by Chantelle Heroux
May 27, 2008 - The other day I saw my housemate’s girlfriend with a bottle of ‘Fiji Water’ and I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would feel it’s necessary to drink water from halfway across the world, when we get some of the best water in the world out of our faucet.
On top of that, to think that glaciers are melting, islands are having to be evacuated, and natural disasters are becoming more prevalent and larger than ever, why would anyone want to make more of an ecological footprint than necessary over something as simple as where your comes water from?
I once read an ‘Adbusters Magazine’ that had a chart of the items we import and the items we export, and I was shocked to see that many of the items we import happen to be the items we export. Because of trade negotiations, we import things that we already have, and vice versa. With the environment in the state that it’s in right now, for the sake of keeping the snow on mountains and the polar bears white, wouldn’t you think we could skip importing what we’re exporting?
I guess the choice is up to us. We need to start making changes in our lifestyle that will help the world around us. Everyone always comes up with the same argument against changing, the ‘what difference is it going to make if one person changes or not’ argument. The difference is that the one person turns into millions if we all do our part. The evidence is out there, global warming is happening quicker than even the most brilliant scientists ever thought it would. We need to act now.
I once went to a peace protest in New York City, and at a gas station I commented how it’s a shame how there were no bins to recycle my juice container. The 80 year old lady I complained to told me how she agreed, but always just carried the items that were recyclable until she found a place to recycle. From that point on, I figured if an 80 year old lady could do it, I could do it too. Small changes like that will be big changes if everyone decides to join in.
If you don’t recycle, start. If you can walk, skate, or ride your bike instead of driving, do it. If you can reuse something you already have, instead of buying a new one, reuse it. And if you need to buy something, buy local, then regional, then national, and if you absolutely have to, buy internationally. That means, don’t buy your water from Fiji if you can just drink water from the faucet. And I swear, your change helps.
A couple cool sites to check out-
Keep Winter Cool: www.keepwintercool.org
Action Sports Environment Coalition: www.asecaction.org
Clean Air- Cool Planet: www.cleanair-coolplanet.org
“Be the change you want to see in the world…” – Mahatma Gandhi
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