Help The Environment

by Alissa

Picture this, a once beautiful planet coated in the colors green and blue. Vast amounts of plants and animals flourishing in all types of environmental habitats. Sounds amazing doesn’t it? Well, our Earth did once look like this, but with all of the pollution that we humans have created, it has changed dramatically. You may not notice it automatically but take a look around, trash can be seen everywhere, some water systems such as lakes and ponds are turning green, a thick heavy smog fills the atmosphere… If you take your time to really just pay attention to everything you see daily you would begin to notice that our planet is slowly dying off, and mankind is the only one to blame. You see, as an environmentalist, I try to do the best I can to be as eco-friendly as possible. If we do not change our habits we are going to run our Earth straight into the ground and we are not going to be able to salvage it.

Now you are probably wondering why there is a random article about the environment on a website meant to target percussionists, right? Well, because this is exactly what Beetle Percussion’s mission is, they are trying to change the Earth one practice pad at a time. North American pine forests in the western section of the country have been affected by beetles drastically over the past decade. These beetles are causing millions of trees to be killed due to a fungus they carry into the trees bark when they go to lay their eggs. Under normal conditions, this wouldn’t be an issue as most of the eggs would be killed due to the harsh temperatures of winter. Although, due to our extensive release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, we have slowly began to warm the earth, allowing winter to have a warmer than average temperature. The shortage of colder temperatures allows the beetles’ larvae to survive the winter, along with the fungus they carry, this fungus eventually kills the host. Beetle Percussion takes these trees and handcrafts them into uniquely designed practice pads and more.  These products help reduce the threat of wildfires on the environment, and help dispose of these infected trees. This is just one way that Beetle Percussion is ecologically friendly.  Not only does Beetle Percussion use the remnants of trees affected by beetles, they use rubber from tires reducing the harmful environmental effects it has on the surrounding areas. They reuse tire material keeping them out of landfills and ocean systems to cut down on pollution and create a better opportunity to be eco-friendly.

Honestly this organization is making an extreme impact on the percussion world, not only giving us the opportunity to help save the world that we live in and be sustainable, but by also producing great products and providing a large variety of different designs and models. I would definitely recommend checking them out if your haven’t already.