Let's Take Better Care of Our Environment

It’s 6:30 am.  Your alarm goes off  you get out of bed and hop into the shower. You spend the next 30 minutes using a lot of hot water, which will bump up your power bill a few dollars. But hey, it’s not a big deal right? How could it possibly affect anything? After your shower you get dressed and get into your car that uses half a tank of petrol within hours, and go to work. On the way there you stop at McCafe to get a cappuccino that is in a recyclable paper cup, after drinking it you throw it in the bin and head to work. After work you do your grocery shopping at the supermarket that only uses plastic bags. When you get home you put your food away and throw away the plastic bags that you could’ve re-used. Everything you’ve done today seems pretty innocent, but truth be told, you and seven billion other people are taking part in ruining our environment, But it doesn't have to be this way.

You may wonder, ‘How will all of these environmental issues affect me?’ These environmental issues can and will affect you especially health wise. DoSomething.org said, “Pollution is one of the biggest killers affecting over 100 million people. Thats comparable to global diseases like malaria and HIV.” Pollution doesn't just affect humans health it also affects animals. Over 1 million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals are killed by pollution every year. It’s sad, but unfortunately it’s the reality we live in. China is one of the biggest polluters on the planet and that sounds right considering that China dumps 10 billion tons of co2 into the atmosphere every year. Although New Zealand is only 50th on the co2 emissions global list  we should still be aware of the fact that if we don't start to make some changes we may go higher and higher up that list. Even though these are all serious factors to why there is so much pollution in our world, its not too late to change our ways.

Waste is another problem in our in our environment, we take things for granted and throw stuff away without a second thought. This is a major problem considering all the rubbish we throw away goes into landfill and sometimes it doesn't even make it into a bin due to the fact that some people are too lazy to put their rubbish into a bin.

EnvironmentalProtection.org said, “Every year we generate around 14 million tons of food waste, which is 106 pounds, (48 kgs) of food per person. The rest, or 13.4 million tons is incinerated or landfilled.” That’s a lot of unnecessary waste. A lot of the rubbish that go into landfill will take an extremely long time to disintegrate. Even when you throw away a styrofoam cup, it will be just sitting in landfill for the next 500 years same with an aluminum can. Putting a can in a recycling bin isn't the only thing you can do to help our environment.

There are plenty of things you can do to help our environment. You can use different modes of transport to get from place to place without using a car, you can walk, bike, or even bus to reduce the amount of cars on the road. When it comes to food waste, you can use leftovers and be creative by making a new dish! You’ll get your moneys worth as well! For more information you can go to zerowaste.co.nz .

All of this information may be a lot to take in, and you might not even care about the environment, but you should. The environment is all around us and it must be taken extreme care of, so take the time to recycle a can and try biking or walking to places for a change. Not only will it benefit our environment, but it will benefit you as well.

Ella Gillon