BADAN PENGELOLA HARIAN PENDIDIKAN DAN RISTEK Masjid Al-Markaz Al-Islami Jend. M.

Yusuf

AL-MARKAZ FOR KHUDI ENLIGHTENING STUDIES (MAKES)

Our EARTH is Our Only HOME
Part 2:

Save Our Big Earth, from Our Little Houses By: Z

only when the last tree has died, and the last river been poisoned, and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money" (Cree Indian Proverb)

In the previous paper, we noticed how the environmental degradation can endanger our future life. Briefly, we note that basically our uncontrollable desire affects our demands and brings us to the natural resources exploitation. When this is happened, the natural balance be disrupted and ultimately leads us to natural disasters. We also note that the government, along with NGOs and societies is responsible to the prevention of environmental sustainability. Therefore, environmental conservation movement should be taken immediately, carefully, and of course, simultaneously. Contributing to sustainable natural resources protection doesnt mean that we should become the government first, or establishing NGO related with environmental activities or some sort of that. In fact, we can contribute to the nature from our home. Our habits define our contribution. Let us take some examples from our friends who care about our lovely earth: 1. Reducing tissue papers usage. Tissue papers are one of things used by most of us nowadays. We can easily find people who use tissue papers everywhere (at homes, campuses, offices, streets, etc.), anytime (after eat, sweating, cleaning faces, etc). But, did you know that tissue papers are made from woods? There are a lot of woods used for making tissue papers. Using many tissue papers means cutting down trees. Reducing tissue papers usage can prevent deforestation. We can do that by, for instance, instead of buying tissue papers, we can bring handkerchief for ourselves, or having napery instead of napkin on dining table. 2. Reusing papers. We read books, newspapers, and of course this paper for MAKES, which are using a lot of papers as basic materials. As well as tissues, papers are also made from woods. So, as we have mentioned above, using many papers means lost a lot of woods. We can reuse waste papers, for example by using its other side after using the first one. 3. Using cosmetics providently. As we have noticed in the previous paper, one of the usefulness of palm oil is cosmetics, and palm oil plantation needs steppes to be growth. Land clearance (deforestation) is needed to have those steppes. In short, we can say that using cosmetics providently can reduce the demands of palm oil. Everybody needs cosmetic (like soap, shampoo, etc.) to be beautiful, but being beautiful without the earth means nothing, right? There are many things that we can do to help preventing environmental degradation. Beside the aforesaid solutions, other activities can be applied to protect our forests from massive deforestation. We can see that it is not important who we are, where we from, or what we do, but as far as we realized that we can do something, though it is a little thing, can become big benefit for our future generation. Some people have done their tasks, even from their little houses. So, what about us? Have we save the big Earth from our little houses?