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You can now find out pollen levels in your current or future location by using our hyper local pollen forecasting tool.

Your Pollen Pal gives you both the pollen count levels and weather forecasts in your local area when you enter your postcode. It can also give more detailed information about the types of pollen you can expect today and for the days ahead. You can even click on the pollen type to see the breakdown of allergens to give you a further idea of which pollen you may be sensitive to.

Pollen Forecasts

Your Pollen Pal will forecast pollen levels over the next 5 days in your current, or selected area, and break this down into Grass, Tree and Weed pollen levels to help you plan your next few days ahead in the great outdoors. Visit our types of pollen page to find out more about different pollen types and the impact they can have on hay fever symptoms.

How Does Your Pollen Pal Work?

The pollen tracker takes data from several sources and gives it to a friendly little AI robot (not a real robot) to create a personalised pollen count just for you.

The data comes from Ambee, which takes its data from:

1. Pollen traps across the UK and beyond

2. Local weather on the day

3. The different types of trees, weeds, and grass in your area

"With such levels of accuracy, we can predict the pollen count on your street for up to five days ahead." Madhusudhan Anand, Co-Founder & CTO of Ambee

Pollen Levels

The following table shows the risk level for each type of pollen derived by applying NAB guidelines to our data and taking percentile values from the extended season for each type of pollen.

Severity of pollen is dictated by the PPM number, which stands for Pollen Grains Per Cubic Metre.

The weather and time of day can also be a big factor when it comes to how the pollen count can affect you. As pollen falls to the ground when the heat dissipates during the evening, this can mean your hay fever symptoms get worse and is why many hay fever sufferers have worse symptoms in the night.

On rainy days, you'll find your hay fever symptoms are easier to manage as the rain tends to wash the pollen away.

Top Five Tips to Prevent Hay Fever Symptoms

Knowing how to manage or even prevent hay fever can really help to improve your quality of life in high pollen seasons. We've put together five top tips on how to keep hay fever to a minimum.

1. Showering and changing clothes after being outdoors - pollen gets everywhere, sticking to clothes and affecting you long after you've retreated inside. After a day outside, jump in the shower, or bath, and change your clothes to prevent transmission.

2. Applying petroleum gel just under nose - a little dab before you head out can act as a barrier to prevent pollen particles from entering your nose. Just don't forget it's there, as if you're eating doughnuts (go on, why not?) the sugar will stick to the jelly as well as the pollen powder.

3. Wearing wraparound sunglasses - a suitably stylish way of keeping pesky pollen powder out of your eyes. Plus, you'll look like The Terminator which is cool... if that's your thing?

4. Keep it clean - Regularly wash your hands when out and about to remove pollen, or just give them a quick clean with some Allergy Comfort Wipes.

5. Drying your laundry inside - gorgeous weather means drying washing outside - but this leads to pollen using your best jumper as a resting spot. If you suffer from hay fever, it's better to dry your laundry inside.

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Pollen Count - find pollen levels near me | Kleenex

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You can now find out pollen levels in your current or future location by using our hyper local pollen forecasting tool. Your Pollen Pal gives you both the pollen count levels and weather forecasts in your local area when you enter your postcode.

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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You'll find games, trivia quizzes and help with map skills, plus you can delve into some fascinating topics about the world around you and find out how geography is evident in our day-to-day lives.

Mapzone brings geography and mapping to life and is a great resource to use as a teacher.

Unfortunately your browser doesn't support Javascript which is required for MapZone.

View instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.

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Variety of games, and homework help for children about mapping and geography.

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AIRVŪZ STAFF NOTE :

The Amazon Rainforest is an immense area, covering 5.5 million square km (2.1 million square mi) of territory in South America. Roughly 60% of the rainforest is situated in Brazil, with the balance spread around eight other countries. In this stunning drone video, contributor Cristian Dimitrius give us an aerial tour of portions of this irreplaceable natural resource in Brazil and French Guyana. The Amazon River is the world's largest source of freshwater apart from the Arctic icecaps.

Just a quick sample of some drone footage I shot while filming in the Amazon Rainforest.
Dop/Pilot: Cristian Dimitrius
Location: French Guyana and Brazil (Acre and Amazonas).
Drone: DJI Phanton 4
Shot at 4k 24p
No Post/Grading at all.

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The Amazon Rainforest is an immense area, covering 5.5 million square km (2.1 million square mi) of territory in South America. Roughly 60% of the rainforest is situated in Brazil, with the balance spread around eight other countries.

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Learning to count is fun with this range of free educational games for Key Stage 1 children. Start with the simple counting games and progress to numbers up to 100. There are also matching and sequencing numbers activities.

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Free, interactive, learning to count games for 5 to 7 year olds involve numbers from 1 to 100.

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Rainforest Animals 🐅🌴 - Animals for Kids - Educational Video

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Ready for an amazing outdoor adventure with Nat Geo Kids? Then check out our awesome Amazon facts as we head into the depths of the Amazon rainforest!
Amazon facts

1. The Amazon is the world's largest tropical rainforest. Covering over 5.5 million square kilometres, it's so big that the UK and Ireland would fit into it 17 times!

2. The Amazon is found in South America, spanning across Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.

3. Running through the north of the rainforest is the Amazon River - a network of many hundreds of waterways that stretches 6,840km. Although there is some debate, most scientists agree that the Amazon is the world's second longest river after the River Nile.

4. In 2007, a man named Martin Strel swam the entire length of the Amazon river! To complete his splashing jungle journey, Martin powered through the water for up to ten hours a day for 66 days!

5. Around 400-500 indigenous Amerindian tribes call the Amazon rainforest home. It's believed that about fifty of these tribes have never had contact with the outside world!

6. The Amazon has an incredibly rich ecosystem - there are around 40,000 plant species, 1,300 bird species, 3,000 types of fish, 430 mammals and a whopping 2.5 million different insects. Wow!

7. The Amazon is home to a whole host of fascinating - and deadly! - creatures, including electric eels, flesh eating piranhas, poison dart frogs, and some seriously venomous snakes.

8. One fascinating fish found in the Amazon is the Pirarucu (also known as the arapaima or paiche). A menacing meat-eater, the pirarucu guzzles up other fish and can grow to nearly 3m long! And what makes it super deadly? It has teeth on the roof of its mouth and on its tongue!

9. This area of immense natural beauty plays an important role in limiting climate change. This is because the rich vegetation takes carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) out of the air and releases oxygen. You can learn more about this in our feature on the lifecycle of plants!

10. Due to the thickness of the canopy (the top branches and leaves of the trees), the Amazon floor is in permanent darkness. In fact, it's so thick that when it rains, it takes around ten minutes for the water to reach the ground!

If you liked this article, check out these awesome facts about the River Nile in Egypt! Plus, learn all about the water cycle and discover how habitat destruction is threatening Earth's rainforests.

Photos: Getty Images UK

What do you make of our Amazon facts? Let us know by leaving a comment, below!

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10 amazing Amazon facts! | National Geographic Kids

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Check out our 10 top Amazon facts here at Nat Geo Kids! Learn all about the rainforest, the Amazon river, the creatures that live there and more...

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Collaborate for free with online versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Save documents, workbooks, and presentations online, in OneDrive. Share them with others and work together at the same time.

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Ten products and ingredients that come from tropical forests

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The Amazon is much more than simply a beautiful, far-off tropical rainforest. It's also a source of everyday items we rely on. Do you recognise these familiar products and ingredients?

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Don't feel helpless over the state of the rainforest. There are some simple things that we can all do that will reduce the rate of deforestation of the most biodiverse place on earth.

Toilet paper

Toilet paper is responsible for uprooting 27'000 trees a day including tropical hardwood trees from the rainforests. These rainforests are vital for the health of the planet and home to many critically endangered species.

Western consumers demand 4-ply thick toilet paper that's made from virgin pulp. As more people are becoming wealthier across the earth the "luxury" toilet paper is industry is growing rapidly.

We have a vast amount of paper that could be recycled into toilet paper. It may not be as white, perfect and smooth but swapping to 2-ply recycled toilet paper will help stop deforestation. Bamboo toilet paper is also a great choice as it's wood that grows quickly and is sustainable.

Alternatively you can go for a bum gun / bidet sprayer and use a jet of water instead. Many people once they get used to using a water spray wouldn't go back to paper and it's more hygienic. Although you may still want to use a single piece of toilet paper to dry. All steps that help to reduce add up to a change.

Soybeans

It almost goes without saying that soy beans are responsible for rainforest deforestation, but hear me through as this important point is missed.

Vegans are not eating all the soy beans that are grown after cutting down the rainforest! It's very easy to blame the people that buy products from the store with soy in the name but the truth is meat-eaters are eating most of the soybeans!

The vast majority of soybeans are used for either animal feed or a cheaply bulk out mass-produced products - often meat products.

As soy is high in protein and fibre it's popular as an animal feed and around 35% of soy is used to feed cows, pigs and poultry.

I worked in a Pizza shop as a (vegan) student and was surprised that the beef and pork chunks contained more soy than meat, but it now makes sense. Mass produced products are full of soy to bulk up and increase profits.

Most vegan soy products are made from organic and high quality soy beans that are unlikely to have been grown in swathes of the rainforest that were cut down. The soy used to produce meat cheaply and bulk out foods is the low-quality soy beans that will be bought from wherever they are cheapest, and this is often the rainforest as in the short term they can be grown for a good profit margin.

If you're buying a soy product check with the manufacturer about where they source their soy beans from so you know it's not contributing to deforestation.

The next time someone says vegans and soy beans are bad for the rainforest you can now be informed to tell them cows milk uses far more soy beans (per litre and in total volume) than soy milk!

Unsustainable Palm Oil

Everyone knows palm oil is bad but this is only the unstainable kind.

Palm oil is very high yielding, making it a very lucrative crop and the #1 reason for Indonesian deforestation.

If palm oil is grown sustainably it can be good choice for the environment to lessen your impact because of the high yield per land usage.

Sustainable palm oil can be an effective way to produce oil for commercial purposes that makes use of land that isn't biodiverse rainforest.

The Rainforest Biome at the Eden Project has an exhibition to illustrate the importance of sustainable palm oil.

If it doesn't say sustainable palm oil on the packet it won't be. Only buy products that expressly say the palm oil is sustainable.

Cocoa

The chocolate bean is one of the most common crops that's grown on illegally deforested land.

Cocoa comes from the theobroma cacao tree and only grows within 15 degrees north or south of the equator. Countries like Ghana produce cocoa that's all for export and this one cocoa makes up 64% of all exports.

As the worlds appetite for chocolate products is increasing cocoa farmers are turning to unstable and damaging practices in order to meet the cocoa demand.

However the great news is cocoa is one of the easiest products to buy that is fairly traded and so ethically sourced.

Beef

As Nest and Glow is a vegan site with 100's of vegan recipes I have to mention the worst animal product in this article.

As the middle classes across the world grows meat is still seen as an aspirational food.

Beef is the worst animal product for deforestation.

Cattle farming in Pará State, Brazil, photo by Nilo D'Avila

Large parts of the Brazillian rainforest have been cut down in order to farm animals to meet the demand for this red meat.

The rainforest is burnt in order to clear for a cattle ranch and would take hundreds of years to recover. After a few years all the nutrients from the slash and burnt former rainforest soil are depleted and the deforested land is useless.

Compounding with the earlier mention of soybeans that are used to feed beef cattle makes beef the worst animal product for deforestation.

Final Thoughts on Products To Reduce The Rate Of Rainforest Deforestation

It can be pretty depressing seeing the rate at which the most biodiverse part of the planet is being destroyed forever.

But a few changes we can all make can help slow down the process.

All of these switches can be done instantly and us all together making changes adds up to a big change.

Use recycled 2-ply toilet paper

Only buy products with sustainable palm oil

Buy fairly and ethically sourced cocoa

Eat less / or no beef

Buy less processed products with soybeans and less animal products

Let me know what you think of this article about products to avoid to help the rainforest in the comments below and any more tips you have to help people.

References

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5 Products That Cause Rainforest Deforestation and How You Can Easily Help - Nest and Glow

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Don't feel helpless over the state of the rainforest. There are some simple things that we can all do that will reduce the rate of ... 5 Products That Cause Rainforest Deforestation and How You Can Easily Help Read More "

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In a large-scale consumer survey across the UK population on perceptions of vegetable oils, palm oil was deemed to be the least environmentally-friendly. It wasn't even close. 41% of people thought palm oil was 'environmentally unfriendly', compared to 15% for soybean oil; 9% for rapeseed; 5% for sunflower; and 2% for olive oil. 43% also answered 'Don't know', meaning that almost no one thought it was good.

Retailers know that this is becoming an important driver of consumer choices. From shampoos, to detergents, from chocolate to cookies, companies are trying to eliminate palm oil from their products. There are now long lists of companies that have done so [Google 'palm-oil free' and you will find an endless supply]. Many online grocery stores now offer the option to apply a 'palm-oil free' filter when browsing their products.

Why are consumers turning their back on palm oil? And is this reputation justified?

In this article I address some key questions about palm oil production: how has it changed; where is it grown; and how this has affected deforestation and biodiversity. The story of palm oil is not as simple as it is often portrayed. Global demand for vegetable oils has increased rapidly over the last 50 years. Being the most productive oilcrop, palm has taken up a lot of this production. This has had a negative impact on the environment, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia. But it's not clear that the alternatives would have fared any better. In fact, because we can produce up to 20 times as much oil per hectare from palm versus the alternatives, it has probably spared a lot of environmental impacts from elsewhere.

Palm oil production has grown to meet rising demands for vegetable oils

Palm oil production has increased rapidly over the past 50 years. In 1970, the world was producing only 2 million tonnes. This is now 35 times higher: in 2018 the world produced 71 million tonnes. The change in global production is shown in the chart.

The rise of palm oil follows the rapid increase in demand for vegetable oils more broadly. The breakdown of global vegetable oil production by crop is shown in the stacked area chart. Global production increased ten-fold since the 1960s - from 17 to 170 million tonnes in 2014. As we will see later in this article, more recent data for 2018 comes to 218 million tonnes.

The story of palm oil is less about it as an isolated commodity, but more about the story of the rising demand for vegetable oils. Palm oil is a very productive crop; as we will see later, it produces 36% of the world's oil, but uses less than 9% of croplands devoted to oil production. It has therefore been a natural choice to meet this demand.

Who uses palm oil and what is it used for?

Why has the market for palm oil - and vegetable oils more broadly - increased so rapidly? What is it used for?

Palm oil is a versatile product which is used in a range of products across the world:

Foods: over two-thirds (68%) is used in foods ranging from margarine to chocolate, pizzas, breads and cooking oils;

Industrial applications: 27% is used in industrial applications and consumer products such as soaps, detergents, cosmetics and cleaning agents;

Bioenergy: 5% is used as biofuels for transport, electricity or heat.

While food products dominate globally, this breakdown varies from country-to-country. Some countries use much more palm oil for biofuels than others. In Germany, for example, bioenergy is the largest use, accounting for 41% (more than food at 40%). A push towards increased biofuel consumption in the transport sector has been driving this, despite it being worse for the environment than normal diesel (more on this later).

In the next section we will look at what countries produce palm oil, but here we see a map of palm oil imports. Although production is focused in only a few countries across the tropical belt, we see that palm oil is an important product across the world.

Where is palm oil grown?

Oil palm is a tropical plant species. It thrives on high rainfall, adequate sunlight and humid conditions - this means the best growing areas are along a narrow band around the equator. Palm oil is therefore grown in many countries across Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. In the map we see the distribution of production across the world.

Small amounts of palm oil are grown in many countries, but the global market is dominated by only two: Indonesia and Malaysia. In 2018, the world produced 72 million tonnes of oil palm. Indonesia accounted for 57% of this (41 million tonnes), and Malaysia produced 27% (20 million tonnes).84% of global palm oil production comes from Indonesia and Malaysia.

In the chart we see the production of the palm oil plant across a number of countries. Other producers include Thailand, Colombia, Nigeria, Guatemala, and Ecuador. As we'd expect, all of these countries lie along the zone of 'optimal conditions' around the equator.

How has land use for palm oil changed over time?

How has the world achieved such a rapid expansion of palm oil production? There are only two ways in which we can produce more of a given crop: increase yields (growing more on a given amount of land) or expand the amount of land we use to grow it.

Global palm yields have increased over time, but far short of the increase in demand. This means that over the last 50 years the amount of land devoted to growing palm oil has increased a lot. In the chart here we see the change in land use. Since 1980 the amount of land the world uses to grow palm has more than quadrupled, from 4 million to 19 million hectares in 2018. Indonesia and Malaysia account for 63% of global land use for palm. This is low when we consider that it accounts for 84% of production. This is because both countries achieve high yields.

19 million hectares might sound like a lot of land. But we should consider this in the context of all land used to grow oilcrops. The world devotes more than 300 million hectares for oilcrop production. Palm oil accounts for 6% of this land use, which is small when we consider that it produces 36% of the oil.

Is palm oil responsible for deforestation?

Land use to grow palm has more than quadrupled since 1980. But has this expansion came at the expense of tropical forest?

This seems like a simple question, but is not as straightforward as we might expect. The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Oil Palm Task Force conducted an in-depth review of the literature to understand the impact of palm oil on deforestation. There was a lot of variability in the results, depending on how a forest was defined, the geographic focus of the analysis, and timeframe that was considered.

Having done my own review of the literature I conclude that palm oil has been a significant driver of tropical deforestation, especially in Southeast Asia.

Some studies suggest that palm oil has played a very small role in global forest loss. One study suggests that palm oil is responsible for around 2% of global tree loss. Another suggests it is responsible for only 0.2% of intact forest loss. This seems very low. But there are a couple of caveats to these figures. Firstly, they measure forest loss, which combines both permanent deforestation (where trees do not regrow) and forest degradation (which is a temporary thinning of forests with subsequent regrowth). As we discuss in our related article on this, deforestation accounts for just one-quarter of global tree loss. Palm oil's contribution to deforestation - which has greater environmental impacts than degradation - would be higher.

Secondly, the 0.2% figure is based on intact forest loss. Intact forests are a specific subset of primary forests which are very rich sites of biodiversity, and are largely undisturbed by human activity. Only 6% of global intact forest is in Southeast Asia, the hotspot of palm oil expansion. Only 2.8% was in Indonesia, and 0.2% in Malaysia. So, even if all of these countries' forests were wiped out by palm oil plantations, it would still make very little difference to this metric of global intact forest loss. The authors of the original study make it clear that intact forest loss should not be confused with primary forest loss.

So, how much of palm oil's expansion has really come at the expense of forests? Let's focus on the two key countries driving production: Indonesia and Malaysia. In the chart here we see the drivers of deforestation in Indonesia from 2001 to 2016. Oil palm plantations were the largest driver of deforestation over this period, accounting for 23%. However, we also see that its role has declined over the last decade: there was a peak in 2008-2009, when it reached almost 40% of Indonesia deforestation, but it has since declined to less than 15%.

Part of what makes this question so challenging to answer is that it depends on whether you only consider palm plantations which immediately and directly replaced existing forest, or whether you include plantations which very quickly replaced forests which had been logged for wood, paper and pulp. In a paper published in Nature, David Gaveau and colleagues (2016) used satellite imagery to assess what types of land industrial plantations replaced in the Borneo region. Industrial plantations include palm oil and pulpwood tree plantations, but are dominated by the former.

This is shown for the Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo in the chart.

75% of these plantations were grown on land that was previously forested in 1973. Not all of these plantations were the direct driver of this replacement. In fact, only one-quarter of post-1973 plantations in the Borneo was driven by rapid conversion of this land to plantations (20-21% oil-palm; 4.3-4.8% pulpwood). This is shown in green in the chart. Direct deforestation for palm oil played a larger role in Malaysia; 60% was driven by plantations, whilst in Indonesia it was only 16%.

This study only looks at the Borneo region. But this is reasonably consistent with studies that have looked at the expansion of palm plantations more broadly. A global study of palm-driven deforestation found that in Southeast Asia, 45% of oil palm plantations came from areas that were forests in 1989. In Indonesia this was 54% and in Malaysia, 40%.

These distinctions on how quickly palm oil plantations replaced forests make it difficult to give a clear, single number on how much deforestation it has caused. But, most of the research concludes that, particularly in tropical forests in Southeast Asia, palm expansion has played a significant role.

Palm oil versus the alternatives

Palm oil has been an important driver of deforestation. But would the alternatives have fared any better?

There are a couple of reasons why palm oil has been the favored crop to meet growing demand for vegetable oils. Firstly, it has lowest production costs. Secondly, its composition means it's versatile and can be used for food and non-food purposes alike: some oils are not suited for cosmetic uses such as shampoos and detergents. Third, it gets incredibly high yields.

If we weren't meeting global oil demand through palm oil, another oilcrop would have to take its place. Would the alternatives be any better for the environment?

We can compare crops in terms of their yields - how much oil we can produce from one hectare of land. This comparison is shown in the chart. Palm oil stands out immediately. It achieves a much higher yield than the alternatives. From each hectare of land, you can produce about 2.9 tonnes of palm oil. That's around four times higher than alternatives such as sunflower or rapeseed oil (where you get about 0.7 tonnes per hectare); and 10 to 15 times higher than popular alternatives such as coconut or groundnut oil .

Let's take a look at how this comparison affects the global landscape of oilcrops in terms of production and land use. In the chart we see the breakdown of global vegetable oil production in 2018. On the left we have each crop's share of global land use for vegetable oils; on the right we have its share of production.

We know from our yield comparison that palm oil achieves a much higher yield. What this means is that it accounts for a very high share of oil production without taking up much land. In 2017 it produced 36% of our vegetable oil, but took up only 8.6% of the land.

Sunflower oil was almost exactly proportional in terms of how much oil it produced relative to how much land it took up: it produced 9% of oil, and required 8.3% of land. Rape and mustardseed oil were also in proportion. The rest - soybean, olive, coconut, groundnut, and sesameseed - used more land than they gave back in oil production. Coconut oil, for example, provided only 1.4% of global oil but required 3.6% of the land.

It's of course true that some crops provide co-products in the process. The non-oil fraction of soybeans, for example, can be allocated to other uses such as high-protein animal feed. Therefore using this land to grow the crop is meeting other food demand at the same time. But this doesn't change the fact that if the world requires a given amount of vegetable oil, it is the oil yield per hectare of each crop that we care about - regardless of whether it provides co-products in the process.

What would be the impact of substituting palm oil?

Palm oil achieves very high yields relative to other oilcrops. Why does this matter?

If we want to limit our environmental impact, reducing the amount of land we devote to agriculture is key. To make space for more croplands and pastures, we have been displacing forests, grasslands and peatlands - areas of rich biodiversity. The less land we need for farming, the better.

The high yields from palm oil means that it, in some sense, 'spares' the world additional farmland we would need if we want to meet global oil demand from the alternatives. We can look at this in terms of the amount of land we would need if total global demand for vegetable oil was met from a single crop alone. In other words, how much land would be needed if the 218 million tonnes of oil was only produced from palm oil, or only produced from rapeseed? This comparison is shown in the chart. As we'd expect, we see vast differences.

Let's give these numbers some context. Currently the world devotes around 322 million hectares to oilseed crops. That's an area similar to the size of India. If global oil was supplied solely from palm, we'd need 77 million hectares, around four times less. If we got it from rapeseed we'd need an area similar to the size we use today; from coconuts, an area the size of Canada; and in the most extreme case, we'd have to devote 2 billion hectares to sesame seeds - a bit more than Canada, the USA, and India combined.

In this sense, palm oil has been a 'land sparing' crop. Switching to alternatives would mean the world would need to use more farmland, and face the environmental costs that come with it. A global boycott on palm oil would not fix the problem: it would simply shift it elsewhere, and at a greater scale because the world would need more land to meet demand.

This is true for other tropical oilcrops such as coconut, groundnut, or soy. However, we might argue that this oversimplifies the comparison to more temperate crops: it assumes the environmental impact of devoting one hectare of land for sunflower seeds in Europe is the same as cutting down tropical rainforests to grow palm or coconut plantations. We know that tropical forests are incredibly rich in biodiversity, and store a lot of carbon from the atmosphere. In some cases, especially for European domestic markets, some substitution for rapeseed or sunflower seed oils could have a positive environmental impact even if it required using a bit more land.

How can we use palm oil without destroying tropical forests?

There are a number of steps we can take to ensure we meet global demand for oils, without destroying our tropical forests.

Substitutes for palm oil do not always exist. As we've discussed, substituting palm oil with alternatives can do more harm than good. But it's also true that alternative oils are not always suitable for the products we need. Palm oil is unique in its versatility, meaning it is suitable for a range of foods, cosmetics, industrial applications and biofuels. Substitution would be feasible for most food products. Substitution in industrial processes would be more difficult, especially if we want to replace it with oils grown in temperate countries: sunflower or rapeseed oil is not suited to products such as soaps, detergents or cosmetics. One sector where alternatives do exist is bioenergy, which brings us to our next point.

European countries should stop using palm oil for biofuels. The EU - after China and India - is the third largest importer of palm oil. There are some products where using palm is our best option. This is not the case for biofuels, yet two-thirds of the EU's imported palm oil goes to bioenergy production. Using palm oil as a biofuel is worse for the environment than petrol. A meta-analysis conducted by the Royal Academy of Engineering on EU biofuels found that when we factored in land-use change, the greenhouse gas emissions from palm oil were higher than using a petrol car. Other studies have shown that when we take the additional environmental impacts into account, these biofuels are much worse than conventional fuels. By using palm oil, EU countries are not only increasing emissions, they're passing the responsibility and accountability of these emissions on to other countries. A ban on using palm oil for biofuels would reduce this impact while allowing global palm oil to be used for purposes where there are few better alternatives - food and cosmetic products.

Increase companies sourcing from suppliers with sustainability certification. There are now a number of certification schemes which help to verify whether palm oil is being produced in a sustainable way. The most well-known is the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The RSPO was launched in 2004, and provides certification for suppliers who produce their crop in a more sustainable way by conducting impact assessments, managing high-value areas of biodiversity, not clearing primary forest and avoiding land clearance through fires. For example, suppliers can only be certified if their plantations since 2005 have not replaced primary forest or areas rich in biodiversity. Consumer demand for sustainable palm oil puts pressure on food and cosmetic companies to source from certified suppliers, and ultimately rewards the most sustainable growers.

Only 19% of palm oil production is covered by the RSPO. Research into the impact of the RSPO found that it was successful in reducing deforestation. However, it found that this most avoided deforestation from older plantations, which is not where most tropical forests remain. To have a real, permanent impact, certification needs to cover a much larger number of growers.

Increased crop yields. If we want to reduce agricultural expansion, we want to maximise crop yields through effective management practices, improved varieties and choosing the most productive areas of land.

This combination of interventions involves actors across the full production line, from agricultural scientists improving crop varieties, to palm oil growers, governments, food and cosmetic producers, retailers and consumers. Pressure from consumers can filter through to growers. To do this effectively, understanding for consumers has to be clearer. Many believe that boycotting palm oil is how we make a difference. But as we've seen, the alternatives are not necessarily better; more sustainable palm oil (used for food, not fuel) rather than no palm oil is what we should be pushing for.

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Explore palm oil production across the world, and its impacts on the environment.

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Landsat Image Gallery - Tracking Amazon Deforestation from Above

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Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

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Map Finder - with Outlines - National Library of Scotland

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Search for all our historic maps by viewing their outlines or bounding box extents visible on a map background

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View map: OS town plan - Cirencester sheet LI.11.11 - Ordnance Survey Town Plans of England and Wales, 1840s-1890s

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Historic map - OS town plan - Cirencester sheet LI.11.11, published in ca. 1876, part of the Ordnance Survey Town Plans of England and Wales, 1840s-1890s series

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Math explained in easy language, plus puzzles, games, quizzes, worksheets and a forum. For K-12 kids, teachers and parents.

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British Pathe, the world's leading multimedia resource with a history stretching back over a century. The finest and most comprehensive archive of fabulous footage and stunning stills.

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On this day in 1953: Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

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Dan bought a packet of crisps and an ice cream.

The cost of both of them together is in one of the boxes below.

If you are using dollars instead of pounds then go to

Use these clues to find out how much he paid:

1. You need more than three coins to make this amount.
2. There would be change when using the most valuable coin to buy them.
3. The crisps cost more than $50$p.
4. You could pay without using any copper coins.
5. The ice cream costs exactly twice as much as the crisps.

(If you are in Hong Kong, have a look here.doc or here.pdf for a version created by Mrs Voce at Victoria Shanghai Academy in Hong Kong.)

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Dan bought a packet of crisps and an ice cream. The cost of both of them together is in one of the boxes below. If you are using dollars instead of pounds then go to Use these clues to find out how much he paid: 1.

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Amy went into her local stationery shop. Her mum had given her £2.50 to spend.

Amy liked the look of some luminous pens, which cost 15p each, and some fancy pencils, which cost 10p each.

She bought four times as many pens as pencils and was given 40p change.

How many of each did she buy?

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Amy went into her local stationery shop. Her mum had given her £2.50 to spend. Amy liked the look of some luminous pens, which cost 15p each, and some fancy pencils, which cost 10p each. She bought four times as many pens as pencils and was given 40p change.

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Rosie went into the sweet shop with $10$p to spend.

There were chews for $2$p, mini eggs for $3$p, Chocko bars for $5$p and lollypops for $7$p.

What could she buy if she wanted to spend all her money?

Alice, James, Katie and Henry went into the shop too. They each had $20$p to spend and they all spent all of their money.

Alice bought at least one of each kind of sweet. Which one did she have two of?

James spent his money on just one kind of sweet, but he does not like chews. Which sweets did he buy?

Katie bought the same number of sweets as James but she had $3$ different kinds. Which sweets did she buy?

Henry chose $8$ sweets. What could he have bought?

(If you want to do this with cents instead go here )

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There were chews for 2p, mini eggs for 3p, Chocko bars for 5p and lollypops for 7p in the sweet shop. What could each of the children buy with their money?

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Awesome Aquatic Plants Facts For Kids - Aquatic Plant Types

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Explore aquatic plants facts and their types for kids. Aquatic plants are simply plants that live in or around water such as ponds, rivers & other water bodies.

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Air plants ( Tillandsia spp.) are from Mexico and South America. They are so-named because they use their short, wiry roots to attach themselves to branches, cliff-faces, even electricity and telephone lines, rather than rooting in soil.

Get involved

The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK's leading gardening charity. We aim to enrich everyone's life through plants, and make the UK a greener and more beautiful place.

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Air plants ( Tillandsia spp.) are from Mexico and South America. They are so-named because they use their short, wiry roots to attach themselves to branches, cliff-faces, even electricity and telephone lines, rather than rooting in soil. The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK's leading gardening charity.

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Trees are tall, woody plants. They usually have a stem called a trunk. Trees are some of the largest and oldest living things on Earth. Some trees live for hundreds or even...

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10 facts about honey bees! | National Geographic Kids

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Join us here at National Geographic Kids as we check out ten facts about honey bees! Find out what they eat, how they communicate & why...

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Bees are some of the most important creatures we share this planet with. In fact, these buzzing beauties are responsible for almost one out of every three bites of food we eat. With that in mind, it's important to teach future generations the importance of protecting our friends, the bees.

Here, we'll provide a few kid-friendly facts and some fun ways to use them to teach your children about the wonderful world of bees.

13 bee facts you didn't know

Let's start with the facts. These 13 facts cover some of the basic functions and traits of your average bee. In addition, we'll review some key information about bees in general. Time to get started.

1. Bees have five eyes and six legs

2. Honey bees live in hives (or colonies). The members of the hive are divided into three types: Queen, Workers, and Drones.

3. There are more than 20,000 species of bees.

4. Bees can see all colors except red. That and their sense of smell help them find the flowers they need to collect pollen.

5. The average beehive can house around 50,000 bees.

6. Each bee has 170 odorant receptors, which means they have one serious sense of smell.

7. Worker bees go from one flower to another, collecting nectar. In one collection trip, a bee visits 50 to 100 flowers.

8. Carpenter bees create tunnels that usually look about one or two inches deep, but they can be up to 10 feet long.

9. The queen bee lays all of the eggs in a colony. At the height of the season, she may layover 2,500 eggs per day.

10. Honey bees are great flyers. They fly at a speed of around 25km per hour and beat their wings 200 times per second.

11. It takes 21 days for an egg to develop into an adult bee.

12. Honey bees pollinate more than 100 different crops in the U.S.

13. Over the past 15 years, colonies of bees have been disappearing, and the reason remains unknown. In some regions, up to 90% of bees have disappeared.

As you can see, there's a lot to teach! And while these facts cover a lot, there's still so much more to learn about the world of bees. But to get started with these facts, we'll review a few helpful teaching tips.

Share Your Passion for Bees

Kids pick up on your interest in certain topics. If you're particularly passionate about bee education, let that shine through! There are so many amazing facts about bees, many of which we covered above. Using your passion as a way to really reach out to the children you're teaching is an excellent method to start with.

Use Visual and Tactile Aids

If there's one thing kids love, it's being able to see and touch the things they're learning about. Bringing visual aids like pictures, diagrams, or even working with your local beekeeper to bring an observation hive into the picture can make all the difference. Other items like a honeycomb, macro photos of bee eggs, or even a portion of an abandoned beehive can go a long way in helping kids take a peek into the wonderful world of bees.

Use Nature as Your Classroom

The great thing about bees is that they're all around us! A simple nature walk can provide a lot of insight into the world of bees. Try spotting a bee or two in your local flower garden. Watch and point out how they move from flower to flower, gathering pollen and nectar as they go.

For more intrepid explorers, organizing a field trip to your local beekeeper's farm is an awesome learning opportunity. Not only will you get up close and personal with the bees, you'll be able to see how they function within a hive.

Bees Are Friends to Us All

It's easy for children to be afraid of insects, especially if they have stingers attached to them like bees do. But bees do so much for us! It's our job to teach future generations how to live with, love, and protect these buzzing beauties all around us.

How will you teach future generations about the wonderful world of bees?

This entry was posted in green hotels and tagged amazing nature, bees, better the world, biodiversity. Bookmark the permalink.

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13 Bee Facts to Help You Teach the Wonderful World of Bees

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Bees are some of the most important creatures we share this planet with. In fact, these buzzing beauties are responsible for almost one out of every three bites of food we eat. With that in mind, it's important to teach future generations the importance of protecting our friends, the bees.

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3. UK Bees are being helped by a B-Line transport system

Imagine trying to travel around Britain without our road and rail network. Or imagine if nine out of every ten miles of road just didn't exist - life would be impossible! B-Lines are an imaginative and beautiful solution to the problem of the loss of flowers and pollinators. The B-Lines are a series of 'insect pathways' running through our countryside and towns. They link existing wildlife areas together, creating a network, like a railway, that will weave across the British landscape.

4. Bringing a bee back to life

If you find a bumblebee which appears to be struggling, it may be that it is just resting, particularly if the bee is a queen in early spring. If you think the bee is struggling the best thing to do is gently put the bee onto a bee-friendly flower.

If there are no bee-friendly flowers around, mix 50/50 white sugar and water to give the bumblebee a one-off energy boost, providing the carbohydrates it needs to fly. Simply offer a drop or two of sugar water up to the front end of the bee on a teaspoon or an upturned drinks cap in a sheltered place and allow the bee time to recuperate.

(It is not advisable to use brown sugar as it is harder for bees to digest and don't give bumblebees honey as this can contain pathogens.)

5. Anyone, including you, can help a bee out

We can all do our bit to help bees whether that's in our gardens, balconies or windowsills. You can also chat to friends and family about how cool bees are and help them to make their wild spaces bee-friendly.

Plant a range of flowers in your garden so bees have access to nectar from March to October. Bees love traditional cottage garden flowers and native wildflowers, like primrose, foxglove, and marigolds.

We also recommend:
Fascinating facts about animals Things to do at home Learn to love nature Our tips on how to bee friendly

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Learn these top 10 facts about bees and find out more about these remarkable insects.

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Bees are a very important part of our ecosystem all around the world. They pollinate plants in gardens, parks and three-quarters of the UK's food crops.

All bees have a long straw like tongue, two wings, two antennae and three segmented body parts (the head, the thorax and the abdomen). Here in the UK we have an amazing 267 different species of bee including the honey bee, bumblebees and solitary bees!

Honey Bees

Honey bees are the most well known species of bee and the only species of bee to make honey.

The Hive: Honey bees live together in a group called a colony. The colony is made up of one queen, hundreds of male drone bees and thousands of female workers. Honey bees work together to build a hive in a hollow space such as a tree trunk. They make bees wax to create little hexagons in which they store eggs, honey and pollen.

The Queen Bee: The queen controls the hive. She also lays all the eggs to create the next generation. She can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day! She lives for around 5 years. New queens will either take over the hive or leave the hive to start their own colony.

Worker Bees: All the worker bees are female and they are very busy! They collect pollen and nectar, look after the queen and drones, feed larvae and build, look after and defend the hive! Workers born in the summer will only live for 5 - 6 weeks. Those born at the end of the summer will hibernate in the hive through the winter with the queen.

Drones: The male bees, or drones, stay in the hive to mate with the queen. At the end of summer the drones are pushed out of the hive to die!

Fabulous Facts: Honey bees fly at a speed of around 15 miles per hour and beat their wings 200 times per second! The communicate by dancing.

Bumblebees

There are 24 different species of bumblebee. They are easy to spot as they look fluffy!

Colonies: Like the honey bee bumblebees also live in a colony with a queen, female worker bees and male drones. Their colonies are much smaller than honey bee colonies with up to 400 bees in a hive.

Bumblebees don't make honey, as they do not need to store food for winter. They will live in their nest for 2 to 3 months looking after the queens eggs. After this the queen, workers and drones will die and the new queens leave to hibernate over the winter. In the spring they will form their own colonies.

Parasitic Bumblebees: Six of the bumblebee species are called 'parasitic bumblebees'. Instead of creating their own nests they take over a nest already built by another colony, killing the queen and laying their own eggs in the nest.

Feeding: Most species of bumblebee have a long tongue and can reach into flowers the honey bee can't. They will visit the same patch of flowers every day.

Fabulous Facts: There are over 250 different bumblebee species in the world!

Solitary Bees

There are around 240 different species of solitary bee in the UK. They vary in size but are all smaller than a bumblebee. Unlike the honey bee and bumblebee, solitary bees do not live in hives with a queen. Each female bee builds her own nest. They are social insects and tend to nest close to one another.

Nesting: In the spring female solitary bees will find somewhere to build a nest. She'll choose a tube shaped cavity or hole in the ground and lay her eggs inside. She'll leave pollen inside the nest for her young to eat when they hatch. She'll then seal the end of nest to protect her eggs.

When the larvae hatch from the egg they will eat the pollen left behind for them. After about 6 weeks they will create a cocoon around themselves as they change from a larvae into bee. They will emerge from their cocoon the next spring.

Types of Solitary bees: Common solitary bees include the mason bees, leaf-cutter bees, mining bees and wool-carder bee.

Fabulous Facts: Solitary bees are not aggressive, they don't swarm and rarely sting.

Bees Need Your Help!

The bees are disappearing!There are many reasons that bee numbers are falling.

Pesticides: Pesticides are chemicals which farmers spray on their crops to kill insects which might eat or destroy the crop. They affect the bees nervous system making them feel disorientated and unable to feed until eventually they die.

Varroa Mite: The varroa mite is a huge problem for honey bees. This tiny mite attaches itself to the bee and sucks its blood. When a bee returns to it's hive the varroa mite spreads through the hive and can wipe out a whole colony in just a couple of years!

Habitat Loss: The loss of wild spaces in the countryside means that bees have less places to find food and to build their nests.

Colony Collapse Disorder: Billions of honey bees across the world are leaving their hives and not returning. This is known as 'colony collapse disorder'. In some areas up to 90% of bees have disappeared! In some areas of China farmers have to pollinate the plants themselves using a paint brush!

How you can help

There are lots of ways you can help the bees.

Let your grass grow long so that wildflowers can grow. These will provide pollen and nectar for the bees.

Don't use pesticides on your plants at home to make your garden bee safe.

Buy organic food - farms that don't use pesticides on their crops are bee friendly!

Build a bee hotel to give solitary bees somewhere to nest.

Plant wildflowers and flowers which are easy for bees to feed from.

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Bees are a very important part of our ecosystem all around the world. They pollinate plants in gardens, parks and three-quarters of the UK's food crops. All bees have a long straw like tongue, two wings, two antennae and three segmented body parts (the head, the thorax and the abdomen).