Page 2 - Green

The Park Catalog is donating part of sales of recycled plastic benches and other products to the Everglades Foundation for Earth Da

Many people think the Everglades covering the southern half of Florida is nothing more than a massive swamp filled with alligators, mosquitoes and Burmese pythons. But it's so much more. And there are groups such as the Everglades Foundation doing their best to protect this precious and unique ecosystem.

Here are a few important  and interesting facts about this unique land mass compiled by the Everglades Foundation and other sources:

- The Everglades are more than just Everglades National Park. The ecosystem actually covers millions of acres stretching from Orlando and the Kissimmee River to Lake Okeechobee down to Florida Bay by the Florida Keys. Everglades National Park only makes up about 1.5 million acres, or 20% of the original Everglades area.

- Yes the Everglades is actually a river - a slow moving "River of Grass" as author Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Commercial recycling receptacles are prerequisite to earn LEED credit

Anybody in construction knows that LEED certification is a very complicated process. But when it comes to one requirement for recycling, it may be one of the easiest tasks to accomplish. All it takes is some space and some commercial recycling receptacles.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It is a coveted designation awarded by an organization called the U.S. Green Building Council. The group gives a building certification based on qualifying credits earned for practices that are eco-friendly and energy efficient. The premise behind the award is simple - to encourage the building of structures that have less of an impact on the environment than a standard construction project.

There are different certification levels depending on the requirements you meet in the application. Those levels are Certified (40-49 points), Silver (50-59), Gold (60-79) and Platinum (80-plus).

Achieving the certification

Hiker with bottled wate

Just like the way a pebble thrown into a pond creates a rippling effect, so does talk of the National Park Service's proposed ban on the sale of bottled water.

This decision is creating quite a splash with environmentalists, the bottled water industry, Coca-Cola, Congress and other interested parties.

The issue is a serious one. As you can imagine, with the millions of people who visit our national parks every year, they can generate quite a few empty water bottles.

In its effort to be more green and sustainable, the National Park Service proposed ending the sale of all bottled water at its facilities - in their stores and vending machines. (Note, visitors can still bring in their own bottled water purchased elsewhere).

Many parks have already initiated this ban - some well-known names include The Grand Canyon, Mount  Rushmore, Little Bighorn, Zion National Park and Dinosaur National Monument.

Zion National Park officials reported they felt the ban was successful

Research shows sitting on outdoor park benches for a few minutes can recharge worker

Is it possible that adding outdoor park benches near an office building can help workers become more productive? A bunch of scientists think so. And they have the research to back it up.

In a rather simple experiment, 150 college students were asked to participate in a Sustained Attention to Response Task. All they had to do was sit at a computer and watch numbers from 1 to 9 flash on the screen. They were instructed to hit a key on the keyboard for each number fired rapidly at them, unless the number was a 3.

Simple right? But not so easy. Clicking the keys furiously to keep up and then making sure not to hit the wrong key for one particular digit can become difficult and exhausting. (The whole idea behind the test is to monitor the ability to focus and pay attention).

Researchers wanted to test the effect of a "microbreak" on the students. For just 40 seconds, they gave the subjects a break from the

Demand is high for recycled plasti

When it comes to saving the planet and using products made with recyclables such as plastic picnic tables and plastic benches, there's good news and there's bad news.

First the good news. Chalk this one up to American ingenuity.  Manufacturers in the past decade have become very, very adept at creating high-quality products using old milk jugs, soda bottles, bottle caps, plastic bags, etc.

Some of those products included plastic picnic tables, plastic benches, pipes and even spun plastic fibers to make clothing.

Plastic picnic tables made from recycled plastic scrap

Here's one of the ironic, positive outcomes of all this. Mother Nature has provided us with incredible raw materials such as cotton, wood and iron to manufacture products, The American Manufacturer has developed processes that reuses plastic and creates products with some attributes that make them just as attractive as items made with natural materials.

Take recycled plastic benches for

Promote recycled products such as plastic picnic tables at schools, stores and parks to raise awareness

Offering plastic picnic tables and plastic benches made with recycled materials for use by the public can be one of the keys to promoting conservation in your town.  Rather than just talk about the benefits of recycling, you can walk the talk and show the real, tangible rewards of green living.

If you look on the web at various governmental programs to promote recycling, most of them focus on promoting the concept of recycling.

For example, with the Municipal Government Toolkit from the US Department of Environmental Protection, they outline several steps a town can follow to increase participation in a recycling program.

Every town in America is probably involved in some sort of recycling or sustainability effort - they would be foolish not to. A successful plastic recycling program can make a major dent in the expansion of landfills. Landfills are growing exponentially in this country.

Litter impacts property values. Add more commercial trash cans where necessary. Photo by WoodleyWonderworks - Flck

If you are a park or site facility manager who needs to justify adding more commercial trash cans or park trash cans, consider the loss in property values caused by unsightly piles of garbage.

Excessive litter is not only ugly; it will cost homeowners and businesses some major money in the long run.

According to a Keep America Beautiful study conducted in 2009, here are the indirect costs of litter:

93% of homeowners said a dirty neighborhood would lower the value of property in their eyes and would definitely influence their decision to buy. 40% of homeowners said litter would reduce a home's value to them by as much as 10% to 24%. Business development officials who are paid to bring businesses in to an area (which results in a larger tax base and more jobs) revealed that 35% of them felt litter would have a negative impact on a company locating in their area. When speaking

Standing by one of their recycling receptacles are (from left) Kristin Hall, City of Cleveland Sustainability Manager, Anand Natarajan, City of Cleveland Energy Manager, Rita McKenzie, West Side Market Administrator and West Side Market intern. Source: City of Clevelan

Placing recycling receptacles where people see them every day has paid off in a fantastic way for the City of Cleveland Mayor's Office of Sustainability.

The Office's mission is to promote green strategies throughout city departments and with local citizens.

So they thought, sure most people practice recycling at home. But what about when they are away from home? They are certainly generating plenty of trash that has recycling potential.

The solution? The department decided to bring recycling to where the people congregate. Downtown of course!

Think about how smart this is. People know all about recycling in their homes. Placing your milk jugs, plastic bottles, glass bottles, aluminum cans and old newspapers in recycling

Dog owner using a dog waste statio

We all love dogs. Our canine brothers and sisters. Who doesn't? But there are a number of very important reasons why owners should have access to a dog waste station in any public area so we can still appreciate our furry friends. It's THE most essential piece of dog park equipment.

Sure, as a dog owner you might pick up after Fido does his business. Well, maybe most of the time. But here's a startling fact: About 40% of people in the US don't pick up their dog's waste. They just leave it there on the ground for the rest of us to smell or step in.

Here's another startling fact: As many as 37%-47% of American households own a dog. That means there could be as many as 80 million canines.

They not only own millions of dogs, they also own millions of pooping machines. The EPA estimates that a typical dog excretes about three quarters of a pound of waste a day. That's 274 pounds per year! Per dog! That's not only a lot of dog waste, that's a mountain

From PreventCigaretteLitter.or

An outdoor ashtray can have a huge impact on a common misconception when it comes to the state of litter in America.

Why? Because most people don't realize that discarded cigarette butts are the No. 1 source of litter. If you think about the number of smokers out there and how easy it is to toss a finished smoke, it starts to make sense. But did you know that discarded butts are nearly DOUBLE the next closest source of trash? DOUBLE. That includes every McDonald's wrapper and empty Mountain Dew bottle and a million other disposable items.

Those little burned down cigarettes are contributing in a major way to making part of your local park, shopping area, university, etc. into an eyesore.

According to Keep America Beautiful, Tobacco Products accounted for 37.7% of litter. Paper Products came in second at 21.9% followed by Plastic at 19.3%, Metal - 5.7%, Glass - 4.5% and then Organic - 4.2%.

Here's another common misconception. Many smokers reported to researchers

Courtesy of League of American Bicyclist

A bike parking rack takes up less space and is becoming a preferred part of the urban landscape as research shows more people choose to ride their bikes to work instead of drive their cars.

The League of American Bicyclists issued a report recently indicating that from 2000 to 2011, bicycle commuting in bike-friendly communities skyrocketed by 80%.

Here's a breakdown of some of the cities with the highest growth in bike commuters. These city dwellers prefer to leave their mode of transportation in a space-saving parking bike rack instead of their car in a space-wasting garage:

Portland - 443% Lexington-Fayette County, KY - 435% Washington DC - 315% San Francisco - 258%

Those are tremendous increases. What are transportation planners doing right in these cities that the rest of the country is not? They're creating more bike lanes and adding more public bike racks. In general, just making it easier to pedal than drive.

That's amazing. More people

As a park or facility manager, have you ever been in a situation where you needed picnic tables quickly? Portable bleachers and benches for a festival taking place in a few days? Just a few commercial litter or trash receptacles to complete a project and open a park?

The Park Catalog announces its new QuickShip program that can deliver over 50 different site furnishing products in a lightning-fast turnaround - as little as 24 hours in some cases.

Park professionals can discover how to take advantage of this program at our booth, No. 4026, at the National Recreation and Park Association Congress held in Charlotte, N.C., from Oct. 14-16.

The Park Catalog offers a new QuickShip program with shipping in as little as 24 hours

"We know there are instances where our customers simply cannot wait a few weeks to receive their outdoor site furniture and furnishings," said Scott Averbach, VP of Marketing, "So as a solution, we created a program that streamlines the purchasing and shipping process and

Lower Central Park Photo by David Shankbone

Picnic tables, park benches, Frisbees, jogging, dogs or anything else that gets you into a park will improve a person's mental well-being, according to an extensive study recently conducted by a British university.

The research team from the European Centre for Environment and Human Health and the University of Exeter analyzed data gathered over 18 years in a yearly survey of 10,000 people.

The annual study is called the British Household Panel Survey and is distributed to a massive base of United Kingdom residents. The General Health Questionnaire asks a wide and extensive range of questions from income, marital status, health, family size, life satisfaction, etc.

Using longitudinal data combined with statistics pulled from targeted areas, the researchers discovered that urbanites who live near green spaces reported feeling better than the general population overall.

They were also able to track people who moved over a five year period and

How you get the public to pick up their trash and place the litter in commercial trash can

When it comes to commercial trash cans in open spaces there's an amazing paradox. People can find time to congregate in green areas or parks to enjoy the beauty of the outdoors, but when they leave, many can't seem to find the time to throw their garbage away.

For the most part, commercial garbage cans are right there. Highly visible.

So what's the thinking? Nature is nice but who wants to clean it up?

Or maybe, let the maintenance crew pick up my mess? That's what they get paid for, right?

Or, geez, I'm kind of tired from chasing a football or soccer ball all day, that big commercial garbage can over there sure seems far away.

Perhaps if I put enough arc on my shot, I can get my McDonald's wrapper in from here.

Come on, folks! This is serious.

In the US, it is estimated that each person generates about 4.5 pounds of trash per day. That's equal to 250 million tons generated by all of us annually,

Let's talk about speed bump safety for a minute here.

Those parabolic, circular shapes, gently curving upward are there to give people an idea to slow it down…these are speed bumps and humps, and these two words typically get used interchangeably in the traffic safety world. Speed bumps have a more abrupt design and usually stop vehicles completely, where traditionally what we see are speed bumps made of pavement or asphalt which can deteriorate and weather down quickly over time. You will typically see speed bumps and humps in parking lots and residential areas, where speeds should be between 5-10mph, for the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers that depend on the preventative measures that are supplemented by traffic safety in neighborhoods and commercial lots.

While there are numerous amounts of traffic calming and speed deterrent devices to add to your roads and parking lots, each type is dependent on the area and speeds you are trying to adjust your clientele