Pollution: the threat to the environment

 

When we listen to the news, on the TV, or the radio or read the news on the internet, then we often listen that pollution is a very good issue that is making our planet unsuitable for life. We also listen that we humans are a very big reason of this pollution.

What does pollution exactly mean? Pollution means the contamination of something by some other not-required or harmful thing. For example, littering on the ground is a kind of pollution because it is harmful for the soil. Pollution means the negative effect that pollutant creates.

There are 4 main kinds of environmental pollution:

·         Air pollution: air pollution happens when pollutant gas particles pollute the air. For example, carbon monoxide (CO), chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), carbon dioxide (CO₂) are major pollutant gases. There are many ways that we humans are responsible for air pollution through these gases. When we burn fossil fuels, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are exiting that vehicle. These two gases not only harm the atmosphere but also cause a whole new problem with the planet—Global Warming.

The layer of Greenhouse gases that trap the sun’s heat and keep the earth warm is getting thicker day-by-day. This is the EGHE (Enhanced Green House Effect). This is causing the icecaps to melt and the sea levels to rise. If we continue in this manner then all the coastal area might be covered in sea water in the future.

·         Water pollution: not only air, but water is also something that we haven’t left. Water pollution is a major problem of our world because everything is associated with water.

Speaking of stats, 97% of the water on the earth is in oceans and seas. In the 3% remaining, 69% is in the icecaps and icebergs found in Antarctica, Greenland, Canada, etc. Of the 31% remaining, 30% is groundwater, which is not available to us at all times and can also be polluted. This leaves us with the 1% water for us to use. Of this 1% water, over 70% is used in agriculture, leaving us with only 30% of the readily available fresh water on the planet.

If we look from the whole earth’s perspective, only 0.006% of the water is utilizable by us. Rest is in saline, frozen, or underground form.

This 0.006% water is also not left uncontaminated. We humans do all sorts of things with this water, like drinking, washing, bathing, cleaning, etc. and other things that we use water for. But, we also pollute a lot of this water in many ways. Most factories in the world don’t treat the residues before discharging them in the water. Many harmful medicines are carelessly thrown in the water sources without any treatment by most hospitals. These pollutants are so harmful that they kill a lot of life forms in the water, like the fish and the underwater plants and can in fact be so harmful that it can also a kill or heavily disease a human being upon consumption.

Hence, this waste that we discharge in the water should be treated before throwing into the water. There are many cities, which don’t owe a water treatment plant that can treat these residues before discharging into the water. So measures should be taken and these water treatment plants should be encouraged so that the water can remain pure and fit for all forms of life.

·         Land pollution: land is the place where we do everything, from playing with your friends to just resting in the shade of a tree on a bright sunny day. Land is also a form of property for most people, as in people by land upon having money to do so. But, we humans haven’t even left this land to remain unpolluted, and have created huge areas called landfills. Landfills are those places where all the garbage that people throw away is thrown. All garbage-picking vehicles drop the garbage in these landfills and if you just Google the image of a landfill, then you will see how ugly that place looks. Plastic bags, Old computer equipment, old cardboard boxes, paper, chocolate wrappers, chips wrapper, what not; everything is there thrown away.

How is this making any difference in the environmental balance? Well, stray animals and birds looking for food always come to these places to search food in the huge pile of garbage. You will see stray dogs, cats and cows finding food in the garbage piles in the city. But if they eat a single plastic bag, it can get stuck in their throat, or their stomach. If it gets stuck in the throat of that animal, then it can choke it and kill it. And if it gets stuck in the stomach of that animal, then that plastic bag can clog the intestinal tubes of the animal, leading that animal not able to digest the food that it eats.

 This was the problem that the animals face because of land pollution. What problems do we face because of land pollution? There are a lot of flies that fly around in those landfills because flies always stay around dirty places because that is the place where they breed. These flies sit on the garbage, and their tiny legs carry millions of harmful microbes from the garbage. Other places where flies are very prominent to be around are the food carts on the streets. You will see a lot of flies just trying to reach to the food that the vendor has. If these flies reach the food, then the harmful microbes that these flies are carrying also contaminate the food and the consumer of that food is very prone to get sick because of these disease-causing microbes.

·         Noise pollution: if you look at a traffic-jam, then you will see hundreds or thousands of vehicles just spamming, “peep-peep” with their horns. That is a very unpleasant time to be a part of. Anyone can get annoyed because of that noise. Getting exposed to loud noises can cause problems like hear-loss, nausea, headache, and other mental issues. Noise control should be encouraged to avoid these problems.

There is one thing that can at least slow down, or can even stop pollution completely. They are the 3Rs of Waste management. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

Reduce means that reduce the amounts of items that only go as a waste. A very prominent example are use-and-throw pens. We buy these use-and-throw pens simply because they are cheaper than normal pens. But once their ink gets depleted, we just throw them away. Hence this act should be reduced.

Reuse means that reuse something that can be reused to avoid throwing away that thing. For example, there are many shopkeepers that have plastic bags and whenever we go to buy things from them, they pack those items in those plastic bags and give them to us. When we come back home, then we take the items and throw the plastic bags away. Those plastic bags are quite strong and durable, and you can use them for various other purposes instead of throwing them away. You can store other things in your house, like the ration in those plastic bags because they are very good for storing things. So don’t throw these plastic bags the first time you use them, instead, use it for other things.

Recycle means that turn some unusable material into a usable material. For example, if you go to a bookshop, then you will also find that there are some very big notebooks, like 4-times bigger than a regular notebook, at half the price of the regular notebooks. These notebooks are made from recycled paper. The paper that the rag-picker comes and collects from our homes, is utilized to create this recycled paper and these recycled notebooks. These kinds of notebooks however are created in factories, and we can’t create a notebook like this at our home. But we can use our creativity to turn plastic bottles, and plastic bags into pots to plant our plants in.

So this is how we can turn our planet into a better place to live and turn our planet from a garbage pile into a beautiful garden with birds and butterflies flying around.