McEnvironment

upon return from their weekly midnight jaunt to McDonalds, my brothers kindly presented me with an Oreo McFlurry, with extra Oreo bits, just the way i like it. despite the fact that it was a tad too well-done on the melted side, i was nevertheless grateful.

but for the longest time, i sat on the couch sloshing my thawing mcflurry around, thinking of polar ice caps that are suffering the same fate as my ice cream. such big thoughts eh, for someone sitting in a heavily air-conditioned living room, holding a mass-produced plastic cup in her hand, while all the lights in her bedroom have been indolently left on, none of them energy-saving lightbulbs at that. also, once again, yet another day has gone by where i did not succeed in my little personal pledge of cutting back on usage of tissue paper. i swear that despite all my best intentions, it is so difficult to use just one tissue to blot your face when you get out of the shower - i have to use, like, 5. and i take 3 showers a day. that makes 15 tissues just from post-shower wet-face blotting.

and do i really have to waste that much water taking 3 showers a day??? i think of the 80% of Ethiopian population who don’t have clean drinking water, and my wealthy aunt in Melbourne who cant wash her luxury cars due to the water crisis in Australia, and i feel a little bad. when the environment is in trouble, even the rich are poor.

it was World Environment Day a couple of days ago. someone said to me, “aiyah i’m just one person wat, why should i do anything about environment? not like other people care oso.” and all i did was playfully ask her to wear something green that day. i dont know what makes me sadder, the ignorance or the apathy. or the arrogance. i saw someone spit out of his car window this evening. i sincerely wish people would stop this fucking disgusting habit of theirs.

i know like, maybe, 6 other people in my life who actively try to consume less fossil fuels, refuse to use styrofoam or berate restaurant proprietors for running an environmentally unfriendly facility. if you count the guy at my gym who complained very loudly at the front desk about all the plastic bags that the gym management generously (or so they think) leaves in the lockers for their patrons, then 7. if you count the gay couple behind me in the supermarket queue who were bitching about Carrefour’s ridiculous entrance policy where they bag all your non-Carrefour stuff in Carrefour plastic bags, then 9. if you count the Cathay Pacific air stewardess who lightly told a passenger that the airlines prefers not to give out decks of playing cards because they want to save trees, then 10.

so collectively between the 11 of us, if we all use both sides of the paper when we print, we’d probably be able to save, i donno, 10 trees a year or something. or a 100. and assuming each of us drink 3 can drinks a week, that makes 33 a week, and 1716 aluminum cans recycled a year. not too bad for just 11 people eh.

not exactly pertaining to the environment, but here’s a blog tangent before i forget it : i want to work in McDonalds. not because i’ll get free Oreo Mcflurries with extra cookie bits (though that is undeniably a very big perk), but because i wanna see the look on my McCustomers’ faces when i gleefully tell them that their Chicken McNuggets should really be called Corn McNuggets, because they’re made out of corn (almost 60%) more than they are made out of chicken. isnt that funny! hahaha!

okay everybody go plant a tree today. i’m gonna go turn off all the indolently left-on non-energy saving lightbulbs in my bedroom :)

and i want one of those ‘I’m Not A Plastic Bag’ bags.

on another note, sometimes i cannot get over how unbelievably lucky blessed i am.

38 comments June 8th, 2007