by HY
Everyday morning when I wake up and open my eyes, the first thing I need to do is open the windows so that I can breathe the fresh air, look outside green trees, see different flowers and hear bird songs. Everything is perfect. However, I have had allergies for five years now. Although I have tried plenty of medicine, it has not worked for me. I wonder why? Is the environment at risk? Do changes in the environment affect the human body as well? I wonder who causes the environmental problems, or it is only a natural cycle of things.
I was borned as a farmer. First of all, I remember my parents raised me the way they grow their rice, vegetables, chickens, cows, and pigs. I used to walk about 5 miles to go to school then come back home to help feed the animals so that in the new year we would have meat to eat. In addition, back then, I didn't even know what bottled water was. I drank the water from mountain springs, and creeks. The water was clean; It was natural, nobody complained or got sick. Furthermore, I also remember my older sister and I always fighting for one dress or clothes. We only got new dresses, shoes, and clothes for the new year, so we didn’t have too many things but we were happy. Right now ,we still laugh when we talk about this, and we also think about how much the environment has been affected due to the production of things compared to when I was a child.
On the other hands, righ now vegetables, chickens, and everything that we consume grows too fast because of the use of hormones and fertilizers. Yesterday I went shopping, and I saw a man who rode a bike and carried vegetables, and I thought that this is a great idea to try to protect the environment. However, most people like to drive cars to go shopping despite the short distance. Even though they know cars produce a lot of exhaust fumes (greenhouse gasses) that can pollute and damage our air, they continue to use them without thinking about the damage. Many people like to ride bikes in the park for hours and hours but they don't want to ride a bike for a few minutes to the supermarket for a shopping trip. “One stone, two birds;” but nobody wants to do it. In addition, people like to buy new things, but that means a lot of things need to be produced and more damage is done to the environment because we use resources from the earth to produce. We live in a world of overproduction and overconsumption (buy things that we don’t need) and this is affecting our environment.
Clearly, we need to adopt better habits to save our environment, like eating more vegetables; reusing and repurpose the products you already own; and try to buy only the clothes you need; and walk or ride bikes more instead of driving cars. So the next time you think about shopping, think about whether you need the items, and about alternatives to travel in order to live in a cleaner and safe environment.
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