Arbor Day is a holiday that is celebrated by planting or caring for trees. Arbor Day was established in Nebraska and was first proposed in 1872 by J. Sterling Morton. Morton was very passionate about nature and trees. His love for trees was spread to others when he became the editor of Nebraska's first newspaper. He wrote and explained how beneficial trees would be to Nebraska's people and agriculture, and soon others caught on.
Happy Groundhog Day! Today has me wondering...(thought cloud)... When did Groundhog Day come around and why the groundhog? 
We, as consumers, use A LOT of plastic bags! They were invented specifically for the convenience of a busy shopper and as the amount of things we purchase grows...so does the amount of plastic bags in the environment. I found this statistic on another blog called "The Rage Diaries." "According to the Food Marketing Institute, the average American makes 2.1 grocery shopping trips weekly, and picks up $28 worth of food each time -- six to ten bags' worth, depending on how they pack. That's twelve to twenty plastic bags weekly, per person. According to Retail Traffic, there's an estimated 20,000 visits per week per grocery store, on national average.
20,000 * 12 = 24,000 plastic bags used weekly per average grocery store in the U.S. There are about 34,000 grocery stores in the U.S. 24,000 * 34,000 = 816,000,000 bags used weekly nationwide."
Thats a really scary number; and thats exactly why Daniel Burd picked this topic for his science fair project! Daniel is a 16 year old who conducted this experiment as a science fair project, and ended up with a revolutionary solution to the plastic bag plague that has laid waste to ecosystems around the world. Burd isolated two strains of bacteria (Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas) that work together to consume polyethelene plastic! Daniel discovered that this bacteria combination broke down a plastic bag 43% in 6 weeks.
