Books vs. Environmentalism

I went the other day for a coffee with a fellow student to borders. Borders as many might know is a wonderful place, a paradise for bookworms, a fairyland! When I walked inside that stores I already heard rumors of being able to sit there and read the books without buying them! As my dear friend Wigitco can confirmed, I was acting as a little girl who was given lots of candy. We were there for around 3 hours and I did not even realize how the time passed, I was so focused. And the prices, what prices! Cheap! For me ten dollars for a book is like giving it for free. Prices for books in my country are higher than this!

Today I thought since is the last post I will probably be doing for this class ( I don't know if I will continue) to talk about things that I do that are not that helpful to the environment. I love books. Whatever kind of books. When the school was over my fellow students either ripped or burned their books in a sign of relief. I never did that. Even if I hated the teacher or the class I never could do that.

As it is known, books are made out of paper, Paper is made out of trees. What I'm doing is encourage cutting trees for book making purposes. But what can a man do when they are so wonderful? books are not just materials they are most of the times art. But an art harmful to the environment. I would encourage students to read their classes from the computer in a word form rather than buy it from the bookstore but also I would discourage people to read general interest books from the computer. Its a completely difference sence. You feel like what you are reading from the book, your fantasy is materialized. You can read it wherever you are in the bus, in the car, in the park, everywhere. But again here comes the question. Would you rather want to help save the world by not buying books of any kind or would you rather harm even a little the environment by buying the 6th edition of Edgar Alan Poes bibliography in paper?

For me there is no answer to that. I will buy books for as long as i can. But i will still try to help the environment with any other way I'm able to.

No man is perfect. You can only do whats in your limits and does not come in conflict with your interests and life. Books for me might be a big part of life, but there are other way that do not affect someones life at all, such as recycling your garbage. These ways only take some time, thats all. So do not be bored and feel tired, go help the environment!

How something old can become useful Part 2

At the beginning of the semester I was researching for this class and was trying to find some interesting posts and sites to add to my resources.

I found an interesting post about "recycling" your furniture. He (The writer was a man) was saying that instead of an owner to throw his furniture and replace them with new ones, he could do the same thing as I mentioned on the previous post: recycle them. If a sofa is years old and the only damage is a hole, that can be easily fixed. Not really fixed, but someone can save a lot of money. Go to a shop where they sell big cloths with beautiful designs. There are some kind of carpets for sofas and other furniture and you can decorate your old furniture with it. the hole underneath will not be at all obvious, and you even make it look better. Another example could be wooden furniture and their paint is gone and they look nasty. Well, that is the easiest part, you bring them to a carpenter and he can make some beautiful designs and if someone does not have money for that just go to a shop, buy a nice color of paint and paint the furniture. It will look like new (supposedly)!

For the people who simply want to take a new living room or a new kitchen they could action their furniture away if they are still in a good position and make some money out of them.

By not really getting rid of your furniture, you can actually help the environment get itself rid of unnecessary garbage. Its not the latest fashion Trent but you will not spend a fortune buying new ones.

How something old can become useful

Have you ever thought that you clothes are ugly and you wanna get rid of them? the only remaining problem is that you don't have enough money to go in the shopping malls and buy other clothes for your self. Here is a cheap and nice solution.

Children have the tendency to want to make their barbies clothes out of simple cloths and imagining them as wonderful evening dresses. To be honest, this idea will not make this come true but at least will give some people the opportunity to have fun, enjoy themselves and even make something out of it.

Find a person who has a good talent in drawing. Ask them to draw you whatever you may like as a design. When you will have the design ready, in the market there is a kind of paper where you just press on it and the sketch on the paper get to be printed on the other side. This way you can bring a nice wonderful design on your shirt without having any trouble at all (except from the person who actually drew it)! Then you get some special paint that you can find in the market for reasonable prices and draw on your shirt. Well, its not the most fashionable thing but you get to keep the shirt and make something out of it that you like.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos to show of some examples. My best friend and I used to make those and I loved them especially one where my friend made her favorite bands sign. You could not see that it was painted at all!

And so you get: 1) to get a new cool shirt, 2) to help the environment by not throwing clothes 3) and in a long term period save money too ( the paints can keep for a long time)!

Rag collector

I had a talk today with one of my fellow students about how people tend to throw garbage on the streets.

Back in my city I always was judging the people about how they do not care where their garbage will end up. Someone could see gum which dated back in 1988 on the pavements. Little papers, bottles and so on were lying around in the corners waiting for the garbage men to pick them up. Many people are not taught how to keep a small garbage of a used paper in their pocket until they see a bin nearby. I personally when I don't see near me a garbage bin, I keep the small papers or receipts in my bag. When I go home I get rid of all the garbage in my bag.

When I went the other day for Thanksgiving to New York, it was a big shock. People littering, garbage everywhere on the streets and the poor garbage people waiting in the corners for someone to throw trash on the floor. I actually heard a conversation between two garbage people saying that new yorkers are most of them dirty, that they manage to clean one pavement and in 10 minutes its full of trash again. I do not envy them. Someone will say its a big city and a lot of people come and go, but that does not explain the fact how it is possible that its so dirty when in fact there are so many garbage bins on the streets. That does not only happen in New York, do not misunderstand me. That happens in many big cities.

Since my mother is from Switzerland I had the opportunity to go there many times and every time I'm amazed. These people are crazy about keeping their cities clean! You will not see not even in the big cities garbage on the streets. Okay, one or two its natural but not in such a big extent like New York or Athens or whatever other big city.

This is how you get to compare countries and level of awareness. For some Americans it might be natural to just throw garbage on the street but in some extent it is explained by the fact that there is no one to show to the people that this is the wrong way.

Maybe one day the whole planet will be able to understand even the smallest consequences of our actions on our planet. It might not be obvious but if we continue this way of living the future will not be as bright as science fiction might show it.

Smoking Hurts!

Every now and then you will see and advertisement about cigarettes and how they cause cancer and kill the people around the smoker, and the smoker him/herself. Well there is another way to make smokers cut smoking.

Here is the deal: smoking is not really proven to cause cancer or any other disease. It only makes your body weaker to them and a smoker has more chances of becoming sick than a normal person. So a smoker sometimes can have the perfect life without any illnesses and so on.

There is though another effect of smoking but not on people. The environment is also affected by smoking. Ok, not as much as factory fumes but its also bad.

smoke: The smoke produces by the cigarette helps the air pollution grow. One cigarette you might think is not that much, but what about the ten cigarettes a person might smoke a day? what about the the 100 cigarettes a person smokes a month?

cigarette butts: bad, bad, bad. Especially when they are smoked by an irresponsible smoker. Back in my country especially you can see so many cigarette butts on the street that makes me so angry. Especially when the garbage bin is close. In this case a smoker litters. Additionally the same happens with the ashes.

Last but not least, there are many responsible smokers, who do not smoke near people who are non smokers and watch where they throw their cigars. They only do it because they are addicted to it. I'm only talking about a specific group of smokers that do not care about the environment.


-I do not indicate anything bad for those who read the blog and smoke. I do not have any intention to make fun or embarrass anyone. This is my own personal opinion. The fact that I despise smoking so much does not mean that I also hate the people with that habit. Some of my best friends smoke.-

Environmental fast food Restaurants

Yesterday me and two of my friends went for a walk and ended up going for dinner in Burger King which is in the neighborhood of the school. I went in the bathroom to clean my hands and i noticed an interesting sign.

Instead of paper they had those air making machines where you can dry your hands. On it there was a small sticker saying that when using those machines, you save thousands of trees from being cut down for the production of paper.I never thought of this but whoever sticked this little note was right. electricity is easy to find and produce. Trees though take many years to become fully grown up and be cut down. That is also the reason why forests cannot cope with the fast need of paper.

I don't think that the owner of the shop put this machine to be more environmentally friendly though, but whatever the reason the result is better than using paper to dry our hands.

Mmmmm Donuts! Part 2

Something i would like to add to the post yesterday about the donuts.

In our society we do not feel the necessity of food since we can find it in the neighboring grocery store. There are countries however were people starve to death because their salary is not enough even to buy a piece of bread. I'm not talking about Africa or China for which the television shows daily scenes of hunger, starvation and death. I'm talking about the beggar on the street of America and in other "developed" countries of the world. In the land of opportunity and in cities where you would expect to see people with suits and stuffed mouths, there are people who do not have a job and are supported by some homeless station. They would really appreciate those donuts.

Its just the simple question since I don't want to eat them now why not take it back home for later? No food should be wasted. Earth's resources are not limitless and we should not take things for granted, such as food.

Just a little story of me: In my country mothers usually stuff their children and guests with lots of food even when its too much for just one person. When I'm at my boyfriends house that's usually the case. The size of my stomach is not that big and I usually end up not being able to finish my plate. My boyfriend then starts to tease me saying "there are people in the world who would beg to have that full plate of food or those leftover!" well, I end up forcing my self to eat it because I feel guilty. And my boyfriend ends up taking my plate by force because he is afraid that i will throw up if I force my self to eat.

That would be a bigger waste of food so I just let him take it.

Mmmmm Donuts!

On Wednesday as i walked in the classroom for my English class i went to my regular seat next to a fellow student. In front of us there was a box and i asked what it was. "take one" she said. "are they yours" i asked her and she said no they were just lying there, that probably someone left it there. In the box there were three whole donuts, big ones.

I thought that as a very big waste of food. The person should be ashamed of him/herself. Why? simple reasons. The most obvious is that the person who owed this box just left it there. the proper thing would be to take it with him/her or simply throw it in the garbage bin. The bin was right next to the table! I get really irritated when i see people do that. they hold on a paper, they want to throw it away and because they are too bored to cross the street for example and throw it in the bin they just throw it on the ground. There was a very successful advertisement back in my country. In the Ad there was a man that threw on the ground his garbage and at the end he found in front of him a big pile o garbage. the message was "don't throw your garbage anywhere. you will meet them in front of you again"meaning that one way or another your actions will have consequences on you.

So next time when you are about to leave a garbage behind or throw it on the street think. is it plastic or is it paper? paper can melt after a short time of rain and sun. plastic needs hundreds of years. is it food or a cigar? food will go back to nature. A cigar can burn nature. Were is the nearest garbage bin? If not in the area keep it for later. It will not take extra space in your pocket or your bag and it does not cost you. It costs to the environment.

Tribute to a special person

This time I will not post something related to the environment but rather something that has to do with what I am today.

Since the day my family and I moved to our own house many years ago my mother tried to make a lot of things which would contribute to our pockets and the environment. I remember that we sampled all the food in one place in the garden and leave them to decompose. As i mentioned in one of the very first posts i made in this blog is that the decomposed food is the best fertilizer for the garden. That was the best thing for our house since we have a huge garden surrounding it. My father also built a chicken house and we had the waste of the chicken as a fertile soil too. For around 4-5 years we did not need to buy any vegetables and we saved a lot of money by that. We also had the best, tasty and most healthy vegetables that we could find because of that system. After that, my mother still continued recycling the garbages, saving water from the rain and used it for watering the garden etc. Even when the house was still on paper, she thought about the future and built a natural recycling water system in the house and now we can use all the water that was consumed all over again, saving huge water bills. Additionaly, since the house is on a hillside, my parents used the gravity to collect more water in the tank when it was raining (too much detail to go in).

These are only some examples of the kind of life im used to live in and the reason why i continued thinking as an environmentalist away from home. My mother raised us in such a way that it became a standard thing to be benefitial to the environment. I owe a lot to her and not just for making me a better person.

Mom, thank you.

Picture of the week

This time i posted a picture related to our climate right now. At the area where i am it should be snowing at this time of the year but it is not. This is a clear sign of how much we affect the climate and the environment.
Anyway I really liked this picture and i hope everyone will enjoy it as much as i do.

Picture belongs to Ivan-Suta