I do have a kind of annoying habit of using lots of paper napkins (Paper cloth, tissues....whatever you want to call). In fact I use them a lot more that what the usage supposed to be. The reason for this massive usage I can say is they are cheap and available in plenty. One day (in march'09) I was travelling to Florida and I had a stop Atlanta airport. I was using a restroom and when I entered, saw a lot more used napkins fell on the ground(quite awkwardly) as the trash bin is filled completely up to its brim. And when I was washing my hands I notice everybody using napkins ,in fact heavily, though there are electronic dryer machines installed. Perhaps every body is busy and want things to be quick and conveniently done. I felt quite bad on why people are not using electronic ways of cleaning their hands so that at least they will not be responsible to waste that many napkins and make the floor disgusting. Then I saw a person in front of me using about 6-7 napkins to clean his hands and further more.... I felt really bad about that person and thought he is not doing that right. 2 - 3 napkins should suffice his need to dry his hands after washing. I questioned him straight away whether is there a need to use so many napkins? Further asked him that does he think what he is doing now is right? Does it not make him feel bad? He was so em brassed when I was questioning him and so do I. Why me embarrassed..? The other person is no other but me standing in front of mirror holding about 7-8 napkins in my hand.
From that moment I felt I need to stop this kind of usage on paper napkins. Also decided that I need to do something from my side which contributes for safer environment policies. People , this environment is huge and my single handed contribution might not be good enough for it.....but I would at least have satisfaction on my contribution that I am a part for delivering cleaner environments. To continue this practice through out my life I decided that I would choose one item every year from now on which would contribute for Clean environment practices...anything which helps to reduce the effects on all type of disasters I mentioned above.
So, I started this year with saving paper napkins as far as I can. This would contribute further on saving trees , further on reducing corbon-di-oxide levels in air, further reduce temperatures , further reducing the effect of environmental disasters. It’s like a chain reaction.
So this year I started with controlling my usage on Paper napkins(Its not like I will not use them at all, you should use them definitely, but in an optimum way). I will decide starting next year on the next item contributing for safer environments. You might think that with this plan I would save paper napkins (and so trees) only for this year but that’s not true. As I am practicing this from an year and will get habituated to it and so would continue with the additional contribution items I would decide to do in coming years.With this approach, I would be helping to maintain cleaner and safer environments in about 50 - 60 ways (Right know I am 25 and based on the stats of average human life I got this approx. number) which makes me pretty much satisfactory.
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