Small Things, Big Impacts

What does come up in your mind if someone ask you to count how much water and electricity you consume in a day, or how many polybag you use? Just wasting your time?

Yup, it's just the same with me when Ms Stien Matakupan, the lecturer of Environmental Studies asked the class to do an environmental audit. But later on, I realized that those small things we often ignore really give impact to our life, now and later, even until hereafter.

Let's look the closest place for us, our room.How many electronic tools do you have? How long you switch on each of them in a day? It sounds worthless, but if you count the power you use (Watt x minutes used, and then multiply it with the amount of CO2 released, you will realized that you have just contributed kilos of carbon into the atmosphere. You can take this quiz to measure how much "poison" you release and how your lifestyle impact to our earth.

Still in your house, take a look how many plastic bag there are.I bet, you will find a lot in your room and your kitchen. The more we buy anything, the more plastic bag we have.

Did you know, if we throw it into the land now, the grandsons of our grandsons can still find the pieces of it in the layer of land? The plastic bag--the soft one--will be fully degraded after 500 years, and many more years for the hard one. I really appreciate the effort of some department store, which create the eco-friendly polybag that can be degraded only in 2 years.



Nevertheless, since there are sooooo many people buy goods there, there will be sooo many plastic bags thrown into the earth. These plastics will decrease the fertility of the soil, or if it is thrown into a river, it will make the stream stagnant and finally it will destruct the ecosystem of the river

So, is still there any way to save our earth? Of course, there are always solutions.One simple thing we can do is saving the use of electricity, as shown in below video.




Besides, there is a simple thing we can do. Buy a paper or canvas bag and bring it whenever we go shopping. When the cashier/merchant starts to put in your belongings into a plastic bag, refuse him/her assertively while giving your own bag, "I'm sorry, I have had my own bag."