#soilislife — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #soilislife, aggregated by home.social.
-
#RocklandME - #KnoxLincolnSoilAndWaterConservationDistrict
Annual Bin and Barrel Sale
Featuring #EarthMachine #Composters and Systern #Rainbarrels
Note: The Systern Rainbarrels are made from thinner plastic than some rainbarrels and definitely need to be stored when the weather gets cold -- or else they will crack!
https://www.knox-lincoln.org/shop/bin-barrel-sale
#SolarPunkSunday #BackyardComposters #RainwaterCollection #WaterIsLife #SoilIsLife #Compost
-
#NapervilleIL - #TheConservationFoundation
#RainBarrels & #Composters"One simple, efficient, low-cost method to reduce the amount of #StormwaterRunoff from your property is to use rain barrels. Estimates indicate that a quarter-inch of rain falling on an average home yields over 200 gallons of water. Rain barrels are simply large containers that help conserve stormwater from your roof that would otherwise be lost as runoff. Modern rain barrels are sealed, safe around children and insect resistant – they can even be painted or decorated to your liking. You can divert water from your downspout to fill your rain barrel and a hose spigot on the front makes the water easy to access and use.
The Conservation Foundation sells rain barrels, also known as #WaterBarrels, year-round through our partnership with Upcycle Products, Inc. Our 55-gallon rain barrels are made of recycled food-grade plastic, come in a variety of colors and can be purchased for $72.00 (plus tax) for pick-up at #McDonaldFarm in Naperville.
Composters
When we compost our #KitchenScraps and #YardWaste we reduce the amount of material going to the #landfills and instead return nutrients to the #soil. The many benefits of #composting include reducing the amount of material going to landfills and adding organic matter to our #garden beds. This improves soil structure and texture, increases the soil’s ability to hold both water and air, improves soil fertility, and stimulates healthy root development in plants. And it saves you money so you don’t have to buy chemical fertilizers!
Upcycle compost bins (stationary and tumbling) are the same size as the 55 gallon rain barrel, approximately 2 ft by 3.5 ft (the base of the tumbling composter requires a 3 x 4 ft area). The bins are re-purposed BPA-free food grade plastic barrels."
FMI and to order:
https://theconservationfoundation.org/conservation-home/rain-barrels/#SolarPunkSunday #Illinois #Composters #RainwaterCollection #WaterIsLife #SoilIsLife
-
Hey, whatever it takes to #WakePeopleUp!
#MAHA moms threaten to turn this car around as #RFKJr flips on pesticide
MAHA members call movement a “sham” after Kennedy supports #glyphosate order.
Beth Mole – Feb 20, 2026
"Members of the Make America Health Again movement are in open revolt after founder Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly backed President Trump’s executive order Wednesday that would increase domestic production of glyphosate—a pesticide the MAHA movement and Kennedy have railed against.
"Vani Hari, an ally of Kennedy who goes by 'Food Babe,' told The Washington Post she was left 'speechless' by the move.
" 'We truly were hoping that this administration would put people over corporate power,' she said, 'but this action moves us away from that commitment.'
"#Trump’s executive order invoked the #DefenseProductionAct to boost domestic production of glyphosate, the active ingredient in #Bayer’s #Roundup products. Currently, the US imports large quantities of glyphosate from China, according to Reuters.
"The MAHA movement has been vehemently opposed to the use of glyphosate, claiming it contributes to childhood health problems. In 2024, Kennedy—an anti-vaccine activist and environmental lawyer who was then running for president—wrote on social media: 'The herbicide Glyphosate is one of the likely culprits in America’s chronic disease epidemic. … Shockingly, much of our exposure comes from its use as a desiccant on wheat, not as an #herbicide. From there it goes straight into our bodies. My USDA will ban that practice.' " [Yeah, right, sure you will... And I have a bridge I can sell you.]
#TrumpRegrets #MAGARevolt #USPol #RoundUpKills #Poison #SoilIsLife #WaterIsLife #BayerKnew
-
The smoke from #Canada’s #wildfires may be even more #toxic than usual
A legacy of #mining means that #ToxicMetals could be carried along plumes of smoke.
by Matt Simon, June 5, 2025
"More than 200 wildfires are blazing across central and western Canada, half of which are out of control because they’re so hard for crews to access, forcing 27,000 people to evacuate. Even those nowhere near the wildfires are suffering as smoke swirls around Canada and wafts south, creating hazardous air quality all over the midwestern and eastern parts of the United States. The smoke is even reaching Europe.
"As the climate changes, the far north is drying and warming, which means wildfires are getting bigger and more intense. The area burned in Canada is now the second largest on record for this time of year, trailing behind the brutal wildfire season of 2023. That year, the amount of #carbon blazed into the atmosphere was about three times the country’s #FossilFuel emissions. And the more carbon that’s emitted from wildfires — in Canada and elsewhere — the faster the #PlanetaryWarming, and the worse the fires.
" 'There’s obviously the #ClimateFeedback concern,' said Mike Waddington, an environmental scientist at McMaster University in Ontario who studies Canada’s forests. 'But increasingly we’re also concerned about the smoke.'
"That’s because there’s much more to wildfire smoke than charred sticks and leaves, especially where these blazes are burning in Canada. The country’s #forests have long been #mined, operations that loaded #soils and #waterways with #ToxicMetals like #lead and #mercury, especially before clean-air standards kicked in 50 years ago. Now everyone downwind of these wildfires may have to contend with that legacy and those pollutants, in addition to all the other nasties inherent in #WildfireSmoke, which are known to exacerbate respiratory and cardiac problems.
" 'You have there the burning of these organic soils resulting in a lot of carbon and a lot of #ParticulateMatter,' said Waddington. 'Now you have this triple whammy, where you have the metals #remobilized in addition to that.'
"What exactly is lurking in the smoke from Canadian wildfires will require further testing by scientists. But an area of particular concern is around the mining city of #FlinFlon, in #ManitobaCanada, which is known to have elevated levels of toxic metals in the landscape, said Colin McCarter, an environmental scientist who studies pollutants at Ontario’s #NipissingUniversity. Flin Flon’s 5,000 residents have been evacuated as a wildfire approaches, though so far no structures have been destroyed.
"But a fire doesn’t need to directly burn mining operations to mobilize toxicants. For example, in #Yellowknife, in Canada’s #NorthwestTerritories, #GoldMining operations between 1934 and 2004 spread #arsenic as far as 18 miles away, adding to a landscape with an already high concentration of naturally occurring arsenic. In a paper published last year, Waddington and McCarter estimated that between 1972 and 2023, wildfires around Yellowknife fired up to 840,000 pounds of arsenic into the atmosphere. Arsenic is a known carcinogen associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and developmental problems, according to the World Health Organization. (After the 2023 #LahainaFire in Maui, officials reported elevated levels of arsenic, lead, and other toxic substances in ash samples. California officials also found lots of lead in smoke from 2018’s #CampFire.)"
Source:
https://grist.org/climate/canada-wildfire-smoke-toxic-arsenic/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us#WaterIsLife #SoilIsLife #AirIsLife #Mining #ToxicLegacy #FirstNations #Canada #Pollution #Worldwide #AQI #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateCatastrophe #AirQualityIndex