When we talk about the “home”, what readily comes to our minds?
We’d probably describe the house we grew and live with our parents and siblings. Practically, you wouldn’t be wrong. But we all have another home, a shared home, the wonderful place called EARTH, the third planet from the sun.
As we all undoubtedly know, our planet EARTH is uniquely designed to support human and plant life and so we’ve not found another like it in the universe. Although Science fictions (books and movies) has it that whereupon the EARTH’s been destroyed (by us), we’ll magically stumble into another planet that’ll support our species (plants and animals alike) and live happily ever after, but as aforementioned, it’s FICTION and not REAL. Unfortunately, some part of this stories isn’t totally false (the slow degradation and destruction of the earth) which is all so true!...in the past 100 years, the activities of man has wreaked havoc on the resources of the planet earth and should we not take urgent correctives steps, then the fictions could maybe come true one day!
Now we may wonder what this has got on us! Excellent question and the answer is “EVERYTHING”! Man’s activity is on destruction’s driving sit and it’s up to us to salvage it. While the government and corporations have an enormous role to play, every human also have a role here by taking positives steps that will collectively make an impact. To help save the earth we have to follow the three R’s of an environmental friendly mind-set that comprises;
Reduce
If we look around us, we all have so much more than we actually need, we are placing a strain on the resources of the planet. The first step is to “Reduce! Reduce!! Reduce!!!” Reduce what? Reduce Everything! We eat excessive food portions and so gain excessive weight that would’ve been kept off if we had reduced our food portion. Why do we have 2, 3, 4 phones when we could’ve easily gotten a phone with multiple sim slots? We go to a buffet party and stuff our plates with more than we can actually consume, what happens to rest? It’s wasted! We have a closets full of clothes that we mostly don’t use, a house full of furniture we don’t use, a library full of unused books. It’s okay to be comfortable but like the saying goes “too much of everything is a disease”. Think about this! We have over 7 billion people in the world and if everyone chooses to have this little extras, imagine the strain on our resources. We all need to start asking this relevant questions like “Do I really need this?” before we acquire anything and take steps to reducing and also teach others to reduce and by so doing will take a step towards reducing and saving our planet.
Recycle
Most of the materials we don’t need can be recycled into other useable materials. Books, cans, glasses, plastics etc. can be recycled rather than thrown away. Most of this items if not recycled will not decay even in the unforeseeable future and they serve as pollutants to our wonderful home. Recycling has it benefits and these are a few;
• It conserves resources for future use
• Saves precious energy
• It can supply valuable raw materials for industries
• It can create much needed jobs and much more.
Its worthy of note that recycling one aluminium can save enough energy to power a television for 3 hours, recycling a glass container can save enough energy to power a 100 watt bulb for 4 hours and every ton of paper recycled save up to 4200 kilowatt hours of energy and save 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water. So to help save earth let every home set up collection bins for recyclables; one for plastic containers, another for glasses, aluminium cans as well as papers and be actively involved in recycling. Remember that by recycling papers, we can exactly save thousands (if not millions) of trees in a year and we can have a spiral effect of reducing CO2.
Re-use
It’s unfortunate that affluence has led to a disdain of reusing items and indeed entrenched a culture of overdependence on disposables (cups, spoons, plates, diapers etc.) and pretty soon disposable clothes. It sounds fun but it’s time we pause and ask ourselves how this items are disposed. They are just piling up and filing our environments and reducing useable lands and waters. To help save our planet, we must rethink this “Disposable Mentality” and re-embrace our cultural “reusable” mind-set. Parents of babies must realise that while disposable diapers are more convenient, reusable clothes are more environmental friendly. Within a year a baby using only diapers can use about 3,000 diapers while a person using disposable only on outings may use less than 500 in the same length of time not counting the savings in cash by using clothes nappies while at home. Parents can take a positive step towards saving the environment and thus saving the earth.
We can reduce or better still eliminate the use of disposables in our lifestyles and rather embrace reusable. We can store food in reusable containers, shopping should be done with durable reusable bags rather than buying a disposable plastic bag, bottles and containers in the market. As much as you can buy durable items and reuse them. All those will create less waste and help to manage the limited resources in our planet.
On a final note, let us all know that the earth is our home. Let’s take care of this our home to the very best of our abilities. Let’s not waste any of our resources (water, minerals, oil, gas, trees, animals etc.). Renew the renewable ones (plants more trees, breed endangered animal species etc.). If we follow the principles of the three R’s while actively conserving our natural resources we have been blessed with, then we will still have a wonderful earth to live in and to pass on to the future generations to come. Our home, this wonderful earth, will continue to support all of us (human, plants and animals alike) so we could proudly say “HOME SWEET HOME”.
