Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Blog Action Day

Today is Blog Action Day. Bear with me on this post as I really didn't have time to compose a decent article, so I just compiled a few ideas of what can help our environment. Hopefully, you'll adopt one of these ideas so that we all, in our own little way, can help th environment.

Plastic Bags - In Billa (grocery), you have to pay for the plastic bag to put your groceries in, Each bag is 8 crowns. To me, this is a good step to take to reduce plastic waste. People should bring eco-bags, or reusable bags when shopping or doing groceries. I have mine, courtesy of Maitz (when she went to Australia). Although there are some in Manila, I think they are totally overpriced (hello, 1200 pesos for a piece of katsa?) I'm sure there are less expensive options. The bottom line is, bring your own bags to avoid or at the very least minimize the use of plastic bags.

Recycling - At our office, there's a separate trash can for recyclable bottles. I think we should start segregating our trash too. It's not very difficult...but unfortunately, I'm not sure if there are recycling programs back home. :(

Paperless Offices - In Sun Life, we had these online forms to file for leaves, overtime claims, timekeeping etc. etc... Not only does it reduce paper waste, it also reduces time in hunting down signatories as forms are automatically routed through e-mail. I hope our company implements something like this. No need to print forms in duplicate or triplicate, just send copies to the departments/people concerned for their approval.

Fines for Smoke Belchers - Let's face it, we may have emissions testing, but everybody knows how easy it is to skate around it. There are still a lot of vehicles who blast out black smoke on the road. Their drivers should be apprehended and fined, and it should be a steeper fine compared to the cost of a tune-up.

Stop incinerating waste - A couple of weeks ago, my dad and I were driving along dela Rosa and we saw thick black smoke rising up from Makati Med. We can only assume they were incinerating garbage or some other type of waste. Not only do they cause pollution, what if they burn something that contaminates the air? These types of incinerations should be confined in special facilities (or if they can think of a way to dispose of waste without polluting the world, then better).

That's all I can think of right now... all of these things at the top of my head. I'm sure there are a hundred other simple things we can do to save our environment. It shouldn't take too much effort if we all work together for that goal.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We use to segregate office waste before when we were at RCBC, because makati does have a strict segregation policy. now that we are here in Fort, we do still segregate our trash but the problem is that our building couldn't careless if we segregate or not... so what a waste. :(