An article from another Steemian inspired me to ask myself if I did anything to help save the world...
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Human 'Nature'
We, humans, are killing the earth. Every minute of every day we are destroying our home, the only survivable planet in the entire universe. And the worst thing about it is that we know it, but we simply carry on with a smile on our face.
We're cutting down entire forests (between 3.5 and 7 bilion trees each year), use nuclear power plants to provide us with electricity, we pollute entire oceans with plastic and other trash. We use chemicals to grow our food, we overhunt, we overfish, and we are close to killing more than half of the wildlife on earth in just 50 years.
In the so called 'first world', we're producing too much food, draining the soil from all nutrients. But hey, we want our carrots straight and our apples round.
What we are not using is sent to the other side of the world in big, polluting ships or plains. More of those polluters go back and forth to deliver the products we buy in countries thousands of miles from here, because we want to save a buck.
An average person here drives his car to the other side of the country to go to work, while someone from the other side of the country does exactly the same to get to work here. Both are throwing cigarette buds and trash out of the windows of their cars on their way.
I assume I don't need to go on?
We are, in fact, our own worst enemy. Overconsumption, overpopulation, global warming,... it's going to cost us more than we will be prepared to pay.
You Can Make A Difference
We all feel bad about all this, but that doesn't really reflect in our lives.
I admit that I still buy stuff packed in plastic, and put it in a plastic bag before I get into my old, very polluting car. I want my (little) piece of meat every day and I buy stuff on AliExpress and such.
Still, you'll never catch me littering - I'd rather fill my handbag or pockets with cigarette buds than to throw them on the ground. Three quarters of the year, I eat veggies I've grown in my own garden. A garden that is completely free of chemicals.
But if I'm honest, that's just peanuts. I could do a whole lot more to make my ecological footprint a lot smaller.
Fortunately, there are people who care enough to actually dó something. Yesterday, I've read an article written by @alexisdauliac, a young French guy who travelled all the way to Australia with his girlfriend to clear the beaches from trash and invasive weeds that are threatening the the native plants.
Some people might consider this to be pretty extreme, but I have great admiration and respect for people who are actually doing something.
You should read the article. It's in French, but with all our modern technology, a translation is only a right-click away. I read the article in English, and even translated it's a very pleasant piece to read.
Source
The Australian Dream: Volunteer for the protection of the Australian Coast
After reading it, I couldn't help myself and started to analyze what I was actually doing to help save our planet. And I came to a sad conclusion. To be honest, I feel a little disgusted: there is so much more I could do without even having to put in a lot of effort.
What About You?
I came to that horrifying conclusion, and I started wondering if other people were just like me or not. Because if so, the future is looking not that great.
So here's my question for you:
Do you have your ways to limit the pressure human kind puts on the earth? Do you take initiatives - big or small - to help save the earth?
If so, I can't wait to hear about it. If not, I'm curious to hear about your reasons.
I'll put a @steem-bounty on this post, and the answers with the best arguments will get their share of it - no matter whether you are doing something to save our enviroment or not.
And who knows... we might give each other some ideas...
@steem-bounty Rules:
- No self-voting
- No comment bot voting
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Forgive me for the name tagging, but it is never sure my posts get seen, and it would be a shame to let the @steem-bounty go to waste...
I'd like to hear everyone's story, but also that from @lynncoyle1, @janton, @davemccoy, @beeyou, @headchange, @tryskele, @cicisaja, @buckaroo, @rentmoney, @creativetruth
Join Us On Discord: https://discord.gg/rNgU9CE
Thanks for running this contest. The way I feel I contribute to the mother earth is by preserving water. Availability of potable water is an issue faced by many countries across the globe. I always try to optimally utilize water so as to minimize the wastage of it and use it wisely. Some practices I follow include- using bucket for bathing instead of shower, putting residual water from kitchen work into garden etc.
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Thank you for the mentioning/tagging @organicgardener. A small innitiative but continuity action indeed will change something. I have been supporting an innitiative calls "Hutan Wakaf" in Aceh, Indonesia all this time. Some people donate some money to buy abandoned land to change it as a conservation forest. It took 3 years before we could buy a hectare then 2 more hectares and still in negotiation to buy more. Then we invited people to plant trees on that land. Why would we do that? We still have big wide and wild rain forest in Aceh such as Leuser Mt, but we afraid that one day.. all the forest will be gone and have no woods to make a coffin for ourselves. We have been working for so long with many conservation programs with government and community based ecotourism, but we came to an only resolution at that time. Buy land and turn it into a forest where we can see endangered trees (local and spesific trees) exists.
I read so many people try to conserve the forest to be able to maintain the water resources, but not everyone supported those people at first, but after ten years they start to take advantage of that action. The R3 campaign has been running for years..oopps I need to go.. will be back later
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I don't know whether I've done something good to save the earth, I like planting trees and buy local food and use my used coffee ground to fertilize the plants in my garden. I have seen people who loves green life like biking but never threw the plastic bottle to the right recycle bin or never join the community cleaning day just because he's too busy working or going for biking on the weekend, but... I don't blame them at all. they have their own way to live in green. just like you said.. we produce organic and sell it a bit expensive than non-organic fruits and veggies, wrap it in plastic bag too then ship it out to other part of the world with vehicles that use the fossil based fuel.. what can we do? we try to grow trees to anticipate the pollution but the government regulation to enable people access to get a credit motorcycle or cars are getting easy. so I think the best way to keep our eart save is by doing the best we can and then try to influence the community around us to follow... though it hard, but I think education and affrimative action to encourage people to take care of their environment are the best opportunity to keep our earth clean and comfortable to live in.
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I think the solutions are all those things you have mentioned and many more like
. companies and factories should practicebetter waste disposal both liquid, gaseous and solid wastes.
. education and proper sensitization on the harm of all these to should be done. and so on
but let me tell you the best solution......
it's action....
if I come and talk, you come and also talk and so many people come and talk about all these and still none of us is practicalizing this, then we are all wasting our time.
let all work hand in hand and save our home earth.
no solution is better than we begin to work on those on ground trust me......
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Thanks for the tag @organicgardener :) I don't know if I have any great ideas, but personally, I choose to pick up litter wherever I go, especially the beach here in Mexico. When my kids were younger, we lived in Canada, and "adopted" our street to keep clean; I recruited all the other kids on the street to help out. When I was teaching high school, I made a big deal about the environment as well. I'm a firm believer that if each of us does a little bit, it'll make a huge difference! At least it's a start, as opposed to looking at the problem as too big and thinking, there's nothing I can do about it anyway .
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I do my best to not over-consume, but convenience wins out a lot of the time. There's so much packaging with food. We do grow some stuff and we are looking at alternative products such as soap bars instead of liquid soap. These days I take the train a few miles rather than driving for hours to work. I feel better for that anyway. It helps if people just give some thought to their actions. Lots of little things can add up to a difference.
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Hmm reading your post, you sound totally like my sis @zzuzza. Sadly she's not posting much. But our father raised us in the mindset of taking care of nature. He founded a non profit organization called For the Nature (http://www.preprirodu.sk/) cca 20 years ago and they organize summer camps in the nature where they help clean it. I've taken part in at least 30 over the course of my childhood haha :D Even found my 2 ex-girlfreinds there. I currenlty live abroad soo can't take part anymore. But I take all the plastic bottles from the office back home to recycle them. Not just mine, but of all my colleagues. Half-full backpack. Daily. It's crazy..I dunno why we don't recycle a separate trash here in the office. If you want to see a bit of the For the Nature projects, watch my vlog from several weeks (https://steemit.com/dtube/@matkodurko/sj0ydu9w).
Happy to see you've posted such mindful topic to be discussed!
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You got voted by @votefun thanks to organicgardener. To support development, check out Rishi556. Hosted on the @cryptowithincin discord.
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You got voted by @curationkiwi thanks to organicgardener! This bot is managed by Kiwibot and run by Rishi556, you can check both of them out there. To receive maximum rewards, you must be a member of KiwiBot. To receive free upvotes for yourself (even if you are not a member) you can join the KiwiBot Discord linked here and use the command !upvote (post name) in #curationkiwi.
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Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by organicgardener from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
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We are part of nature so if we damage it we are harming ourselves. It is important that we put a grain of sand, mark the difference even if it starts by not throwing garbage into the streets. Our grandchildren will be the victims of what we are doing right now.
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Hi @organicgardener!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 2.223 which ranks you at #20259 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 10 places in the last three days (old rank 20249).
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