheetahs may not roam the African plains forever. They have lost much of their habitat to farmland, and some are killed by farmers who worry about their livestock. But cheetahs have important friends - like Dr. Laurie Marker and the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia. Rosanna Hansen - who spent time working at the CCF - shares the fascinating story of cheetah preservation in this book young listeners will find irresistible.

The most recent research tells us that seaweed is one possible solution for our future on the planet. It could feed human beings, reduce plastic pollution, absorb enough carbon to cool the atmosphere, reconstruct generative ecosystems, treat certain illnesses that are incurable today, replace land livestock farming that exhausts the environment, and give jobs to coastal populations. The seaweed revolution is a hope for tomorrow!

Why spend countless hours indoors in front of screens when being in nature feels so good? In learning why and how to nurture our emotional connection with nature, we can also regenerate the ecosystems on which we depend for our survival. Renewal explores the science behind why being in nature makes us feel alive and helps us thrive.

The Blue Communities Project is dedicated to three primary things: that access to clean, drinkable water is a basic human right; that municipal and community water will be held in public hands; and that single-use plastic water bottles will not be available in public spaces. The movement has been growing around the world for a decade. In Whose Water Is It, Anyway?, renowned water justice activist Maude Barlow recounts her own education in water issues as she and her fellow grassroots water warriors woke up to the immense pressures facing water in a warming world.

As global rates of plant and animal extinctions mount, anxieties about the future of the earth's ecosystems are fueling ever more ambitious efforts at conservation, which draw on Western scientific principles to manage species and biodiversity. In Revenant Ecologies, Audra Mitchell argues that these responses not only ignore but also magnify powerful forms of structural violence like colonialism, racism, genocide, extractivism, ableism, and heteronormativity, ultimately contributing to the destruction of unique life forms and ecosystems.

In 1992, in a remote mountain range, a team of scientists discovered the remains of an unusual animal with beautiful, long horns. It turned out to be a living species new to Western science - a saola, the first large land mammal discovered in 50 years.

Dreaming in Turtle is a compelling story of a stalwart animal prized from prehistory through to today - an animal threatened by human greed, pragmatism, and rationalization. It stars turtles and shady and heroic human characters both, in settings ranging from luxury redoubts to degraded habitats, during a time when the confluence of easy global trade, limited supply, and inexhaustible demand has accelerated the stress on species. This is a tale not just of endangered turtles but also one of overall human failings, frailties, and vulnerabilities.

Fights over the Green River's water, and what's going to happen to it in the future, are longstanding, intractable, and only getting worse as the West gets hotter and drier, and more people depend on the river with each passing year. As a former raft guide and an environmental reporter, Heather Hansman knew these fights were happening, but she felt driven to see them from a different perspective - from the river itself.

David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth present 100 home projects designed to inspire and empower anyone who wants to help save our native flora and fauna in the face of habitat loss and climate change. This book focuses on saving creatures and plants that are especially vulnerable but that can be successfully helped by our efforts, such as bees, frogs, butterflies, birds, trees, and wildflowers.

A life in the wild! Jane Goodall, born in London, England, always loved animals and wanted to study them in their natural habitats. So at age 26, off she went to Africa! Goodall's up-close observations of chimpanzees changed what we know about them and paved the way for many female scientists who came after her. Now her story comes to life in this biography.

Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America’s endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Jon Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it.

At 23, Jane Goodall made her first voyage to Africa and began her determined steps to achieve her goal of studying animals by living among them. In My Life with the Chimpanzees, she shares the remarkable journey which took her from her childhood in London to the realization of her dream in the wilds of Gombe, Tanzania.