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Ways to Create an Eco-Friendly Lifestyle

Let's look for ways to reduce our burden on earth

In order to make your life more environmentally friendly, there are a few steps to follow. First, you have to access your current situation. Next, you have to think about what must be done to improve that situation. Then, you make the effort and based on the results of those efforts, consider your next move. Following such steps of action to reduce negative effects on the environment is called an Environmental Management System.

This system is being used in Japan by many communities, such as schools and offices, and also by municipal offices and districts called "prefectures." However small the effort, they all work hard to reduce harmful effects on the environment.

In Minamata City, in southern Japan, the municipality started a unique movement to introduce this management system to every household. Nearly 50 years ago, the people of this city suffered a very severe environmental disaster.

The citizens and the city made a vow to learn from their hardships and use them as an incentive to protect their beautiful mountains and beaches, clean air and clean water in the rivers, and to ensure that they can be passed down to their children. One of their activities is called "My Home Environmental Standards: Pledges to Live an Environmentally Friendly Life."

"What kind of pledges are these?" you might ask. Well, various efforts are listed under specific categories such as:
-- Power Reduction (Energy Conservation)
-- Waste Reduction and Recycling
-- Clean Air and Water Maintenance

A choice of 35 specific activity pledges are listed under each category, such as "Turn off the TV when nobody is watching it and switch off lights in unoccupied rooms," and "Take your own bag when you go shopping." From this list, anyone can choose the tasks he/she wants to pledge and they notify the city of their choice. Then his/her family decides which roles to assign to each family member.

At the end of each month, the family analyzes their cumulative efforts and grades them with the following comments: "Well Done," "Satisfactory" or "Slight Accomplishment Made." Every month, the family also records their consumption of electricity and gasoline, as well as the amount of garbage.

Three months later, family members discuss the results with one another. They review their actions and check whether or not each person carried out their tasks, if they remembered to record amounts, etc. Then, they consider what their next step should be. If they succeeded with their pledges, they may add a new one or think up a different task for themselves. They repeat the same process for their new pledges, which is: report the pledge to the city, carry out the pledge, take records, review them and make assessments.

Responses from participants have been very positive. One proclaimed that, "All our family members have learned to turn off the power when appliances are not in use," and others reported, "Our power bill is much less than it was last year!" You, too, can have these same benefits at home. How about talking with your family about making your own pledges?

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