Self-quarantine and lockdowns during this coronavirus outbreak have proven themselves to be one of the most effective ways to reduce air pollution all over the world. However, air is not the only part of nature to get better during this outbreak.
Without our presence, nature has been restoring so much in almost every aspect. Even experts consider that the outbreak is a bless in disguise for the nature. However, this one is sure a life-threatening “blessing” for human being.
We all love nature and sure we want to support its self-restoration. But can we give our supports to the nature without endangering our lives? Can we keep witnessing the nature restoring itself even after this pandemic ends?
The answer is, we can. Here in this article we will talk about how to keep supporting the nature’s restoration even without the presence of coronavirus and self-quarantine.
Use Green Transportation Because Vehicles Contribute So Much
To begin with, we should talk about how polluted our air used to be, especially in big cities. In big cities, we usually have enormous number of fossil-fueled vehicles running on the roads. Those vehicles produce air pollutants, which means that we are polluting our air by riding on one.
The absence of fossil-fueled vehicles has proven to bring down the number of air pollution in every single locked-down city. Take for example how nitrogen dioxide level in a street in Glasgow named Hope Street, which was used to be a pollution hot-spot, was reduced from 56.6 micrograms per cubic meter to as low as 18.7 micrograms per cubic meter after self-quarantine period.
“When we tend to think of air pollution we tend to think of things like low emissions zones and clean air zones where we generally try and change the vehicle technology. The Covid impact has very much been about reducing vehicle activity and that’s a very different way of achieving the same sort of air quality benefits,” said David Carslaw, technical director at Ricardo.
Using green transportation methods is the best way to keep the level of air pollutants low. Bicycles is still currently the most practical vehicle in this case, because it literally requires and produce zero matters by itself.
Take a look at cities like Amsterdam whose cycling culture has been known worldwide. The city has proven that bicycle is a pretty effective transportation method to bring us from one place to another. Most of our trips are short distance trips and we don’t really need to use cars to get there. Thus, the first method to keep our nature clean after coronavirus is to develop a cycling habit starting from ourselves.
Use Less Electricity Because Power Plants Are Burning Coals
The next point in this topic is energy or electricity consumption. Instead of decreasing, the consumption of electricity is increasing during self-quarantine period because simply more people are staying at home watching television and using heater or air conditioner.
This is not winter nor summer yet, but many of us already think the need of using those temperature controllers. That’s a waste of energy, because we don’t really need that yet. Thus, different from how we should keep the trend with vehicles, we should change our electricity consumption trend post-coronavirus.
Sure, vehicles contribute major part in our air pollution, but energy generation from coals contribute not less compared to it. Even though recent trends show that coal plants are being left one by one, but it doesn’t mean that it has been completely left out.
Many countries are still getting their major share of energy from coals, such as Indonesia. Even though president Joko Widodo has campaigned a green revolution in energy generation by planting wind energy plants all over the country, the effectiveness of the green generators is still far from its coal counterpart.
Re-reduce our daily electricity consumption starting from now so that we can get used to it after the pandemic ends. For betterment, we can also try to use green energy generation starting from planting personal solar panels for our personal use.
You can save money from skyrocketing electricity bills by using solar energy as a supplement. Electricity providers offer solar buyback for selling them the excess energy you generate from your solar panels.
Solar power is also applicable for commercial, industrial, and public properties. Community managers and property owners can also install solar powered street lights in residential, commercial, and public establishments to save significant electricity.
Working with a trusted solar lighting specialist can provide efficient, bright solar lighting solutions that can enhance the safety of your home and community. Choose a solar lighting provider that can provide innovative and excellent quality solar lighting technology solutions within your budget.
Learn To Compost Like During Self-Quarantine
During this lockdown, we spend our days dealing with one of our most basic needs: food. In this case, we are not only consuming it, but also processing it, and processing the biproduct of it which are leftovers and food waste.
We are talking about the latest two things mentioned, leftovers and food waste. Many of us just throw away all of them to the trash cans, and the story ends here. Yet, we can actually make use of them by making compost instead of throwing them away and let them rot in landfills.
Making compost from food waste and leftovers is pretty easy, just put them in a container and wait for it to decompose. Our food waste consists of organic matters because we only eat organic matters, and every single organic matter decompose slowly with time.
Just try it out and you will learn how easy to make compost at home. Especially when you have so much spare time during self-quarantine, you will find it can be a positive time-wasting activity. Moreover, it can be a good habit after this period.
Appreciate The Nature More
Nature is recovering itself during the absence of human presence, and surely after this period ends, we can revisit the recovered nature. it is highly possible that we would find the nature far more beautiful and serene than what it used to be.
There are two reasons for that, which are the recovery itself and our longing for it. We can make use of this new and refreshed love to the nature to grow bigger appreciation toward nature. But the main point is we will not have it alone, every single person on earth will also grow the same feeling.
We can use the new global feelings of appreciation to campaign for betterment in nature conservation. People who grow the feeling are more likely to want to join the campaign and contribute more to the nature after this self-quarantine period.
Indeed, coronavirus is a disaster to human being, but our nature counterpart might not see it so. Staying safe during this disaster is our main priority now, but after it all ends and we live in ‘new normal’, we must take the positive side of all this. Going for betterment in nature is the most obvious choice.
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