The things we should do to save the earth. 我們應該做的救地球的事

高雄市政府工務局秘書室股長 蔡美蕙

Head of Documentation Section of Secretariat, Public Works Bureau, Kaohsiung City Government
Do you think you have the power to save the earth from globe warming?
Keep your answer in mind.
I supposed most of you have seen the film “An inconvenient truth” starred by Al Gore, the former vice president of America. Then you know in how bad condition our earth is and it is going to be worse in the near future. Some of you might start to worry about our children’s future. How can they survive in that kind of bad situation? However, worry is useless. We need to take actions to slow down the globe warming to save our earth. You may think you are a small potato. How is it possible that you have the ability to save the earth?
The answer is for sure and we can make it. How?
The following things I’m going to share with you are what I learn from Tzu Chi. Good things have to share with good friends so we can enjoy them together. Let’s go for them.
Change life style.
The first thing we can do is refuse. I’d like to know how many of you will bring your own chopsticks when you eat out?
We have to refuse using disposable chopsticks, bowls and drinking bottled water. You know how many pairs of chopsticks we used in Taiwan each day? It’s 280 million pairs. The chopsticks are made of wood. We cut down more trees to make chopsticks. Every year we recycle 4.6 billion bottles. That means we consumed at least 4.6 billion bottles. These behaviors will harm our environment.

The second thing we can do is reduce. Do you bring your own shopping bags? I usually do. We have to reduce using plastic bags and bring a shopping bag with us. This is my shopping bag. Can you believe that we use 49 million 315 thousand and 68 plastic bags each day?

The third thing we can do is recycle. Do you do garbage classification? Of course, or we may get tickets from EPB, but how to do it thoroughly. Now I’m going to invite you to join me. Use your ten fingers as the props and try to remember these English letters “B, B, C, C, P, E, 1, 3, 5, 7 ”. The first “B” stands for plastic bottles, including all the plastic products. The second “B” stands for glass bottles. C, C means cans, the first “C” stands for aluminum cans and the second “C” stands for iron cans. P stands for paper, including paper containers. E means electricity, including battery, light bulbs. One means clothes you know in Chinese we say clothes “衣” the sound is like one. Three means 3C products like house appliances, computers and telecommunications. Five means hardware which is made of metal or steel and Seven means the rest of items including bikes, cars, motorbikes and umbrellas.

With the oral tips “B, B, C, C, P, E, 1, 3, 5, 7” 「瓶瓶罐罐紙、電1(衣)3 5 7」 it makes garbage classification much easier.

In the end I’d like to use letters A, B, C to make a sentence to end the speech. That is “Action is the best commitment.

Let’s take actions to save our earth together by refusing disposable dinning utensils, bringing our own dinning utensils, reducing use of the plastic bags, bringing our own shopping bags, and doing garbage classification thoroughly. Even though we are small potatoes, we can still make efforts to saving our living environment and leave a beautiful world to our offspring.