3 UNEXPECTED FUN FACTS ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY

WITH TIPS ABOUT HOW TO BE SUSTAINABLE TOWARDS EACH

With the environment around us is visually worse and worse, I’ve been paying more attention to the sustainable issues. I randomly came across these interesting knowledge on the internet, which makes me realise that sustainability can be a fun thing but not a boring task. It is with a big sense of achievement when discovering a new idea and another interesting way of being sustainable. I recently found 3 fun facts about sustainability that I’d like to share to all of you, and hope it can be your start of exploring! Besides, each fact is followed by some tips from my own experiences that I’d do in my daily life.

1. Electricity- The ‘resurrection’ of dry batteries

Batteries have always been a serious problem when talking about sustainable and waste. When the batteries’ chemical contents leak into the ground, it can lead to both soil and water pollution.

Do you always throw the dry batteries right away when you find it does not work? There was a day I met with this situations, then I thought about trying the method I once saw online and it actually worked! Dry batteries can come back to life with a very little effort. You can simply rub them with your hands or in your clothes to allow the heat to warm it, then the batteries can ‘revive’ for another half month to a month. Sometimes they are just not flowing smoothly but there is still much energy left inside, and the warmth we produce can help make it reacts

Little Tips to save electricity:

• Extend the batteries’ lives with the above method

Small changes make big difference. Try to make little saving in our daily life, for example, instead of putting TV in standby mode, completely shut it off, turning off the lights and chargers every time it is unnecessary and so on.

• Indoor energy saving

Do not set air conditioner at a too high or too low temperature. A middle temperature of 25-27 is most energy saving, and the healthiest for human beings.

 

2. Water-How much water do you need for taking a shower

Water has been and will always be one of the most important resources for human beings. However, the excessive wasting and serious water pollution have made it in short. There are still many areas in the world that are lack of drinking water. Do you know how much water do we ‘consume’ in a shower?

I was so shocked when I know that the amount of water used is unexpectedly high. Let’s say if you take a quick shower for 10 minutes, then you have been used 40 litres of water. To make it visualised, this is 80 bottles of mineral water. Girls like me who have long hair might take double amount of water in a shower, which is enough for a person to drink for a month! Our daily movement is actually making a big change to the environment, more than we notice. Every drop we save can be other’s precious gift!

Little tips to save water:

• Take a shorter shower and turn off the taps when using shampoo, shower gel and toothpastes

The amount of water we waste during the time of squeezing toothpaste is enough to let a person to drink nearly for a day.

• Reuse the water, do not make it one-off

For instance, we can use the water that have washed the fruits and vegetables to water the flowers.

• Do not always turn on the tap to the biggest water flow

At most of the time, we don’t need such high water flow, but simply opening it is a big waste.

 

3. Forest- The value of a TREE

Many people only know that tree can be made into paper, but that’s it? Surprisingly, tree contribute more before it is shut down into paper! It can store the pollutants created by a car driving for 16 km. The ammonia gas produced by an acre of forest is enough to for 55 people to breathe for a year, can absorb 20-60 tons of various dust and 67kg carbon dioxide. This finding means that by wasting the papery products, we are not only wasting the resources of trees, but also sacrificing all these values given by the trees. One day, the earth will might be no enough oxygen and full of dust and pollutants. Dust storms will happen more and more. This is what wasting papery products might cost.

Little tips to protect the trees and forests:

• Take your own bottle rather than using one-off both plastic and papery bottles.

Plastics are hard to be recycled and easy to get pollution, while papery wastes are also what we should reduce

• Take public transports and bikes!

Car gas and pollutants bring huge pollution to the air, and they give huge pressure to the forests if we want to purify them. It can be worthier to be proud of taking public transportation and bikes rather than driving a fancy car!

• Save all the papers you can see in your life

The amount of papers we use in a day is out of our imagination, napkins, toilet papers, kitchen papers, notebooks, scratch papers and so on. Some papers are still very clean that can be used twice. Besides, sometimes we can use the rags instead of papers. We can save daily-use papers in many circumstances and many ways, just keep an eye on it!

 

Have these three little fun facts surprised you as well?

These three aspects are about some basic sustainable knowledge in our daily life. They all seem easy and normal, but if we can make small actions (like those in the tips!) we can totally make a big difference. Stop considering sustainability a far away thing, why not start by now? There are still many interesting things about sustainability, let’s explore together!