Keeping the Earth Clean is Everybody’s Business

When our mums told us to keep our rooms clean and tidy, we would (even if begrudgingly) spruce things up and be careful about dirtying it again. Even though we used to bring the roof down in school we would remind ourselves of what our teachers told us about keeping the classrooms and hallways clean and we would compose ourselves and clear things up. However, when it comes to keeping our homeland; Earth clean, everybody seems to be less proactive. It appears that everyone is of the view that someone else would do it or that keeping it free of litter is someone else’s job.

The ground that we live on, the air that we breathe, the oceans and rivers we bathe in are to be shared with everyone else. One person being selfish and thoughtless affects everyone’s ability to live freely and enjoy the bounties of nature. At Full of Etiquette, we advocate being aware of your surroundings and making sure your actions or inactions do not inhibit others from having what they are entitled to.

As we commemorate World Environment Day, on 05^th June 2024, let’s all find ways to break away from this notion that conserving the environment and cleaning up is someone else’s job. In fact let’s remind each other that conserving earth is everybody’s job.

I cannot emphasise enough on the importance of not littering and not disturbing the environment. In Full of Etiquette’s run up to World Environment Day, we suggested that everyone carries their own little garbage bag around to dispose of waste responsibly and that they clean up their own messes.

Here are a few other small suggestions of what you can do everyday. When all of us do all these things all the time, we would steadily move towards a point where all of us can enjoy Mother Nature better.

• Carry your own cloth bag to shop or if it is just one or two items, carry them back without another layer of packaging.
• Carry your own water in a glass or stainless-steel bottle everywhere you go and reduce purchasing plastic bottles.
• Buy a metal straw for everyone in the family and avoid using plastic straws.
• Bring back leftovers without trying to look fancy.
• Choose sustainably sourced and produced products.
• Reuse or donate, rather than send to landfill prematurely

Saving the environment is not the job of the janitors, street sweepers and garbage collectors. Pay more attention to what you can do as an individual, a family, a team, an organization and a community towards protecting the environment. Volunteering to clean, setting up beach clean ups and river clean ups are great – but that is not the proactive way to protect our home as citizens of earth.

Make it your business today to conserve the environment and treat it well.