07/07/07

Today is 7 July 2007, or 07/07/07. As part of the effort to go green and save the Earth, there was a concert today held worldwide to bring about awareness. And over TV, people were urged to wear green on this day.

Well, we did our part. I wore a polo-shirt with some green on it (I don't own any full green shirts or anything), while my wife wore a half-sweater top with green and white stripes. But looking around, we didn't really see many people out there wearing green. Guess the message being passed around on TV didn't really sink in.

As I write, the concert is still ongoing.

My wife and I are actually environment-conscious people. That was what prompted me to write to the papers in the first place. And we practice recycle-reduce-reuse at home too. We reuse any paper that is printed only on one side (all those property agents sending us flyers to sell our home...), we sort out our trash so that we dispose of those that can be recycled separately. We don't use the air conditioner as much as we would like to, instead using the ceiling fan, or just bearing with the heat a bit more. There is the rule of "no air conditioner before 10pm" and "setting the air conditioner to turn off 1 hour after we sleep". Saving electricity saves us money from a high utilities bill, that's for sure. But it also helps to save the limited resources we have on this Earth.

Now, if only the agencies involved can actually put more effort into this. In Japan, people are made to recycle because they are forced to. The rubbish truck only collects trash put into clear plastic bags, so that their contents can be seen. And if you throw away the wrong type of trash, it won't be collected. For example, if Monday is "plastic bottles day", if you leave your paper trash out, the rubbish truck won't collect it.

We Singaporeans are so concerned about efficiency, though, that we have grown impatient. It will be hard to convince Singaporeans that their trash can wait. I don't think we will understand. At the end of the day, people will just leave their trash out there, and if it isn't collected, they probably won't care, even if the smell affects everyone else. If we don't get what we want the moment we want it, we deem it as inefficient. Are we right? Or are we simply impatient, lacking the patience that comes with the civility of first world status?

I think we have a long way to go, before we Singaporeans as a nation can fully embark together on the path towards environment-consciousness and the real effort to go green.