I went around asking some of the people around me about what would they do if they had to play a part in conserving the environment. Almost everyone answered that they would recycle. While one of them answered that she’d be willing to adopt a turtle or plant a tree at least. My brief discussions with your average everyday people made me wonder about how much do our people know about the environment and conservation. Do they even care? Or maybe they have not had the opportunity to decide whether to care or not?
There must be at least gazillions of other ways to play our part rather than just recycle. There’s carpooling, composting, growing your own veggies, discovering your carbon footprint to name a few. Upon further contemplation of the subject matter, I’ve come to conclude that the people I’ve talked to must have had almost the same exposure to conservation given the almost perfect uniformity in answers given. However, before I go on, please note that my thoughts here are hardly representative of the general populace and are purely speculative. There was also no proper methodology, just random chats with the people that I’ve come in contact with.
The first thing that came to mind about what could have a been a common denominator in all those that I’ve talked to was of course, the television or the idiot box as some might call it.
Thinking back to earlier days, I could remember watching infomercials and government-sponsored ads over the telly about recycling to save our environment. I could still remember the tune in which the ad played to. A mother correcting her child for making a wrong match as to which waste material goes to which designated bin. I still can’t remember what goes where too. If you’re as old as I am, and watched the same channels as I did, you would have most probably seen those same ads. There was no Astro back then, it was just good ol’ TV1, TV2 and TV3. After a while then came MegaTV and that soon gave way to Astro. I reckon with the availability of channels like Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, people would have a greater chance of being exposed to nuances in conservation.
I wonder if the government had not pushed the recycling agenda but instead opted for adopt-a-turtle, would our answers today be any different? Instead of recycling, adopting-a-turtle would be a norm to conservation. That would be a dream come true for environmentalists. .
I cannot help but feel now that governing bodies play an enormous role in instilling a sense of awareness to environmental issues that plague our everyday lives although we might not feel the brunt of it. Sure it takes a lot of self-effort as well, but it is undeniable that the stand in which governing bodies take and the priorities they set in concerns to development and conservation can very well influence the behaviour of the masses. A governing body that takes high priority in conservation would most probably have a constituency that holds the same values as well providing that socio-economic structure is not undermined and there is incentive in doing so. There’s subsidies and tax waivers when people are compliant to environmental standards to name a few examples.
However, in the case when there are people who are more ‘enlightened’ than their governing bodies, there can be mounting frustration and discouragement. There have been countless times where I’ve heard ‘Government tak mau buat apa-apa, kami peduli pun tiada apa-apa juga’. Again of course, these are rather simplistic assumptions and there’s so much more to be explored to further understand the intricacies of the socio-economic and cultural structure that makes for the fabric of our nation.
Rather than to think that people do not care, I would rather like to think that we are still unaware of what we can do and the legitimacy of environmental movements. Surely, there has got to be something better than just recycling.
At least one person I know think that the ‘Adopt-a-turtle’ program sounded cute.
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