Environmental protection is a crucial issue for today's and the future world. On one hand, we humans are utilizing nature to create a new world, while on the other hand, we must protect our natural environment. This is because economic development cannot come at the expense of the environment; otherwise, humanity will destroy nature. In reality, in our daily lives, with a little extra attention, some good environmental habits can be formed. If everyone has this awareness, then improving our environment is just around the corner. Perhaps, environmental habits can start right from the dining table! -Habit One: Bring Your Own Chopsticks
Background: Environmentalists warn that at the current rate, China might cut down all its forests within 20 years. With even a slight awareness of environmental protection, anyone would feel uncomfortable using disposable wooden chopsticks—though small, they come at the cost of vast forests. Environmental protectionists in China are already challenging this traditional tableware and calling for a stop to the use of disposable chopsticks.
Advocacy: When dining at a restaurant, it is recommended to use regular chopsticks and refuse disposable ones. Although everyone has experienced using disposable chopsticks when dining out, and many people prefer them for being more hygienic and safe, studies have shown that the harm from disposable chopsticks is far greater than that of disinfected reusable tableware. After being bleached with sulfur gas, they produce a large amount of sulfur dioxide, which can solidify when it cools. Therefore, when eating with these chopsticks, sulfur dioxide can easily solidify in the respiratory tract along with the airflow, leading to coughs, asthma, and other diseases. -Habit Two: Order an Appropriate Amount of Food
Background: Every night, filthy trucks can be seen parked outside restaurants of all sizes in the capital. Late at night, these vehicles loaded with food waste slowly move through the streets of Beijing, with dripping waste and a strong, foul odor that makes passersby hold their noses. What's more, the food waste from the nearly 50,000 hotels, restaurants, and canteens in the capital is often transported to the suburbs to feed pigs.
Advocacy: When dining at a restaurant, be sure to order an appropriate amount of food based on the number of people to avoid unnecessary waste. Because leftover food will lead to food waste pollution in the city, creating an environment swarming with flies and mosquitoes and filled with a foul stench. It is reported that the centralized collection, transportation, and disposal of standardized kitchen waste will be one of the key tasks for the municipal administration committee this year. Within the year, Beijing will build two kitchen waste treatment plants and introduce special vehicles for kitchen waste to transport it to specialized waste treatment plants for scientific processing, thereby preventing small vendors from collecting the "swill" to make "gutter oil". -Habit Three: Do Not Smoke While Dining
Background: It is well-known that smoking is harmful to health. The latest research from Italian scientists shows that the pollution caused by cigarette smoke may exceed that from certain car engine exhaust. According to measurements, the pollution index from the smoke of three cigarettes is 10 times higher than that from diesel combustion.
Advocacy: The dangers of cigarettes to the human body have been widely publicized over the years, but the smoking population in China is still on the rise. Quitting smoking is not easy; smokers "quench their thirst with poison," seriously harming their own and others' right to healthy breathing. Smoking in an indoor environment can easily lead to a decline in Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). Smoke contains a large number of "smoke particles," with a diameter of 0.1-1.0 microns. These particles can easily enter and remain deep in the human respiratory tract. There can be as many as 5 billion particles per milliliter of cigarette smoke, whereas in the polluted air of some cities, there are no more than 100,000 soot particles per milliliter. In poorly ventilated indoor conditions, smoke is difficult to disperse, greatly reducing the air cleanliness index. Restaurants are crowded and relatively enclosed. Therefore, smokers should learn to restrain themselves and not smoke in such public places, which is beneficial to their own health and a responsible act towards others. -Habit Four: Develop a Habit of Light Eating
Background: Industrial waste gas, vehicle exhaust, and catering industry fumes are considered the three major "killers" causing air pollution. The large amount of high-concentration fumes produced during food processing in the catering industry, after being discharged, linger in the city for a long time, directly threatening the health of urban residents. Experts believe that the condensed fumes at high temperatures have strong carcinogenic and mutagenic effects.
Advocacy: Chinese food culture emphasizes stir-frying, pan-frying, and deep-frying, which can produce a large amount of fumes. These fumes enter the human respiratory tract with the air, causing what is medically known as "fume syndrome." People with this syndrome often experience loss of appetite, irritability, listlessness, drowsiness, and fatigue. Fumes contain a carcinogen called benzopyrene, and long-term inhalation of this harmful substance can induce cancerous changes in lung tissue. According to cancer experts, the incidence of lung cancer in women has been continuously rising, even surpassing that of men, and kitchen fumes are largely to blame. We should develop a habit of light eating when dining out, which is the most direct way to reduce fumes. -Habit Five: Prohibit the Indiscriminate Consumption of Wild Animals
Background: China consumes tens of thousands of tons of snakes each year, and these snakes can eliminate 1.3-2.7 billion mice annually. The indiscriminate consumption of snakes and frogs leads to rampant rodent and insect infestations, which in turn necessitates the large-scale use of pesticides, further exacerbating ecological damage and pollution.
Advocacy: Over-exploitation, habitat loss, and other factors are the main reasons for the current endangered status of China's wildlife resources. The bad habit of consuming wild animals in some regions of China is the driving force behind the over-exploitation of wildlife resources and the promotion of illegal wildlife trade. If consumers have good environmental awareness and refuse to consume wild animals, then this illegal trade will have no market and will naturally decrease and eventually disappear. -Habit Six: Sort Food Waste
Background: Urban waste contains a large amount of recyclable resources, and environmental protection companies are becoming new economic growth points. Waste sorting can improve recycling rates, quickly achieve the reduction, resource utilization, and harmless disposal of waste, thereby saving land and reducing the threat of waste pollution to humanity.
Advocacy: Food waste sorting includes paper products such as packaging cans, foil pouches, paper boxes (like milk cartons), and paper tableware. Among them, paper packaging cans must have their glue removed, be taken apart, and flattened before recycling; foil pouches (like Tetra Paks) should have the straws removed, be flattened, and then recycled; waste paper tableware should be rinsed with a little water before recycling; iron containers and iron products (such as food cans, paint cans, milk powder cans, iron boxes, iron chests, iron pots, etc.) and metal products such as aluminum containers and aluminum products (such as beverage cans, aluminum basins, aluminum window frames, etc.) should first have their residual contents emptied, be rinsed with a little water, and then recycled. -Habit Seven: Use an Induction Cooker
Background: An induction cooker is not only smoke-free, odor-free, flameless, and free from fuel residue and exhaust gas pollution, but as long as you set the temperature and time, it will automatically shut off power after a certain period, making it safe and convenient to use.
Advocacy: Choose an induction cooker to create a green kitchen because, unlike gas, it is not prone to leakage, does not produce an open flame, and will not become a cause of accidents. Furthermore, it is equipped with multiple safety protection measures, including automatic power-off if the stove body is tilted, overtime power-off, dry-burn alarm, over-current, over-voltage, under-voltage protection, and automatic shutdown in case of improper use. An induction cooker is much safer than a gas stove; even if soup overflows sometimes, there is no risk of the flame going out and gas leaking, making it worry-free and labor-saving. Because of these advantages, induction cookers are gradually gaining popularity among consumers. Of course, in addition to basic functions like boiling, frying, stir-frying, grilling, deep-frying, steaming, and simmering, induction cookers with personalized functions such as congee cooking, soup making, keeping warm, and milk heating have also quietly emerged. -Habit Eight: Be Cautious When Using Dish Detergent
Background: It is reported that the main method for consumers to remove pesticide residues from fruits and vegetables currently is to soak them in dish detergent. However, experts have found that because the pH value of dish detergent on the market is basically weakly alkaline, when highly toxic pesticides such as "dichlorvos" come into contact with it, they produce more toxic and harmful substances, which can easily cause secondary pollution.
Advocacy: Try to minimize the use of dish detergent; you can use traditional alkaline flour to remove grease from tableware. If you use dish detergent to wash vegetables and fruits, dilute it with water 200-500 times (the washing concentration should be 0.2% to 0.5%), and the soaking time should be about 5 minutes. Dish detergent helps wash away residual pesticides and other substances from vegetables and fruits. After soaking, it needs to be rinsed repeatedly with running water.