Ten a long time ago, my entire life is just residing in only three major places: school, home and church with few items that I carry almost everyday: notebooks, books, bible and pens. I don’t eat an excessive amount of junkfoods. I hasn’t been yet shown computer and cellular phone. There are no internet cafes but only rice fields with fruit trees where we usually spend our weekend with my churchmates. The weather wasn’t yet too hot the period. We can walk in the sunshine even for hrs just to reach my friend’s farm and eat Mangosteen.
Now, the easy life has changed into a complicated, modern day and advanced lifestyle. I spend my weekends to your mall, internet cafes, cafe, cinema and eat in the fast food chain. I don’t walk out the house without having a cellphone. I place my packed lunch inside a plastic bag. I love fast foods. I usually eat canned foods or noodles because they’re instant. I don’t head to farms anymore. I love shopping.
Is this yourself? Always on the run? Fast moving? Time has developed into a fast-paced environment where boundaries are broken as a consequence of high technologies. Malls and fastfood chains are expanding as well. There is very little time to stay home and spend more time with the family.
Is this lifestyle affects our surroundings?
Have you realized that the weather gets hotter? Or sometimes it’s uncertain. We don’t know in the event it rains. We can’t stay longer in the sunshine even with umbrellas, pity to people fieldworkers who don’t charge other choice but to work on the planet. It is wipeout of the earths, I say.
Yes, we always say, “Well, its our planets atmosphere, you realize?” But have we pointed out that each of us has contributed and definately will always contribute on this so called Global Warming, unless we practice people?
If that you are only conscious along with your daily activities particularly about how much wastes you generate everyday, then you can definitely eventually discover how much you contribute towards the climate change.
Because from the changing lifestyle, from straightforward to advanced plus much more complicated one, waste generation increased. If you are coping with this present lifestyle, that you are on estimate generating 1.5 kilogram of waste on a daily basis. When we multiply this per capita waste generation to thousands of people residing in the cities, then imagine the amount of wastes we accumulate in the day. Most of these wastes can be found in fastfood chains where we usually eat or sign up for food, in schools where students bring lunch in “styro pack” or plastic cellophanes, in cafeterias, internet cafes, cinemas where junkfoods will always be eaten, or perhaps your home in places you usually eat canned foods, noodles, as well as prepared food through the market packed in a very layered plastic bags, and during meetings and conventions where meals is served with “throw-away” materials like straws, disposable cups and utensils and styro packs. All these wastes will just end towards the waste bins. From the waste bins, where would they go? They can be with the dumpsite, across the streets and canals, or worse, they may be burned. Isn’t this contributed to global warming, floods, water and the actual environment?
If we’re getting sick in the intolerable warm weather now and in the floods due to just a short heavy rain, the amount more down the road if we tend not to stop what we’re also doing since we changed our lifestyle? How about our sons and daughters and next generation? Can we compromise their future with this unmanaged wastes?
If you might be moving too fast, stop to get a minute and take it slow… Observe your environment and learn that you can start surviving in an environment-friendly lifestyle.
Here are be simple tips you can start practicing. Make this a habit. Later, this will likely turn into lifestyle.
1. AVOID AND REDUCE WASTE
a. Avoid instant and junk foods. They are usually set with Styrofoam and plastic which aren’t recyclable and so are “throw-away” materials. Aside from that, they’re not healthy.
b. When going shopping, use “green bag” as opposed to plastic bags. It is a reusable bag using a biodegradable material. Some malls present you with shopping points usually when you use the bag.
c. When buying on the public market, you may also use the green bag or basket. If not, use lesser plastic bags as is possible. You can place a variety of vegetables in the plastic, fish inside the other and meat in another plastic, so as not to have plastic for every item you acquire. That will provide you with less waste when in your own home.
d. Minimize buying products in sachet. They produce more wastes than buying in bottle, which may be reused or recycled.
e. If you don’t want the plastic pack, don’t end up being it.
f. If you can drink without worrying about straw, don’t require it.
2. SEGREGATE WASTES AT HOME
a. Prepare a minimum of three waste receptacles to the biodegradable, recyclable and residual wastes.
b. Label the receptacles as important for you to familiarize the kind of waste to use that certain receptacle.
c. Throw your garbage properly towards the receptacle where it has to be thrown.
d. Segregate refined food wrappers, empty sachets and tetra packs. They can be changed to recycled products.
3. REUSE
a. Reuse materials like empty bottles, plastic or glass, because of same purpose or some other.
b. Reuse plastic bag as container or receptacle before throwing it for the waste bin.
c. Wash the plastic cellophanes, especially those on the market, let it dry and make for future use.
4. RECYCLE
a. Learn how to recycle wastes such as unhealthy food wrappers, empty sachets and tetra packs.
b. If you usually do not have the perfect time to recycle, donate those wastes to students or relatives who’ve school project in recycling.
c. Sell recyclable materials to some nearby junk shop or ambulant junk buyer for extra income.
5. COMPOST BIODEGRADABLE WASTES
a. Have your personal backyard composting that may be made of low-cost materials like bamboo, old GI sheets, cyclone wires or wooden slabs.
b. Learn how to do composting.