Is Green Living easy?

Green Living should be started from reality

Staying at home because of the Covid-19 pandemic for continuous months, eating, studying, followed by sleeping, without considerable tasks to do makes me horribly cramped. In my spare time, I craved a little bit of Dalat atmosphere. Other people are interested in traveling here and there; however, for me, nothing is so good as “The city of flowers”. There is nothing better than being involved in cool weather and blending with flowers and plants to be a truly green living person.

When being reminded of green living, people often imagine something “subliminal”. However, it is not that complicated! It is simply a lifestyle that we only need to change our habits to reduce natural resource use and avoid bad impacts on the environment. When everything we have been doing affects the environment directly, green living is the most effective permanent solution. What would happen if our road to school tomorrow were cleaner? Would it be better if we can self-equip ourselves with personal boxes for soup?

I did not think that an accidental action would cause such effects.

Saigon – well-known for its luxurious and magnificent blocks and hustle and bustle streets. Contrasting to this development are dark rivers with tons of rubbish. I wonder how miserable citizens are when they have to live close to those rivers? Are our daily water resources actually clean? Surely, any one of us does not expect to be sick just because of the surrounding polluted environment.

I used to have a habit of receiving sunlight earlier in the morning; however, I have to get rid of it because of too much dust in the atmosphere; as well as do not incidentally play in puddles of rain on streets like when I was a child anymore. At present, the vast majority of families buy water-refining machines, and no one relies on deep groundwater due to its severe pollution.

Also in this Saigon, when everyone does not live in a family anymore, hand-made foods are rarer. Studying and working lead to buying and eating rapidly any kind of food. Fast foods have brought many poisons, gradually affecting our bodies unknowingly. When it is detected, our bodies absorb an unpredictable amount of poisons.

The question is whether the smallest and cutest things also disappear

Being a symbol of the whole city, Saigon River made citizens love it by its picturesque beauty. Currently, when being mentioned, everyone gets bored with its different characteristics - full of floating rubbish and smell. There is no idea regarding the suffering of citizens living nearby the river.

There is no longer a faint aroma of ripe rice, instead, farmers make use of chemical pesticides, the surrounding environment is poisoned, anybody approaching is worried to smell pesticides. Similarly, sea creatures have gradually disappeared, farmers trade-off their health to use agricultural poisons.

Environmental negative changes will wash our beautiful lives. If we do not take action and begin living green, more rivers and fields will be destroyed, and acid rains will take place more thickly.

Living Green or not, the decision is yours!

Looking back at the signals of the climate change listed as the suddenly increasing temperature of the Earth, annual floods in the Central region, or droughts in the Mekong River Delta last year which took families of the miserable, and a whole crop seeming to be bountiful. When Mother Nature gets angry before negative changes in the environment, who takes this responsibility? No one wants to be responsible for that at all, but everybody will receive adequate consequences, including those who are making efforts day by day to protect her.

You have just lost one second to litter, but it requires several days for clearing sewers to reduce flooding. You receive one more nylon bag conveniently, but it takes hours and days to decompose them. Responsibilities for environmental destruction are significantly huge while its protection starts from tiny actions, is it worth it?

All difficulties are possibly solved, so is Green living!

“Every time going shopping, I bring my own bag because I do not want to use any nylon bag at all” - a student at my university said. Green Living is just this simple action, even though you think it is nothing valuable; in fact, it carries a large meaning towards the environment. At the time you know how to refuse nylon bags, bring your personal bottles or limit ordering take-away foods, and so on. Any type of your action, no matter it is small, contributing to cutting released garbage, is green living!

There are beautiful skirts and blouses in your cabinet for quite a long time that no one has touched. You do not need them anymore and plan to throw them away? Why don’t you turn them into Second-Hand items?

Have you ever taken several hours of your time to transform plastic bottles into beautiful planting pots? Immersing yourself in interestingly creative spaces may be a relaxing green living you should experience. Let’s recycle as much as possible as what we think rubbish can continue existing usefully.

We are not living green alone

Sometimes, Green Living can make us lonely among friends, boring, and surrender. Don’t be like that! Don’t see yourself as an alone green living person. There are a number of people similar to you. They are still living green every single second with pride. Even for those who are not living green or embarrassed, you are a pioneer and motivator for them to take action together.

Green living does not require you to do great things, it is simply getting rid of a bad habit, and replacing it with other healthy acts. Green Living does not mean investing much. Starting with philosophies will not come to an end, let’s continue contributing and spreading the Green Living spirit from your small actions. Green Living is just that easy!

I have done it!

Following the serious impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, the whole country is facing a long-lasting pollution statement, the number of medical and domestic waste has increased considerably compared to ordinary days. If medical waste is unavoidable, why don’t we live green? Every person living green, every family living green, leading to a green, cleaned; consequently, beautiful society after the pandemic is absolutely possible.

Stopping pursuing macro-matters and realizing that all actions, regardless of their scale, probably works. Don’t let the environmental protection movements continuously start and be extinguished, from now on, let’s believe that green living is easy and begin changing because you are a hero of our planet!

Editor: Khanh Ha

Designer: Tan Phat

MC: Huu Trung

Technician: Anh Thu