Cycle 24: The Sustainablility Fair

On April 20, 2007, my school had a sustainability fair. At this fair, different people from around the island came to our school to talk about building a more sustainable future.There were three topics that I found especially interesting.

I learned about something called Indian Blue Worms. The difference between these worms and regular worms are that they will eat pretty much any type of organic material. Organic materials are materials that have Carbon. Even though they are red worms, they have a blue ring around their heads, which is how they got their name. So, if people started to use these worms, we wouldn't have to throw away as much of our trash. These worms could use it for food.


We also have a recycling water plant on our island. The water here is not used for drinking. It is sewer water that has been treated so it can be used for irrigation and industrial purposes. Irrigation purposes include the watering of golf courses. Since we are using recycled water, we don't have to waste our precious clean water supply. Industrial purposes include using the recycled water for steam. This is a great way to build a sustainable future for our islands. I also learned that purple is the universal color for non drinking water. So, if you see a purple pipe, don't drink the water from it!

I learned about Xeriscape. Xeriscape saves water in landscape areas by using drought tolerant plants. A lot of the times, we use native plants, which is good for two reasons because it saves water, and increases the native plant population. Xeriscape also uses drip irrigation instead of sprinklers because it directs the water to the plant instead of watering everything around it, which is not necessary. It also uses mulching, which holds in water for longer periods of time.

From the sustainability fair, I learned a ton about building a sustainable future for the coming generations. The people that came to talk were very nice people and easy to talk to and ask questions. Besides learning about the things we are doing to build a sustainable future, I learned some very interesting facts. For example, 84% of all household waste can be recycled. You throw away 41 pounds of garbage a day. That means, you can recycle about 35 pounds of garbage a day. I don't think that anyone recycles that much. I really hope that my school has another sustainability fair next year, because this was really fun. Did I mention, I also won a mug because of this fair. It's pretty cool.