Save the Environment

by Zubaida Nihad (Iraq)

Making a local connection Iraq

Save the Environment When I grew up and went to high school, I joined some people together who were interested in saving the environment from anything harmful in one group named the Green Area and our mission was to get more and more people to work with us and decrease the rate of pollutions. We made educational projects about encouraging people to use bicycle instead of cars and motorcycles that produce harmful gas to the air called CO. We succeeded in our projects because people in my hometown Kirkuk/ Iraq started to use bicycle more than cars. After working on many projects, our goal was to travel to other countries where the environment needs for our help. We as a group made some research and contacted local people in some countries to see which country is the most in need for our help till we found out that Egypt and Egyptian people need to be aware of what’s happening to their environment. According to Aswat Masriya, around 43,000 Egyptian died by some diseases such as stroke, ischemic heart diseases, lung cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that are caused by air pollution in 2012. According to Numbeo, Egypt had 60.73 of water pollution, around 85.00 air pollution, and 87.59 of garbage. These huge numbers of deaths and pollution made us to travel to Egypt in 2013 and 2014 and we tried to make connections with local people there who didn’t know the harms of pollution that will risk their lives. We started to go to local areas and talk to elders, youths and children about the consequences of air and water pollution that will risk their lives. Then we started to find ways to save the environment together and decrease the rate of pollution. We started with a project about using reusable plastic or glassy bottles instead of unreasonable plastic bottles that will harm the environment since each one of them need at least more than 1000 years to break down, and even when it does, it will release toxic chemicals since it is made up of fossil fuels. We encouraged organizations there and even factories to start working on making reusable bottles that will also make youths who don’t have job to start work in these factories. Our project succeeded and people started to use reusable bottles instead of harmful plastic bottles. Then we started to encourage people to use cotton bags instead of plastic bags that also cause deaths to people and animals when they break down in sea and oceans. According to National Geography, A whale shark in the ocean suffers from ingesting cuts of the plastic bags while it’s the biggest whale in the sea. People in Egypt depend on Nile River as the main source of usable water, however we found out that it’s polluted and it causes many deaths for animals and people who drink it. According to Springer, Northern of Egypt, the Nile is polluted which affects the diversity of fish there. After this presentation about the pollution in Egypt, more people started to join our organization including elders, youths and children to save their environment. We went to factories and we talked to people who don’t have jobs and encouraged them to start make a small business about selling cotton bags in suitable price to markets and malls. After some months people who own markets and shops started to use cotton bags instead to plastic bags. Elder women started to make cotton bags at homes and sell them to markets and shops as an investment. Youths who faced lack of jobs started to work in these factories. Besides these accomplishments, people in Egypt started to be more aware of danger of global warming and environmental pollution and the necessity of taking an action towards saving the environment. This was the end of my travel and I was able to build up relationships with local people in Egypt who have truthful love and loyalty to their environment. Without these people we couldn’t get the job done because they helped us to know facts that we couldn’t find them online, and they helped us by sharing new ideas about how to save the environment.