Environment Facts

Concerned about the reducing bee population, Morgan Freeman converted his 124-acre ranch in Mississippi into a bee sanctuary. He imported 26 bee hives from Arkansas, hired gardeners, and planted hundreds of clover, lavender, magnolia, and other bee-friendly trees. He cares for the bees with no intention of disrupting the hives or harvesting honey.

Every year, approximately 22,000 tons of dust from the Sahara Desert is carried by air currents to the Amazon Rainforest, enriching the tropical soil with phosphorus that gets lost due to rain and flooding.

In the early 70s, around two million old and discarded tires were dumped into the ocean off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida to create an artificial reef. Though intended to promote sea life, the Osborne Reef turned into an environmental disaster, causing more harm than good. After several failed cleanup efforts, the US military took the project and used it as a training exercise for their diving and recovery personnel. By November 2019, around 13 of the tires were removed.

Casey Kasem, the first actor to voice Shaggy in the Scooby-Doo franchise, was a vegan and a staunch supporter of animal rights and environmental causes. He also criticized factory farming. When he was asked to voice Shaggy for a Burger King commercial, he quit and would not return to the show until 2002, when the producers agreed to have Shaggy become a vegetarian.

In 2015, two Buddhists released £5,000 worth of crabs and lobsters into the sea off Brighton in a religious ceremony for good karma, but they were fined nearly £15,000 for releasing non-native species into the wild and causing "untold damage" to the environment.

Three Toronto-based teens won a STEM competition for their incredible idea of developing "eco-friendly" diapers using mushrooms! The idea is that the “Shiitake Diapers," as they call it, would use highly absorbent mycelium, which is the root system of mushrooms, as the basis of these diapers. They would also harness harmful carbon dioxide to grow the mycelium. The teens won a $30,000 prize for their innovative idea.

Cigarette butts are the most littered thing in the world, with over 4.5 trillion cigarettes littered worldwide every year.

Instead, over 80 percent of products buried in landfills could be recycled.

Globally, 15 million children under the age of five dies per year from drinking water-related diseases.

Before the twentieth century, most Americans and Europeans followed re-use and recycle practices that existed in farming cultures.