Room Four Focuses

Weeds in gardens can be annoying and stressful, but there are better ways to get rid of them than using weedkiller. More and more people are using weedkiller all the time, not getting outside and gardening with the family. This can be stopped. If only a few people are allowed to use weedkiller, we can have a safer and healthier environment.

Weedkiller hurts the environment, and can accidentally kill plants and young trees. Sometimes these plants and trees could be very rare, or native. If an animal eats a plant that has been sprayed by weedkiller, it could get very sick or even die and, outrageously, many dogs have got cancer because of weedkiller.

Animals aren’t the only ones affected by weedkiller. Humans can be poisoned too. Babies and toddlers can drink weedkiller, without knowing what it is. We could also breath it in to be poisoned. The affects of weedkiller poisoning can be low blood pressure, dizziness, a loss of oxygen in the blood, fever, shivering, headaches, swallowing difficulties, burns in the mouth, and even seizures!

If, for any reason, weedkiller is the only option, we should have to get a license to use it. But if weedkiller is unnecessary in that particular situation, you will not get a license, but if you need it, here is a safe, organic weedkiller recipe which I strongly recommend. Use 4 cups white vinegar, 1/4 of salt, and 2 teaspoons of organic dish detergent. This recipe won’t hurt plants as badly.

Even though weeds are horrible, annoying and stressful and weedkiller seems to be the easy way out, it is not only the best option. Weedkiller is bad because it makes plants sad!

Ashley    

Our planet is in danger. We need to STOP global warming. I know a way how. Stop using plastic bags in supermarkets. Our supermarkets already have some eco-friendly bags but I think we should use them all the time, instead of plastic.

Did you know we use 8 hundred million plastic bags a year and that’s only in New Zealand? Do you know what happens to the plastic? It will take three thousand years for it to disintegrate. But if we start using eco-friendly bags NOW we can help prevent global warming.

The good thing about having eco-friendly bags is that you can re-use them and they help the environment. Plastic bags have also been killing animals and even some crops are dying because plastic bags get stuck over the plants and the crops do not get the rain to live so they die. The animals are dying because they eat the plastic and stays in their digestive system until they die.

There is a solution to this problem. We can use paper bags so we can put them in the recycling. So remember when you go out to the supermarket go get an eco-friendly bag NOW and use it!!

Every week I go to the supermarket and find when it is time to go to the register the amount of bags they use is very unreasonable. This is an outrage from my point of view. Eight million bags are used by our supermarkets every year! How about that? That plastic rubbish doesn’t just disappear. It can stay here over 3000 years.

Dolphins are losing their lives because plastic is taking over the supermarket bags. Hundreds of people are going out on their fishing boats with their pale, opaque, plastic bags from their local supermarket and coming back with no plastic bags. This means that the plastic bag is drifting in the sea like a delicious squid to a special sea creature. That is one of the reasons why we should change to a more clean and green way. Even though plastic are a less expensive way, does it really matter if we are saving our Earth?

Plastic can be handy but plastic bags aren’t as strong recycled bags. These bags can hold longer and there is different fashionable types of recycled bags. These bags can also be used in all different situations like a carry on bag for a long aeroplane trip or it can be used as a storage bag. 

So as you can see, even if we have to pay a little price we should still go for a cleaner way for our environment.  

Ruby 

 The Internet is massive and one of the biggest applications these days. It has so many websites on it like games , music and email, that it would be too much to count. With all that technology comes some big responsibilities. Some people use the Internet as a toy and do not understand the consequences of the Internet.  Pop ups are little advertisements that invite you to their website, but don’t click on them! they can lead to viruses and you don’t want viruses in your computer. Viruses are little microchips and when you get one it can copy itself and spread all over the computer. When you put a hard drive or disc into your computer the virus can jump on to it and go on to another computer you put them into it.  But you can get virus protection. Bad sites are sites that anyone can edit. They’re not like a book so it is possible that they don’t tell the truth. When people edit a site they could accidentally put a virus on it so think before you click. Also never give your information away if a site asks for it. The benefits of the Internet are huge. You’ve got games like miniclip and addicting games. But that’s only the main sites. There are sites you haven’t even heard of. You can get email on the computer. There are a couple of email websites. You can also download music on itunes, and you can research anything from ants to Mount Everest.  Remember - Use the Internet wisely. Think what you are doing, never give your information away, and have fun and enjoy it. By Taylor

Around the world people are using plastic bags when they shop and it is not good! I strongly believe people should use reusable bags instead.

Each year billions of plastic bags end up as ugly waste. On clean up Australia Day, volunteers found over 500,000 littered plastic bags with each one killing the environment more and more. After 40 years plastic bags break down into toxic pieces that pollute our land and water.

Hundreds of thousands of marine animals such as sea turtles and whales die each year by mistaking discarded plastic bags as food. If a sea creature swallows a plastic bag it will get stuck inside them which kills them. We do not want our future to be empty of marine animals, do we?

So next time you’re going to the supermarket remember to bring your reusable bags!

Zoe 

Global warming is hitting us and we are not doing much about it. In just a few decades the Earth will be in serious danger from global warming alone. What happens about this problem is up to us. It is an outrage with the amount of rubbish being thrown away and I am extremely concerned. I strongly believe that burning our rubbish is not a solution. Instead we should definitely send it to space!

Recently we got new rubbish bins that we have to pull and lug up and down the drive way, and sometimes we get lazy and leave them up there for a few days while pedestrians have to dodge them. Instead of making the bins bigger we should definitely send or rubbish to space!

There are plenty of benefits that come with sending our rubbish to space such as rubbish will not float out to sea and kill ocean animals. Houses will also be less smelly since the rubbish will not be sitting in the bin rotting and making the house stink. If people do send their rubbish to space there should be no cost because we are saving the Earth which should be priceless.

It is extremely important that we should send our rubbish to space so we can keep the Earth clean for future generations, have no full landfills, no more smelly houses and of course we will be saving the our precious planet Earth. That is why I think we should definitely send our rubbish to space!

By Emily

One day I was walking down the street and I came across two teenagers smoking. They put down their cigarettes when I went past, but I could still smell the horrible fumes in the air. Smoking is a worldwide poison. It’s nearly too big to stop, but there is still time.

Have you ever wondered what’s in a cigarette? Beware, this is not for the squeamish. There are things like… cadmium (a car battery fluid), arsenic (a poison), hydrogen (another poison) and carbon monoxide (a substance that interferes with oxygen supplies to the brain). These are just a few of the awful ingredients in a cigarette. So why would you smoke? Would you really risk your life to smoke a cigarette?

If you ask any smoker how a cigarette can kill you most of them would just say “lung disease,” but this is wrong. The right answer is much, much worse than that. Only 28 percent of death-by-smoking is caused by lung disease, when a horrifying 48 percent is caused by heart and brain disease, which are heart attacks and strokes!

I am horrified by smoking in general as well as the fact that cigarettes are getting sold openly on the street and the fact that there are no laws preventing it. Those are the straight facts that make it worst of all. Don’t poison yourself. Don’t smoke.

Cameron