Why is Green Living Important?

Ten years ago, my life is just living in only three major places: school, home and church and with few things that I carry almost everyday: notebooks, books, bible and pens. I don’t eat too much junkfoods. I was not yet introduced to computer and mobile phone. There are no internet cafes but only rice fields with fruit trees where we usually spend our weekend with my churchmates. The weather was not yet too hot that time. We can walk under the sun even for several hours just to get to my friend’s farm and eat Mangosteen.

Now, the simple life has turned into a complicated, high tech and advanced lifestyle. I spend my weekends to the mall, internet cafes, coffee shop, cinema and eat in a fastfood chain. I don’t go out of the house without a cellphone. I place my packlunch in a plastic bag. I love junk foods. I usually eat canned foods or noodles because they are instant. I don’t go to farms anymore. I love shopping. Is this your lifestyle? Always on the go? Fast moving? Time has turned into a fast-paced environment where boundaries are broken because of high technologies. Malls and fastfood chains are rapidly growing. There is almost no time to stay at home and spend time with the family.

Can this lifestyle affects our environment?

Have you noticed that the weather is getting hotter? Or sometimes it’s uncertain. We don’t know when it rains. We can’t stay longer under the sun even with umbrellas, pity to those fieldworkers who don’t have other choice but to work under the sun. It is global warming, I say. Yes, we always say, “Well, its global warming, you know?” But have we realized that each of us has contributed and will always contribute in this so called Global Warming, unless we practice green living? If you are only conscious with your daily activities particularly on how much wastes you generate everyday, then you can precisely know how much you contribute to the climate change.

Because of the changing lifestyle, from simple to advanced and more complicated one, waste generation increased. If you are living in this present lifestyle, you are estimately generating 1.5 kilogram of waste per day. When we multiply this per capita waste generation to thousands of people living in the cities, then imagine how much wastes we accumulate in a day. Most of these wastes can be found in fast food chains where we usually eat or take out food, in schools where students bring lunch in "styropack" or plastic cellophanes, in cafeterias, internet cafes, cinemas where junkfoods are always eaten, or even in your home where you usually eat canned foods, noodles, or even prepared food from the market packed in a layered plastic bags, and during meetings and conventions where food is served with “throw-away” materials like straws, disposable cups and utensils and styro packs. All these wastes will just end to the waste bins. From the waste bins, where can they go? They can be at the dumpsite, along the streets and canals, or worse, they are burned. Isn’t this contributed to climate change, floods, water and air pollution?

If we are getting sick of the intolerable hot weather now and of the floods brought by just a short heavy rain, how much more in the future if we do not stop what we are doing since we changed your lifestyle? How about our sons and daughters and their next generation? Can we compromise their future with our unmanaged wastes?

If you are moving too fast, stop for a minute and take it slow… Observe your surroundings and learn where you can start living in an environment-friendly lifestyle.