Saving the earth, Part 3 - Be aware

Now that you’ve educated yourself about your life and surroundings, it’s time to learn about others. Our world is full of people – some who try to help the environment, and some who don’t or can’t. It’s important that you know what you’re up against, so that you can find workable solutions to environmental problems.

Firstly, you should try to find out what other people are doing to help the environment. Honestly, some of the solutions people have thought up are quite unique, and worth knowing about. Ideas range from new methods of waste segregation and filtering to innovative methods to use renewable sources of energy. It would also be a good idea to stay updated on the latest technological and/or legal advances which are geared towards helping the environment. You don’t have to root through a compendium of eco-knowledge; neither do you have to force yourself where you don’t want to. Just gather the kind of information that interests you (I’ll come back to why this is important in another part). This should provide you with a large number of interesting stories, anecdotes and pieces of information. As for gathering this knowledge, it’s up to you to choose a source with which you feel the comfortable: the newspaper/local paper, a library, email newsletters, relevant website, local NGOs, your office or school etc. 

Secondly, now that you’ve gathered a good amount of information, you should think of some way to use it. To start with, if there's a large amount of information,  you might consider categorizing it in some way. Try to keep your information updated, and stay on track. Go through the ideas occasionally and identify your favourite ones. They might inspire you to come up with something yourself, and some of these ideas might become solutions to the problems in your environment. Also, you should try analysing things from different points of view, as sometimes a method is not the most efficient or useful to ALL the people. Also, with our ideas of development, we should always keep in mind how they can be practically carried out, what are the factors affecting the and how they will affect other things. By going through your collected ideas, you might be able to identify the possibilities in your immediate surroundings. And most importantly, they’ll show you that you’re not alone.

There's something out there for everyone...