Dr. Fawziya Al-Bakr
Years ago I was standing at the cashier at a large New York supermarket. The cashier asked me politely whether I wanted to buy plastic bags to carry the things I have bought.
The cashier’s question surprised me because at Saudi supermarkets and grocery shops we never hear such a question as we are used to get plastic bags in different colors to take away our purchases.
American women who were standing in the queue laughed hearing the cashier’s question and one of them explained to me that time has gone when we used to get plastic bags free of charge and the measure was taken for protecting the environment.
I had the same experience later in Vienna, Italy, Barcelona and Boston. Every civilized country has enacted laws for the protection of environment. These laws interrupt daily practices of humans and enhance awareness on the need to protect environment, whether they like it or not.
This situation helps develop an environment-friendly culture and attitude among people. Some countries impose fines on people who throw plastic bags in the street as they consider such acts as shameful and unpatriotic. There are municipalities which provide waste boxes in different colors for people to deposit various types of waste including plastic bags.
I would like to take this opportunity to commend the Saudi leadership for announcing the new Vision 2030, which has given top importance to the protection of environment. We cannot ignore environment especially when we witness frightening climate changes including May rains in Saudi Arabia and 46 degree-Celsius in Cairo last week. The Egyptian city has never witnessed such a high temperature during this period of time in history.
We have also seen reports of extreme drought in many parts of India that forced residents to leave their villages in search of water. In addition, there were reports of huge fires in Canada and massive flooding in Africa, all because of climate changes.
The world is burdened by the life of human beings who crazily consume its resources in large quantities. Most people are not aware of the need to recycle waste in order to balance environment, which God created for the welfare and protection of humanity.
Unfortunately many of our activities damage environment and this happens due to lack of awareness at public, official and educational levels. This highlights the enormity of the problem. It is high time we discuss ways and means to prepare the society to give priority to environmental issues.
Let us ask ourselves: Should we drive the car to the mosque or just walk in order to improve our health and save energy? Is it appropriate to waste water by using hose to clean our cars and courtyards or minimize water consumption by adopting economic methods?
All studies have shown that the next war will be to gain control of water resources. Despite the racial, religious and regional wars in the Middle East, the real issue is going to be how to preserve depleting water resources. People have been exploiting ground water resources without control and our government has been spending a lot on desalination of seawater.
We will not be able to achieve sustained development depending on American and Chinese products. We should achieve self-sufficiency by producing environment-friendly products. How can we achieve this target when the Kingdom has become the largest consumer of plastic products?
We have seen total destruction of land and marine environment due to lack of awareness. People working in fishing boats and ships throw waste into the sea without bothering about its environmental impact. Cleaning the earth from plastic products has become a big challenge.
When we visit the Kingdom’s regions from north to south, we can find trees and plants being covered by plastic bags, which will destroy those trees for not receiving enough sun light. Throwing of plastic bags in the sea would lead to the destruction of various types of fish for consuming chemicals.
Our environment is damaged not because of the overuse of plastics alone. Excess use of electricity is another reason. On the World Earth Day we switch off all lights to save energy. People have learned the need to switch off unnecessary lights to cut down increasing electricity bills.
We should replace the electric gate at our homes by those gates that can be operated manually to save energy. We should also implement the green building system to avoid unnecessary use of electricity. Under this system, lights and air-conditioning systems will turn off automatically.
Think how much electricity we can save if we follow this green building system at our universities and public and private institutions. The issue of environment is something that is closely related to our future. Speaking about environment is not at all a luxury because we are talking about the life of our sons and daughters and future generations.
I don’t know how we can encourage the public to give top priority to environment while carrying out any project. Imagine, if we are able to do that we could have saved millions of watts of wasted energy and we could have wiped out so many agricultural, social and climate problems. Moreover, we could have protected future generations from many environmental problems.
