Beszéljünk a környezetvédelemről – szókincsfejlesztés hanganyaggal

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

All of us know how important it is to protect our environment and we hear about the negative effects that our lifestyles have on nature and our world every day. A very serious result of our careless living is pollution. One of the main effects of pollution is global warming, for example, which causes the changes in our climate and makes temperature rise. This leads to many problems for humans, plants and animals. Global warming has been present since the end of the 19th century, but we are still not doing enough to stop it. We are still polluting our earth.

The three main kinds of pollution are: air, water and land pollution. Let’s talk about them in details.

Air pollution

Air pollution means that the air we breathe becomes dirty and bad for our health. Air is polluted by natural activities like forest fires and volcanic eruptions, but human activity is even more polluting. Our consumer society is based on manufacturing. We need factories to produce the things we buy and power plants for electricity, which emit high levels of carbon monoxide, methane and other chemicals into the air through the fumes and smoke that come out of their chimneys. Burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal for transportation also results in smog and serious air pollution. These are directly pumped into the air as primary pollutants. Contaminated air can cause respiratory and lung diseases apart from the climate change. But methane, for example, is also produced by the animals we keep for food and by the tons of decomposing garbage in landfills. The chemicals we use in our household can also be great pollutants. You should check what cleaning and hygienic products you spray into the air! Ways to fight air pollution are straightforward: be less dependent on polluting transportation – ride a bike more and use the car less if you can’t have an environmentally friendly one. Buy less new, non-recyclable products and check if they are environmentally friendly or not. Recycle your waste and use less electricity!

Water pollution

Nature has a way of keeping our water supplies clean, but we are making this more and more difficult. Cities and their industries dump waste products and chemicals into the seas, which is not only destructive for humans, but also for all other living beings. Unfortunately, not only businesses and factories throw their garbage into the water. Many people also think rivers, lakes and seas are perfect places to dump their litter into. People also cause water pollution accidentally when their vehicles leak oil and gas and it gets washed into our water sources through rain or when cleaning the streets and driveways. A huge and many times tragic way to destroy the quality of our water and the creatures that live in or feed from it is through oil pollution. We hear about oil spills regularly and we know how difficult it is to clean and how many animals and humans suffer the consequences. The sewage waste from houses and industries, like nuclear waste from nuclear plants, also ends up in our rivers and seas and there are also underground storage leaks when the harmful substances that are kept in tanks or run through pipes, like petroleum, under the ground contaminate our water sources. What you can do for water protection? Try to waste as little water as possible when you are washing your teeth, showering or cleaning. Always use environmentally friendly household cleaning and hygienic materials. Check your car for leaks. Avoid using pesticides and artificial fertilizers in your garden or for farming because they all get into the nearby water sources through the soil. And whatever you do, do not litter in rivers, lakes, beaches and oceans!

Land pollution

Water and land pollution are connected many times. If you use natural and biodegradable products for farming, you can prevent poisonous substances like pesticides, insecticides and artificial fertilizers from getting into our soil, into the plants we and the animals eat, and also into our water sources. Recycling our waste is also an important step to take to stop land pollution. Garbage that is non-biodegradable and does not easily rot into organic matter should not be piled up on the landfills where cities transport their waste. They stay there for thousands of years and pollute our earth and the crops we eat. Deforestation is also a kind of land pollution. We need trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the air and produce life-giving oxygen, while forests are the home of many animals, birds and insects. We also use wood for housing, furniture and heat. While we are cutting down trees for construction, farming and mining, we don’t plant new trees. Can imagine the consequences if we don’t do something against this more and more serious problem?