Save Mother Earth

(CNN) -- China is banning free plastic bags common at shops and supermarkets and ordering customers to be charged for any they use, the government said Wednesday.

Shoppers in Beijing and other Chinese cities will have to pay for using plastic bags, starting in June.

The rules, which take effect June 1, come as the country tries to tackle a significant source of litter, a statement on the government's Web site said.

The bags also are banned from all public transportation, including buses, trains and planes and from airports and scenic locations, the government said.

Companies caught breaking the new rules face fines and possible forfeiture of goods, the government said.

Shops have been instructed to mark the price of the plastic bags clearly and not fold them into the cost of other items.

Environmental organizations, including Greenpeace, praised China's move, and Christopher Flavin, president of Worldwatch Institute, an independent research organization in Washington, said "China is ahead of the U.S. with this policy," AP reported.

The Chinese use up to 3 billion plastic shopping bags a day.

Often, the flimsy bags are used once and discarded, adding to waste in a country grappling with air and water pollution as a result of rapid economic transformation, officials said.

"Our country consumes a large amount of plastic bags. While convenient for consumers, the bags also lead to a severe waste of resources and environmental pollution because of their excessive use and low rate of recycling," the statement at the Web site Gov.cn said. "The ultra-thin bags are the main source of 'white' pollution as they can easily get broken and end up as litter."

The government statement added, "We should encourage people to return to carrying cloth bags, using baskets for their vegetables."

More durable plastic bags still will be allowed for sale by markets and shops, The Associated Press reported.

When the ban goes into effect, China will join countries such as Uganda and South Africa, the statement said.

Bangladesh banned plastic bags four years ago when officials realized they blocked drains and led to flooding. Since then, customers have taken to using bags made of jute or cloth for shopping.
Last year, San Francisco, California, became the first U.S. city to outlaw plastic checkout bags at supermarkets.

Source: http://www.cnn.com

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Most of the environmental activities are just

talking about the environment issues rather than getting a valuable action.

Everyday every hour every minute, every second earth is becoming extinct. None of the person or world leaders taking a step ahead to do something to prevent the global warming, daily there are thousands of species are vanishing because of couldn’t tolerate the warming environment due to their conditions which were there.

Why we can’t take any action? What prevent them to do so?

Answers are simple; due to the economic expansion of each country they are thinking about overrun another country and become an economically successful. So if we see daily each person trying to expand their lives as well, they are trying to earn money by doing anything. So eventually people are succeeding and their previous lifestyle becoming change. Most of the people own their vehicles and may be each member of the family does. So roads are full of cars, which mean carbon population is on the go.

Even more what we feel is the heat due to vehicles also becoming a factor for global warming.

As an experiment you can stand next to a traffic post and feel the heat around that area. You will be surprise with the heat and believe that this heat is gone all over. This is simple example.

If you go further the industries which generate loads of smoke out of their activities do more pollution to the green zones and ozone layers. This is already damaged a lot than what was there about 10 years back. I have discussed about this in previous posts.

What we should do?

Without waiting the world leaders to do something on this start by your own. You can start doing activities from your home, if your family using 2 cars reduce to two and managed with it. So everyone start doing this eventually there will be huge difference will be visible.

Don’t wait, it will be too late …….

In 1979
In 2003
What is it?
The antarctic ozone hole is an area of the antarctic stratosphere in which the recent (since about 1975) ozone levels have dropped to as low as 33% of their pre-1975 values. The ozone hole occurs during the antarctic spring, from September to early December, as strong westerly wind start to circulate around the continent and create an atmospheric container. In this container over 50% of the lower stratospheric ozone is destroyed.
Why is it important?
While the effective of the antarctic hole in decreasing the global ozone is relatively small, estimated at about 4% per decade, the hole has generated a great deal of interest because:
• The decrease in the ozone layer was predicted in the early 1980's to be roughly 7% over a sixty-year period. The sudden and, at that time unexplained, disappearance of over 50% of the ozone layer in a localized area of antarctica created quite a stir. Many were worried that ozone holes might start to appear over other areas of the globe but to date the only other significant, localized depletion is a much smaller ozone ''dimple''(R.Parson FAQ) ; observed during the arctic spring over the north pole.
• The antarctic hole is a warning that if conditions become more antarctic: cooler stratospheric temperatures, more stratospheric clouds, more active chlorine; then global ozone will decrease at a much greater pace. Some of the more popular senarios of global warming predict that these changes could occur in larger portions of the stratosphere.
• When the antarctic ozone hole does break-up, the ozone-depleted air drifts out into nearby areas. Decreases in the ozone level of up to 10% have been reported in New Zealand in the month following the break-up of the antarctic ozone hole [WMO 1991] [Atkinson et al.1989] [Roy et al. 1990]
What is so special about Antarctic conditions?
Polar regions get a much larger variation in sunlight than anywhere else, and during the 3 months of winter spend most of time in the dark without solar radiation. Temperatures hover around or below -80'C for much of the winter and the extremely low antarctic temperatures cause cloud formation in the relatively ''dry''stratosphere. These Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSC's) are composed of ice crystals that provide the surface for a multitude of reactions, many of which speed the degredation of ozone molecules.

Source: Nasa

An earthquake shook southern Iceland on Thursday, reportedly causing injuries and damaging roads and buildings.

The 6.1 magnitude temblor struck about 3:46 p.m. (11:46 a.m. ET), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Its epicenter was about 50 km (31 miles) east-southeast of the capital, Reykjavik, and was about 10 km (6.2 miles) below the Earth's surface.

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