Children go to school to be educated, and it is there that they should be learning about the importance of going green and the effect global warming and greenhouse gases have on the environment. There is no better way to teach than by way of example, and as such, schools have a responsibility to go green in a way that children will see and emulate their superiors.

The Paxon Hollow Middle School is leading the way with teaching by example. This year they held a project focusing on an environmental garden and outdoor classroom. Teachers and staff built a walkway using rubber mulch from 263 recycled tires, and planted 28 shrubs in one of Paxon Hollow’s inner courtyards. The new garden was decorated with ceramic pavers made by the art students and other eco-friendly paraphernalia. With this project, the school earned itself a beautiful new garden for learning, and an opportunity to teach children about the importance of going green and using rubber mulch.

Rubber mulch has a place in many different areas of a school. Gardens and walkways are beautified with rubber mulch flooring, and there is no safer playground flooring than rubber mulch. Gyms can also greatly benefit from rubber floormats, and recycled rubber equipment can be used for labs, art, and other classes. Eco-friendly rubber mulch has many varied uses in a school.

While the effects of pollution and overcrowded landfills must be taught by schools parents also have a duty to educate their children by example. When used in backyard playgrounds and home gardens, rubber mulch adds beauty and a sense of satisfaction in making the world a better place. Children are also kept safer when playing among recycled materials and nature’s gifts of flowers and greenery.

There is no better way to teach children about the importance of recycling than by practicing what we preach.

There is something about children at play that captures a moment of pure innocence and beauty and makes adults stop with nostalgia. The scene of children running through the grass, laughing and carefree, makes for a picture that is threaded with the joy of life, the innocence of youth, and the bliss of ignorance. This element was made into art this week at Brooklyn Utopia’s Park Space/Play Space. The reception on parks and public spaces took place at the Old Stone House in J.J Byrne Park, on the Park Slope-Gowanus border.

The upstairs gallery featured works such as Marina Zamin’s immersive video installation “Brooklyn Canals” and an animation projected onto a canvas with cutout flower pots and windows. There were also panoramic photo-murals of various blocks on Kent Avenue, as well as picture-postcards and descriptions of eminent domain cases across the city.

Some of the other works in the exhibit merge public space with technology. Lynn Cazabon’s “Uncultivated” project displays pictures of plants with QR codes beneath them. When someone scans the code, they are directed to a website which pinpoints the location of the plants and gives their species.

Then there is Skymills, an app which calls on the Old Stone House’s Dutch legacy and erects virtual windmills that can be viewed through an iPad or iPhone. The mills also create virtual skywriting, and the maker envisions the app as a virtual public space where users plant trees or write virtual messages that all users can see.

This entire exhibit of awe-inspiring art was itself inspired by children at play. In this, Rubberecyle is the expert. The beautiful scene of children playing can become ugly when injury intervenes. Recycled rubber mulch for playgrounds is eco-friendly, and it prevents injuries with added shock absorbency that truly allows children to play freely. The mulch will also appeal to the artist’s love of color, as it comes in a spectrum of colors to suit any setting, and gives a clean look. The makers of Playsafer mulch may also be called artists, for in their own way, they too, are making art, by providing playground equipment for children.

Natural disasters are always tragic. Sometimes they prove to be fatal, killing anything in their paths, while at other times they leave swaths of destruction in their wake, ruining people financially. Yesterday’s tornadoes in Kentucky were no exception to the devastation. Miraculously, no fatalities have been reported. Damages, however, have been estimated to be in the billions. It’s so sad to watch a lifelong dream, whether it’s a house or a business, go up in flames, shattered beyond repair. The victims need our prayers for it is so tough to start life all over midway through. If there is one silver lining it may be that the destruction these tragedies bring upon us can bring some clarity and focus to the damage this planet faces if companies continue with their pollution and destructive factories. It hurts to put both problems in one sentence. However, people must know about the severity of pollution and natural disaster for they are one and the same.

A light at the end of the tunnel is the work of companies that are trying to save our planet with eco-friendly practices. Rubberecycle goes a step further: they help people make their lifestyles more eco-friendly with recycled rubber mulch.

Tires, the biggest consumers of rubber, are increasingly being recycled rather than buried or burned. Rubber mulch has proven to be an excellent way tires can be reused in an environmentally friendly way. Although rubber represents just a tiny problem in the smoggy world of heavy industry, companies and nations alike should follow this commendable example and come up with creative uses for their used products.

Rubber mulch is used for many important purposes every day. For years children coming home from the playground would inevitably be wearing dirty clothes stained with grass and med from where they landed when coming off the slide. Rubber mulch has revolutionized the playground with clean recycled mulch serving as the landing area of playgrounds nationwide. This is both safer and cheaper in the long run.

Rubber mulch is also used in horse arenas to prevent dust from being kicked up when the horses run. Mulch in arenas also protects the horses’ hooves, with an added shock absorbency that adds a bounce to their step and prevents injuries.

Another excellent function of rubber mulch is for landscaping. When used for gardening, rubber mulch helps those who are going green make the process even more environmentally responsible.

Rubber mulch is undoubtedly one excellent step forwardi n saving the environment, but many more must be taken in the coming years.

The days when a playground consisted of a tire hung on a tree and a grassy lawn are pretty much over. Today’s playgrounds are ever bigger and better, with playground equipment that is designed to exercise kids’ mental and physical boundaries and the latest in high tech materials. Enter the Imagination Playground.

Designed by David Rockwell, Imagination Playground takes the concept of free play and creativity to a whole new level. The playground equipment is made up of big blue foam blocks of all shapes and sizes. Using oversized cogs, wheels, spools and tubes, children create whimsical sculptures, construct castles and forts, and design vibrant vehicles that move. Joining curvy blocks with grooves, they form elaborate ramps and tracks and send balls rolling through. They stack, connect, design, configure and play – the possibilities are endless!  Imagination Playground is good for both indoor and outdoor playgrounds, but children will most enjoy themselves on rubber mulch flooring so they can bounce around safely.

Imagination Playground Blocks are made of a cross-linked Polyethylene foam manufactured in the United States. The closed-cell foam is soft, lightweight, waterproof, and biodegradable. It is resistant to sun, heat, mold, mildew, corrosion and micro-organisms. These highly-durable blocks can be transported to a landfill or returned to the manufacturer to be recycled when they are no longer wanted on the playground, making them eco-friendly, as is rubber mulch for playgrounds, the premium playground flooring. In fact, Imagination Playground was featured in UL’s Safe and Healthy Environment pavilion at the Earth Day Eco Village on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. during Earth Week. The UL pavilion featured interactive kiosks on family safety and provided useful information on maintaining healthy environments and the importance of safe play.

Imagination Playground materials can be purchased in a box or case for private use, or parents can take children to visit Imagination Playgrounds. The flagship playground is at South Street Seaport in Manhattan and a new playground is set to open at the Providence Children’s Museum during the April Spring Break. There are Imagination Playgrounds all across the country, and internationally, as well. With new technology and rubber mulch playground flooring, the possibilities for children’s’ play are endless.

With childhood obesity on the rise around the world, parents are finding it increasingly harder to get their kids outside to play. Czech designer Pavel Tuma and his team are looking to change that with a new 5D playground in the works. While coercing children into physical activity, the playground combines online favorites, video games, and other interactive features for a complete experience that is fun, educational, and merges the old with the new.

The team of designers spent two years coming up with the specifics for this otherworldly playground. They describe it as a playground the size of a tennis court, with a 5D box right next to it. The box is a sort of mini-computer center, with a touchpad and sensors relating to the five senses. Each child would have a chip to enter the game, which is a series of physical and mental challenges that have to be overcome.  The playground itself is very attractive visually, with numerous hurdles of different kinds, a multimedia box, and various surfaces, rubber mulch among them.

The software will have six areas of knowledge – geography, history, natural sciences, entertainment, and general knowledge. Quizzes vary between concentrating on one subject, and across the board knowledge. Pavel envisions a scenario where teachers give his team the test questions a day in advance and they would take care of the rest, allowing the children to take the test through the playground system. On a nice day the test could take place out in the open, and teams of students could even play against each other. By the time they get home from school, they would have received their test results by mail, with photos on Facebook of the kids in the playground.

This playground project is still in the making, but there has been interest from countries all over the world, some looking to fight childhood obesity, with others looking at it as a source of tourism. From the looks of it, computerized playgrounds have a bright future.

It has come to the point in society where even do-gooders are criticized.

In response to an alarming rise in childhood obesity and pointed fingers that soft drinks are a large part of the cause, Coca-Cola and Pepsi have launched numerous programs in the recent past that are designed to promote physical activity and movement. As part of the growth of the movement, last year Coca-Cola bestowed on Howe Elementary School of Excellence on Chicago’s West Side a $25,000 grant for a new, safe playground.

After students wrote thank you letters to Coke, critics accused Coke of using this as another advertising tactic. They claim that this move associates in students’ minds the thought that their school approves of Coke, and by extension, their products. This criticism comes even in the face of the Assistant Principal’s statement that Coke did not in any way try to promote their products through the building of the playground.

Bystanders are left to wonder how the purely righteous act of donating a safe playground has become an advertising ploy in the minds of some.

In 2005 and 2006 PepsiCo joined forces with nonprofit organization KaBoom to build 12 new playgrounds across the United States. Last year along Coca-Cola’s Sprite brand invested an estimated $2 million in building and renovating 150 neighborhood parks, playgrounds, basketball courts, and fields. It is estimated that Coca-Cola’s pledges to the program will cost them an estimated $1 million a year for five years.

While critics knock Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, the two companies have helped prevent numerous injuries by installing rubber mulch flooring in their playgrounds. When they build a playground, they do it all the way. The playgrounds built by these corporate giants feature the latest technology to help improve playground safety, and they know that is starts with rubber mulch flooring.

The critics can keep up their complaints while Coke and Pepsi work to promote exercise in children in a safe manner, with rubber mulch playground flooring.

Governments around the world are becoming aware and, in turn, making others aware of the necessity of recycling and going green. A large push is made annually in the weeks after Christmas, when thousands of homes house dying Christmas trees. In days of old, people just left their trees out with the trash. In today’s day and age, however, local and state governments are urging homeowners to recycle their trees and keep the planet healthy.

Right after Christmas New York held their annual Mulchfest, where people were able to drop their trees off at numerous parks around the city and have them ground into mulch chips. Other states and counties are following suit. The Coloradoan reports that January 17 is the deadline for homeowners to recycle trees. Residents are asked to remove all ornaments, lights, strings, wires, fake snow etc. before taking the tree to one of the drop-off points. The city will process the trees into mulch for gardening and landscaping purposes, which will be free for the public in the spring at Larimer County Landfill. At the Hamilton-Wenham Green, one dollar from each tree recycled will go to help local charities, a way to pass on the goodwill.

Old Christmas trees are turned into wood mulch for gardening, but using rubber mulch is also an eco-friendly way to garden and floor playgrounds. Rubber tire mulch is made from tires that have breathed their last breaths. Another form of recycling, rubber mulch has many excellent uses, and is just as eco-friendly as the wood chips that are made out of Christmas trees.

While the majority of the government sponsored programs that recycle used Christmas trees turn them into mulch, some cities have other ideas. In St. Louis, for example, the trees are drowned in marked areas of lakes. The trees on the bottoms of the lakes become homes for thousands of fish for years to come, providing protection from predators and a gathering place for fish to feed and spawn. Since state laws a few years back prohibited counties from throwing trees into landfills, different municipalities have come up with creative solutions. Like other cities, the trees that are not thrown into lakes are turned into landscape mulch.

On a whole the number of recycled trees has dipped over the years, but some counties say that the worsened economy may have attributed to the figures because as the prices of fresh-cut trees rise, more people turn to artificial trees.

By recycling their Christmas trees, people have a chance to let Christmas live on, by giving the gifts of health and life to planet earth.

There are some parents who are fans of vitamins and some who aren’t. It is something that lies with personal preference. Even those who are skeptical of vitamins give their child the necessary vitamin D and other supplements, but then there are mothers who refuse vaccines and reach for herbal remedies at every turn. This becomes a problem when information is withheld from the child’s pediatrician. Recent studies have shown a problem specifically with Melatonin, a supplement given to help children sleep.

Many parents struggle with bedtimes, as children plead to stay up. Children with ADHD or other behavioral issues who are on medication may require Melatonin to help them sleep at night. However, the average child does not need sleep supplements. Many parents think that melatonin is harmless because it is a natural hormone secreted by the body to establish sleep patterns, so the supplement is just that, a supplement. However, many physicians think otherwise, and are concerned with its use. Very little research has been done as of yet on melatonin tablets, and it is being sold without approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Some children have complained of constant nightmares while on Melatonin, while others wake up feeling hungover, with slower reaction times.

It is every parent’s responsibility to okay with their pediatrician anything they give to their children. While doctors are not sure about the benefits of melatonin, there is a sure way to keep kids safe – rubber mulch. Rubber mulch provides optimum playground safety, and will reduce the severity of injuries even if your child does stumble due to drowsiness. You can think of the rubber mulch flooring as the safety net for tired, clumsy children. The rubber material has a bounce and shock absorbency that makes playtime fun and safer than ever. This is a fact that has been proven.

Any mother of an infant knows that babies grow at an extremely fast pace. You’ve finally finished putting together their wardrobe for the season, when nothing fits anymore, and you have to start again. With crawling babies that job is even harder, as everything is always dirty, and the knees of pants are always worn out. A small consolation is that a baby who crawls in the winter is indoors. Babies who crawl in the summer will be even dirtier, and tear their pants even more. When choosing playground flooring, rubber mulch is a great option in this situation.

As opposed to grass which leaves grass stains and wood chips which leave splinters and black streaks, rubber mulch flooring leaves no splinters or stains on clothes. Playsafer Rubber mulch comes in a variety of colors, none of which leave marks on clothing. Rubber is also easier on babies’ hands and knees as it is pliable, and it is odor free.

Playgrounds may be floored with rubber mulch chips or rubber bond. The chips are usually in an enclosed area that is surrounded by rubber curbs. Rubber bond is created by spreading a thick layer of mulch chips which is then covered by a layer of rubber that has a high polyurethane bond. The effect is a smooth, clean surface that retains the characteristics of rubber mulch chips. This option will be better for crawling babies, but it is more expensive than rubber mulch chips. Rubber bond also provides a safe surface for kids to play hopscotch, jump rope, ball, or anything that suits their fancy. Each family must weigh the pros and cons for their specific situation.

Rubber playground flooring offers exasperated mothers a simple solution to constant grass and mud stains and splinters. It is the finishing touch on a perfect playground.

Public parks are meant for children to play in, and it’s a real pity when they’re left to rot. The Daily News reports that for the past three years, Community District 18, which consists of Canarsie, Platlands, Mill Basin, Bergen Beach, and Marine Park, has earned the distinction of being lowest in cleanliness and general conditions. This data is compiled by the city’s Parks Inspection Program, which rates city parks based on litter, graffiti, playground equipment, and general conditions. Aside for being unsanitary, parks that earn low marks can also pose danger hazards for the children playing in them.

In cities especially, where grass is hard to come by, children spend lots of their time in city parks, and are subject to the conditions there. A growing awareness is being made of the need for rubber mulch flooring. Aside for aesthetics, rubber mulch is a necessary part of any commercial playground that is serious about playground safety.

Playsafer rubber mulch is used in the White House playground, an example that cities should follow. Available in different forms including rubber chips, rubber bond surfacing, rubber wearmats, and rubber curbs, the rubber flooring for playgrounds suits any need. A major consideration in any city or commercial expenditure is budgeting. Rubber mulch shows high returns, with little maintenance required and a long life span. An investment in rubber mulch is an investment for the future.

Rubber surfacing is recommended for city playgrounds because its high shock absorbency makes it a safer option, helping to prevent injuries in children. It is also entirely eco-friendly, made from recycled rubber and other sustainable materials. The use of rubber mulch satisfies all the concerns faced by a city, namely, safety, budget, and eco concerns.