Saving electricity during the holidays

November 18, 2008 By Leave a Comment

It is not hard to feel that Christmas is near when you are in the Philippines. Everywhere, you see these christmas decorations that Filipinos call “parol”. It is a star-shaped colorful Christmas lantern made of cellophane paper, japanese paper, and a local material called capiz. Most of them come with colorful moving lights. They’re really beautiful. I think the parol is unique in the Philippines.

I passed by a store of parol last night. It has a display of I think more than 100 parol all of them with their beautiful lights on. I wonder how much energy is consumed with that store in one night. It’s beautiful to see our street filled with the spirit of Christmas but it made me thought if we can still do that and saving on our electricity at the same time.

Along the Ayala Avenue, the main street of our place here in Makati, you’ll see a beautiful display of Christmas lights running through the plants at the center of the road. At night, the lights are a beautiful sight to hold. Even if traffic sucks, you won’t get pissed off because of the sight. It’s beautiful and I don’t have anything about beautiful things and things that are associated with Christmas but I’m just wondering if we can ever have a beautiful and energy-efficient Christmas decorations and Christmas lights?

I know that Christmas lights that are made of LED (Light Emitting Diodes) are more energy efficient than the regular incandescent Christmas lights. But can we find LED Christmas lights here in the Philippines? Is there any shop here that sells LED Christmas lights?

We don’t have any Christmas decorations in our place but if you have a parol and Christmas lights in your house, maybe one energy saving tip is to turn it off before you go to sleep. It doesn’t just save energy, it’s also safe for the whole household. I heard a lot of incidents here in Manila where the house was burned because of defective Christmas lights left turned on the whole night. I think if all houses that have Christmas lights and parol in their houses turn them off at 12am, we’ll save a lot of electricity already.

This may also be the right time to change all our incandescent bulbs if you still have one in your house. Incandescent bulbs require a lot of electricity. Besides, they make our rooms hotter. This holiday season is our time to give gifts to our godchildren and nephews and nieces. We can make this holiday extra special by giving a gift to our planet: buying fluorescent lights.

These are only two things and they’re really simple but they can make a lot of difference. We’ll be saving on our electricity. The electricity we use up means less energy usage which means the less natural resources consumed which means less woe for the planet earth.

Filed Under: Energy Saving Tagged With: , , ,

Shopping the green way

November 17, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Yearly there are tons and tons of plastic bags that go to the open dump sites in the Philippines. Most of them are used shopping bags from Manila’s groceries, supermarkets and department stores. Plastic bags are non-biodegradable trash. When they go to the dump sites, they cannot be recycled or converted into another form just like the paper or the intestines of the fish.

How many plastic bags can one factory produce in one minute? One thousand? Ten thousand? We keep on producing plastic bags, we use it once or twice and then we throw them all away? Where do they go when we are finished with them?

Aside from the dump sites, others go to our seas. They trap the fishes and make it harder for them to breathe under the water.

What shall we do with the used plastic bags that will remain plastic bags in our dump sites forever? There is nothing else to do but to slowly turn to other kinds of materials for our shopping bags. We can use brown paper bags. We can use the rattan basket our lolos and lolas used when they were doing their marketing. There are chains of supermarkets in Manila that are already selling “green” bags which are made from recyclable non-plastic materials. I bought one from the chain nearest my place the first time I did my shopping here. I’ve been using this “green” bag ever since.

Shopping demands responsibility not only in our finances but also in our environment-consciousness. Little things like reducing our use of plastic shopping bags can mean a big acres of land without plastic wastes hundreds of years from now. No one is too small to contribute to our earth.

Filed Under: Non-biodegradable Waste, Pollution Tagged With: ,

Greening the Philippine Christmas

November 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Christmas in the Philippines start really early. Can you imagine hearing Christmas songs playing in the malls in September? Yep! When the “ber” months arrive here, it means it is the start of Christmas. The malls have their reason to do this: to encourage people to buy, buy, buy!

It’s difficult to believe that Philippines is a poor country is you go to the malls during a 3-day-weekend sale especially these days. The malls are cramped with people: families, group of friends, employees out from offices. . .you’ll see them with bags of groceries, clothes, food, and gifts.

Because we buy a lot during Christmas, it is the time of the year that is the least environmentally-friendly. Why? Because, the more we buy, the more we’re using earth’s resources.

The more food we buy, the more plastic bags we use, the more waste will go to our dump sites, the more cans, bottles and plastic containers will be used. . .

The more clothes we buy, the more energy is needed to manufacture more of them, the more water is needed to wash them,the more electricity is used to iron them out.

The more gifts that we buy, the more paper is needed for the gift wrappers, more gifts will have to be manufactured to replace our gifts for next year, the more waste we’ll have for broken toys and electronic gadgets

How can we make our Philippine Christmas green? Reduce our buying. Instead of buying, why not just give our time and energy to our family and friends? Will Christmas not be as meaningful if we don’t have 5 pairs of new pants?

If we reduce our consumption of manufactured goods and use more eco-friendly alternatives, we will be helping a lot already and we are already prolonging the stay of our species here on earth.

Filed Under: Energy Saving Tagged With: ,

No Trees

November 13, 2008 By Leave a Comment

If you look at the sky here in Manila, you’ll easily notice how bad air pollution is here. The air is grayish and if you’re walking along a busy street, you’ll find it hard to breathe. Added to the heavy soot in the air are the heavy gas emission of old buses and the pedestrians many of whom are smokers.

You just have to walk a few blocks and you’ll see what I mean. Even during the early morning, you cannot have your walk without having to inhale the smoke from the cigarettes of the people in the street.

Just this morning, I was walking along this street in Makati and I saw a group of women wearing business attire who were slumped on the steps of a building and smoking cigarettes. There are too many people smoking in this country. It is hard to find a public spot where you can enjoy your walk without inhaling nicotine.

I think another reason why air pollution here in Manila is so bad is because there are barely a tree here. We produce so much carbon dioxide with our burning of energy but there is nothing that can convert the pollutant into oxygen.

We need trees in Manila but where are we going to place the trees? Everything’s road, buildings, malls, slum areas, residential areas, golf courses here.

There must be a designated part here in Manila where nothing will be built but will only be reserved for the planting of trees. I think this is the reason why the quality of air in Japan is not yet polluted even if there are also a lot of vehicles there. They have managed not to touch their forest.

Trees are necessities in Manila. We can plant trees in our backyards and our business establishments. Here in our vicinity, a commercial area has planted trees in the middle of malls. I go there when I want to have a respite from the dirty air. Air is better there.

I wonder how we can have more trees in Manila?

Filed Under: Pollution Tagged With: ,

Waterworld in the Philippines

November 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Millions and millions of Filipinos are living in the coastal areas here in the Philippines. Since this country is made of thousands of islands, almost quarter of the people here live from the bounty of the Philippines seas; most of them are fishermen.

I wonder what will happen to them if the prediction that the water level all around the world continue to rise abruptly because of global warming. It rained hard for about an hour yesterday here in Manila and there are places that are submerged with flood. That is how low the land is in Manila.

There are predictions that Manila will completely be submerged in water when the level of water continues to rise. And the people in the coastal areas will also be wiped out.

This is a very scary prediction. All of us don’t want this to happen but I think it is POSSIBLE to happen: that the whole Manila will be all water (like Kevin Costner’s film Waterworld) and Philippines’ thousand islands will only be a hundred. . .

Why do I say that this scenario is possible?

First, because the melting of ice due to global warming is said to increase the water level all around the world by at least 20 feet.

second, we have experienced only a few feet of water yesterday and yet areas of Manila are already submerged in flood water, how much more with an increase of 20 feet of water?

Third, there are already islands in the Philippines that are completely submerged. That’s why the number of islands in the Philippines is different during high tide and low tide. During high tide, the number decreases.

Is it too late?

I sure do hope it’s not.

Filed Under: Global Warming Tagged With:
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