TIME FOR KIDSHELPING PLANET
EARTH
VOCABULRY
CONSERVATION
EXTINCT
HAR
HARDEST
REMAINS
TROUBLE
PRAIRIE PROBLEM
“We really do not have a lot of time
left to save the prairie,” says Ron
Cole. A prairie is a large, flat area
covered with grasses.
Prairies have very few trees.
Prairies once stretched across
the middle part of the United
States. Today, most of that
land is covered with farms
and towns instead of grasses.
Ron Cole belongs to a conservation
group that teaches people to take
better care of the prairie. Their goal
is to protect the prairie land that
remains. That will help the plants
and animals that live there.
BE CAREFUL
WE’RE ALMOST
GONE!
Experts warn us that many animals on
our planet are in trouble. More than
one thousand animal species are
endangered! That means that they
may disappear forever and become
extinct.
It is natural for some plants and
animals to become extinct. But now
humans are causing more living things to
become extinct than ever before. As people
cut down forests, mow down prairies, or move
into deserts, plants and wild animals get
pushed out.
Protecting endangered species is one
of the hardest jobs people face. The
good news is that people are
working to solve this problem before
it gets worse.
A WAY TO HELP PLANET EARTH
What can everyone do to help
keep Earth clean?
Keeping Earth healthy is an important job. That’s
what environmental conservation is all about.
People who do that job are working to keep
the air, land, and water clean. They are also
working to keep endangered plants and
animals from becoming extinct.
One of the hardest jobs
is solving the problem of
trash. The trouble with
trash is that it keeps
piling up. We could run
out of places to put it.
A lot of our trash comes from plastic. Soda, juice,
water, shampoo – these all come in plastic
bottles. Too much plastic is one of our worst trash
problems. When a plastic bottle becomes trash,
it remains trash for hundreds of years.
That’s because plastic
doesn’t change
much as it gets old.
Is there a better way
to deal with plastic?
Yes! We can recycle it.
RECYCLE IT!
When we recycle, we take something
that’s been used and turn it into
something new. An old plastic bottle
can stay old and become trash. Or
that old plastic bottle can be
recycled and become something new.
Here’s how it works. People save their plastic
bottles. A special recycle truck picks the bottles
up and takes them to the recycling center.
Here, the bottles are crushed into small pieces.
Then the small pieces of plastic are melted
down. The melted plastic is sent to a factory.
1. PLASTIC IS SEPARATED FROM OTHER TRASH
2. SANITATION TRUCKS COLLECT THE RECYCLABLES
3. PLASTICS ARE TAKEN TO A RECYCLING CENTER
4. BOTTLES ARE CRUSHED INTO SMALL PIECES
5. A FACTORY TURNS RECYCLED PLASTIC INTO SOMETHING NEW AND USEFUL
At the factory, the old plastic
is made into something new.
It may become a new
bottle or maybe a new rug.
It may become a
backpack or maybe even a
slide at a playground!
Sometimes there’s not
much kids can do to help
solve our planet’s problems. But kids can do
a
lot about trash. Recycling
is one way all people,
young and old, can make
a big difference!
WATER TROUBLE
Cormelia Gogu lives in Romania.
Last year her school did not have
clean water to drink. The water pipes
were old and rusty. Workers from several
countries replaced the pipes so
Cormelia’s school now has clean water.
Cormelia doesn’t take
water for granted. But
many people do. In
the United States we
can just turn on a
faucet to get clean
water. It isn’t that
easy in other countries.
Most of the Earth is
covered with water.
But only a small
amount is safe to
drink. Some places
receive little rainfall, so
there isn’t enough
water to grow crops.
In other places the
water is so dirty that it
is not safe to drink.
Groups such as the United Nations
are working to solve these problems.
People need to save water so that
everyone has water to drink.