In this article Malcolm Irani, student at St. Mary’s ICSE school in Mumbai, India, inspires us to make our common home a Clean, Green and Safe Place to live in.
“Our Common Home” as we all call it, is our beautiful living planet Earth which provides us with food, shelter and most of our requirements. Despite this, we humans are cruel to our common home by polluting and damaging its natural resources. Every day we produce tons of degradable and non-degradable waste, and throw it anywhere carelessly. Smoke and harmful gases from our homes, vehicles and industries are suffocating it. We are disposing off dirty sewage, drainage and even chemicals into seas, although we know that billions of humans, along with all plants and animals in this world, rely on water for their lives. If this damage continues, we will reach a stage where it will be too late to restore and save our Mother Earth.
One of the main things to focus on is Cleanliness. Cleanliness begins at home. We all should try and keep our houses clean and free from germs by mopping our houses daily and have proper ventilation in our homes. Proper ventilation allows sunlight to enter our houses and destroys the germs. Just like our homes, we should also keep our school clean.
As responsible students of St Mary’s ICSE, we have undertaken various activities in doing our bit to help restore our common home. Ganapati is a festival celebrated in Mumbai on a large scale. However, the immersion of the Ganpati idols in the sea leads to the pollution of the sea and the beach becomes unclean. This affects the cleanliness of the environment & pollutes it. To fight the environmental crisis fifty-six St. Mary’s ICSE senior boys went to the Chowpatty Beach in 2019, for a clean-up drive. Students worked for almost three hours and helped to clean-up the beach.
This drive was headed by two teachers, seven parents from the PTA and two helpers. This was a way of giving back to society and to adopt habits of cleanliness and responsibility among the students, which would go a long way in making them responsible citizens. Likewise, the teachers even encourage the junior students to clean small places like our school grounds and assembly halls. Once our class 4-3 teacher even took the initiative of making us pick few rappers and other waste items from the junior assembly hall in a fun, creative and in an interactive way.
We can adopt the practice of using cloth or jute bags instead of plastic bags. I make it a point to make use of cloth bags or at least the members of my family have lived up to this practice. Making use of cardboard boxes, which we usually throw away after an article is delivered to us, can also stand as storage boxes. It is a good idea to reuse these boxes rather than just throwing them away.
By following these minor steps of cleanliness in our daily actions and by schools/colleges taking up various environmental projects, we will be able to inspire the global community to make our common home a Clean, Green and Safe Place to live in.
