Today, when the planet’s ecology is in a state of permanent crisis, the problems of household waste pollution of the natural ecological environment are very acute. Plastic bottles, glass, and other non-degradable debris in the forest cause irreparable damage to the ecosystem. The upbringing of ecological culture since childhood, a careful attitude to natural wealth can become the key to the health of both the nation and the whole of humanity.
Tourist, are you friend or foe?
Going on a hike, on a picnic or just for a walk in the forest, most people are not going to harm nature. However, more often than not, we inflict irreparable damage without ourselves understanding or realizing it. Of course, there is a certain group of the population for whom the principle “after me, at least the flood” is a personal conviction. Most likely, they do not read this article.
The average tourist, coming to the forest, makes a bonfire. Careless handling of fire - and vegetation, animals, insects and so on are already dying. We trample on grass, tear flowers that we don’t even bring to the house, make cuts in trees, drive our cars as deep as possible into the forest, leaving behind ruts that are destined to drag out after a few years. And most importantly - we do not take out the trash in the forest. The glade after the picnic is all strewn with cigarette butts, bags and bottles. A familiar picture?
Global harm
If a tourist believes that he does not harm the environment globally, he is mistaken. To everyone's delight, tourists do not carry industrial chemicals with them on camping trips. But global harm to the planet can be caused by the fact that it is not poison. Kerosene or gasoline for primus, brake fluid and degreasing agents, oil is very different - spill it on the ground or pour it into a river, and now you have already caused the death of hundreds of animals and plants.
Accumulators and batteries - this garbage in the forest infects the surrounding nature for long, very long years.
Do no harm locally
The local harm caused by the tourist forest has many varieties. Let's start with the food waste left as trash in the forest. Leftovers from your table, of course, will be eaten. We hope that by themselves they will not poison the representatives of the animal world. But left in a plastic bag, in broken glass containers, in a tin can, they can mortally injure an animal that decides to taste your gifts. And if you haven’t eaten, the remnants of the food will rot, exuding an unpleasant odor and spreading pathogenic bacteria.
Boiling water poured under a tree can lead to its death, especially if it is young. But you will not see this - you have already left. They left, by the way, by car. Leaving a rut in the soil and irrevocably taking grassy vegetation.
Didn’t they pay attention to the fact that there were still traces of armored vehicles from the Second World War in the forests? How many years ago did this equipment drive? The place of the campfire where the treat was so successfully prepared will remain the same as you left it for at least 5-7 years. And the slings that you made for the bonfire became branches for at least the same 5-7 years.
Bringing death
Tourists literally bring death to the forest. I don’t even want to talk about barbaric, for the sake of fun, the destruction of anthills (see how they ran in!). And why is it necessary to kill a snake? And without even knowing what kind of snake it is. Let her crawl, because she will not chase you. And the barbaric gathering of bouquets? And well, if the flowers decorated your home. But they will be thrown out along the way.
Nature does not tolerate emptiness
Until the tourist came to this still pristine place of the forest, entire populations of animals lived here. But they are gone. Someone will come in their place. But this is another ecosystem, not at all the same as it was.
Garbage in the forest will stop the growth of herbaceous plants, and this will lead to soil erosion, and now in the place of a dense forest you can see a thinned forest. And then there is no shadow to be found.
What to do, how to be?
Man is a child of nature, and he, this child, really wants to go into the forest: listen to the birds singing, breathe in the pine aroma and wet his feet in the cool of the stream. The principle that all tourists should be guided by is very simple: all the changes that have been made to the ecosystem by your appearance should tend to zero. And you can start with the garbage. Do not leave rubbish in the forest, pick it up and throw it in a rubbish bin. You will be surprised how simple it really is.
Why is bringing food and drink bottles to the forest easier than picking up empty bottles and leftover food? This is an unsolved paradox. And now the decision is ripe - burn everything! Let's say that you didn’t pollute the atmosphere when burning garbage (although it is clear to everyone that this is not so). What do we have in the balance? Food and paper burned out. The plastic has melted, because it does not burn, and now nothing will ever grow on the site of the fire. Fire and glass did no harm. Perfectly disposed of trash in the forest!
Another solution is to bury! Troublesome, but try. Well, if this is a place of mass rest. After all, if tourists come here after you, and rotting remains are buried all around, then most likely they will not like it. We investigate the remainder. Paper and food still rot. Plastic decomposes for about 200 years and all these years it has been vaporizing toxic substances. Iron and glass will make the company plastic. Is that how we clean up the forest?
Thought, thought and decided. But what if you put everything together and put it together? After all, there are services that monitor the forest - they will collect it. All is better than burning and burying. That is how huge garbage dumps are formed in the forest. The second, third and so on will be added to one package. If a tourist is a conscious, environmentally educated person, he will choose the first option - he will take everything away with him, thereby preventing pollution of forests by garbage.
One of us cannot stop deforestation on the planet, cannot reduce the number of cars that poison the atmosphere and prevent the disappearance and destruction of animals and plants. But everyone can throw garbage in the urn, not tear off a snowdrop and make a bird feeder. If each person takes care of the world around him, about a piece of the planet in his apartment and in the clearing where he just rested, Earth will answer all of us with love and beauty. Big always starts with small. If each person says to himself, “The Planet is in my hands” and turns on individual environmental consciousness, will the whole world not become happier, more colorful and cleaner?