| Community Gardens |
Tree Planting |
Rooftop Gardens |
Permaculture Resources |
Humans have lived in environments with plants and animals for thousands of years.
Only in the last couple of hundred years have humans created cities covered in concrete, void of vegetation.
Today, more than half of the people in the world live in urban environments. (Source: United Nations)
This is why More Dirt was born:
To provide a website where folks can learn how to bring more dirt and green life to their cities; so that people have clean air to breathe; fresh locally grown food to eat; and can combat global warming right in their own neighborhoods.
Click on the links above to learn about ways you can green your city.
Trees Help Combat Global Warming:
- Trees Combat the Greenhouse Effect
Global warming is the result of an excess of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere created primarily by burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major greenhouse gas. In the U.S., oil burning cars are the 2nd largest source of CO2. Trees help by absorbing CO2, removing and storing the carbon and then releasing the oxygen back into the air.
- Trees Clean the Air
Trees also absorb odors and pollutant gases (nitrogen oxides, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and ozone) and filter particulates out of the air by trapping them in their leaves and bark.
- Community Gardens provide nutritious local fresh food for urban neighborhoods.
- Community Gardens also stimulate local economies by allowing urban farmers to sell their products within their neighborhoods.
- Fresh food just harvested tastes better than food that has been prematurely picked, frozen and shipped thousands of miles…
- Fewer fossil fuels are used when food is grown locally because significantly less energy is used for transportation, refrigeration etc...
Plants & Trees also help to mitigate the "heat island effect": The heat island effect is caused when a city has higher temperatures than surrounding areas because of a greater retention of heat by man made buildings, concrete, and asphalt. Heat islands form as cities replace natural land cover with pavement, buildings, and other man made infrastructures. These changes contribute to higher urban temperatures in a number of ways:
- Displacing trees and vegetation minimizes the natural cooling effects of shading and evaporation of water from soil and leaves (evapotranspiration).
- Waste heat from vehicles, factories, and air conditioners may add warmth to their surroundings, further exacerbating the heat island effect. Click here to read more about the Heat Island Effect.
Living, growing things have been proven to make cities nicer to live in.
Thank you to all our volunteers.
More Dirt
More Dirt shirts seek to spark peoples' curiosity to learn how they can bring more dirt and green life to their cities.
On the More Dirt website you'll find simple reasons why more dirt is better for all living things as well as organizations you can contact to learn about ways you can green your city.
