STEP BY STEP: CONTRIBUTION TO THE ENVIRONMENT

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This month, for my free report, I took a different approach. Instead of writing about serious topics from a personal point of view and help you understand them, I decided to write about actions being taken against these issues. This month, I will be telling you about two people in my community, who have been, and are, contributing to the environment. I asked them questions about their work, future plans and wishes to see changes.

First person to be interviewed by me was Tania Sultana. She lives in the same neighbourhood as I, and her daughter is one of my friends. She has a garden in her balcony and the roof of the apartment building she lives in. During one night, I went up to her house and asked her all my prepared questions. Before you read them below, I should let you know that our conversations had been in Bengali, and I had to translate it into English for you people, so they are not her exact words, even though I wrote it in a script style.

N: When and why did you start gardening?

T: from school life. I was always intrigued about leaves and trees from my childhood. In university, my subject was botany. I did honours and masters on it. So as a botanist, I learned all about the inner systems and workings of plants and trees. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching tree leaves from a microscope. Most people learn about gardening through experience, but I gathered knowledge on it through my education.

As a matter of fact, I hadn't really done gardening seriously after my marriage. Until my mum had died and I became depressed. My career was also over, so I had so much time to be wasted away. Then I started gardening to pass my time, to make it a quality pastime. And now, this is what I do.

N: what else would you like to do? As in, what is your future plan towards it?

T: my dream is to see a big thing. Like, maybe an orchid farm. I work a lot with orchids. I would also love to work with tissue culture, but that's a very expensive process.

That is my long-term goal. For a short term goal, I could increase the varieties of orchids. Increase the varieties of other trees.

N: Would you call yourself an environmentalist? Do you think what you're doing is enough to contribute to the environment? 

T: Yes, I would call myself an environmentalist. And I do think I am contributing to the environment.  I attended a workshop on environment, and implying what I learned from there and before, I believe what I do contributes to the environment.

I have organic vegetables in my garden. I don't use that much chemicals. Everything I use is environment-friendly.  I decompose rotten vegetables and leaves. What I do, my garden, provides fresher air and coldness to this community. 

N: Do you think people, with special attention to the youth generation, are conscious about the environment?   

T: No. People are not enough conscious about the environment.  When I had wanted to create a garden on the roof, a lot of people were opposed to my ideas. They were telling me the roof will get damp.  They were not thinking about the shade, better air and cooler nature that could be permanent. 

It's a bit ridiculous thinking that these people are all study experts and engineers, some of them even have degrees in environmental engineering, but they don't support things like this.

Aa for the youth generation, they don't have the mindset to think about the environment. Yes, so many people are coming to save the environment and almost all of them are the youngsters, but  a lot of the future generations are still in the dark. They know about the environment, they are learning in school about it, but they don't think it through in their heads. So there is no learning outcomes.

N: How do you think the youth generation can come forth to save the environment?

T: the thing about the youth generations in our country is that they are under so much school pressure, they barely get a chance to think about themselves, forget the environment. Teenagers don't have personal interest anymore. 

I think it needs to start from schools. Schools will have to take voluntary attempts to create the inspiration in the youth, as a learning objective.

N: What do you think you can do to inspire the youth generation, or any others, to step up and save the environment?

T: I try to engage my daughter into these activities. I am trying to create an awareness in her. I could do the same for the other children here. Arrange an awareness sessions. You could help me.

As to inspiring others, I'm already trying to do that. Whenever someone invites me over, I take one of orchids and gift them, show them how beautiful that is. This not only creates love and affections, but also awareness and enthusiasm.

Afterwards, I ended the interview and asked her if she would be up for it if I wanted to carry out an awareness campaign in this community. She said that she would. I told her I will do it in January, and I will knock her about it.

The second and the last person I interviewed had been Rowshon Akhter. She is a biology teacher in my school. During classes, she would often talk to us, her students, about the issues facing the environment and how she wanted to step up and overcome the said problems. As I write down the interview below for you to read, I will remind you again: these are not her exact words. We had been talking in Bengali.

N: What are the things that you have done, so far, to contribute to the environment?

R: I haven’t done that much to be honest. My friend, she lives in Canada. She founded an organization. We carry out activities on its behalf. We gather funds from our own pockets. My friend, she advised us to put away money slowly by waking up from little luxuries. Like she would always have a coffee in a Canadian restaurant with her friend, every day. But they stopped going on Thursday, and put away the money for that, to fund their causes. She encourages us to do the same.

N: Okay, so what have you done from that organization? Could you give me an example?

R: At the moment, we are cleaning lakes in Bangladesh. We clean the lakes and fill them with fish. We started it in the Northern districts, but we believe we will touch the whole Bangladesh one day.

N: Can I ask why do you carry out such activities? I mean, we all know we need as many contributors to the environment as possible, but no one begins without a personal motive.

R: The personal motive isn’t much of an important case when you would come to my age. I am in early sixties. My kids are married and have their own family. I have done enough in my lifetime and I have not much to accomplish for myself. So I turned my focus to the society, to the environment. We choose the lakes of those who have nothing, you know. And we clean it under the expenses of our own.

N: What do want to do in the future? What is your goal to achieve later on?

R: I want to better sanitation and cleanliness among Bangladesh. It’s not just a problem for the environment, but also for people, on an individual basis. I want to work with plastic as well. Have you seen the latest footage on Facebook, Nazaha? How a group of youth collected ten million wasted plastic bottles? Can you see where bangladesh is going?

N: I did. See that video.

R: I want to work with plastic. I really do. I keep thinking that I could figure out a different chemical reaction to make it decompostable, but I’m not that of an expert in this field.

N: How do you think the youth generation could step up in saving the environment?

R: First of all, they need to get out of the addiction. The addictions of virtual media, their phone. These youth have all the time in their worlds, and they waste it on silly things! They need to use their energy and passion in productive things. They need to gain morality again. Everyone is so selfish these days. And of course, to begin saving the environment, they need to be aware. It needs to begin from family and school.