This week we are excited to “blow our own horn” and tell you about our national TV debut on Lifetime TV and the Balancing Act. In case you missed the show on November 11th, you can click on the link above and watch the segment. Sabrina Cowden of the The Climate Project and Harriet Shugarman, Executive Director of ClimateMama address the Balancing Act audience and discuss simple ways that you can make a difference in the fight against climate change. If we are to succeed and leave the world in “at least” as good shape as we found it, we need to act now. Start making connections between your daily actions and our changing climate, and start making positive changes today – small steps add up. Get involved, make a difference.
While you are at it, test your Climate Change knowledge in this fun new 
quiz by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Take the true or false quiz with the kids in your life; put your knowledge of climate change to the test against public officials, media personalities, and political hacks. See if you can tell who’s “Got Science” versus who’s spreading propaganda that’s “Not Science” about global warming. Complete the quiz and the Union of Concerned Scientists will send you a free “Got Science?” sticker.
Our Video Peek of the Week, is a provocative look at some of the cosmetics and beauty products we use every day. Our partners at “The Story of Stuff” show us, in an engaging way, things we need to pay attention to so that we can take better care of our bodies and our environment – watch it with the kids in your life!
A new study, backed by the Melinda Gates Foundation, is looking at capturing and turning human urine into fertilizer. (Tell that to your 10 year old son, we bet he will sit up and listen!) Durbin, South Africa is looking at ways to improve urban hygiene, save money as well as help out the environment, all at the same time. Since 2002, the city has installed about 90,000 toilets that don’t use any water. In a country like South Africa, where water is scarce, this is a way to save a scarce resource. Now, as a way to further save another scarce resource, “money” the city is collecting urine waste from these dry toilets and then manufacturing it’s own fertilizer from this urine. The test study, announced this week, installs collection tanks on 500 of these toilets, which capture the urine that the city then turns into fertilizer. Households will be paid a small amount each week for the urine collected. A win, win for all. And this has WHAT to do with climate change you ask? While many commonly used fertilizers contain nitrogen, a contributing greenhouse gas in our atmosphere – 23x more potent than carbon dioxide!
