OPINION: OPening etwInNIng hOrizoNs

Ola from class 7a describes one of the tasks she took part in:

Two weeks ago I and representatives from schools in Greece, Lithuania and Italy wrote an online letter which we sent to the European Parliament. It was part of our e-twinning project. Each of us wrote something about enviromental problems in our own country. We divided our work on paragraphs and saved everything on google doc. It is a piece of our conversation on instagram:

Ola, class 7a

A tak wygląda cały list:

Dear Madam,

We would like to present to you some of the most serious problems regarding the environment in our countries, starting from Greece.

Nowadays, perhaps one of the most important problems regarding the environment in my country is the waste management as well as recycling.

Unfortunately, not many people recycle, as they should, resulting in a great amount of rubbish. That means there will be more pollution sources, more recyclable packages that end up in the garbage and the further pollution of the environment. There are some reasons for the problem. The first reason is that the effects of the thrown rubbish are very dangerous and extremely harmful. Landfills have always been regarded as sources of illnesses and unpleasant smells. The toxic chemicals get into the water pipes and spread through the people’s drinking water. In most of the world, we do one of two things with our ordinary garbage: burn it or bury it. Neither one is good for us or for the environment. Burning garbage releases dangerous gases which contribute to global warming and pollute lakes, forests, oceans and .Burying garbage also causes both air and water pollution.

If we want all that to change, we need to recycle more, to produce less rubbish and to use less plastic, which as we all know, is not recyclable. It would be good practice to separate garbage into different groups, instead of throwing everything into the same bin. In this practice, waste is categorized and placed in different coloured bins or bags, thus separating garbage that is recyclable or reusable.  Buy products that are good for the environment. Local communities, authorities and states need to put more efforts towards the education of waste management. More emphasis should be placed on responsible resource use with an objective of avoidance, maximizing recycling and waste reduction methods. And we do the Reduce, Reused, Recycle for the betterment of our country.

There is another problem. Most people do not care about it. There are people who do not even know about it. And there are people like us - too young to do something or help, despite their sheer will to do so. And it is because nobody is taking responsibility to talk or to do something. We are talking about FUR FARMS. We know that there will always be animal abuse and that is horrible, but this is the next level of abuse.

Why is it bad? Fur animals are killed just for their fur. Those innocent little creatures are killed or even skinned alive. How can people be so cruel and do things like that? That is the biggest question. We think we know the answer. It is very simple to know what they need. MONEY. They can do anything for paper called money. And there is the most disgusting part of all. They do not care. It is just a simple work to do. They got money and that is all it takes to kill a little, cute, innocent creature...

But now we are a little bit happier, because in Lithuania a year ago established an organisation called ‘’Open Cages’’. Activists are doing their job very well.They published images and videos at the Lithuanian fur farms which prompted the State Veterinary Agency to launch an investigation.

If we want to change that, we need to speak as loud as we can. Now there are so many innocent fur animals skinned alive or killed just to make a fancy jacket. Please, stop this. Please, speak as loud as you can and save all these animals so they can live in this world without such a big fear.

Another problem that we also noticed in Poland is not enough trees. We will present the effects of the lock of trees and ways that in our opinion should solve this problem.

Why trees should not be cut? A lot of people cut trees, because the area where they grow is intended for the construction of modern blocks and shopping malls. Unfortunately many people don’t  realize how much we need it to live. If there were no trees we would not have enough air to breathe, because they produce oxygen and other nutrients.

We think that we should allocate more area for planting trees, create „belt of greenery” and of course more parks. Thanks to that we will save more trees and it will be a good way to rescue our planet.

In Italy, exhaust fumes are one of the main causes of pollution, so electric cars might be a good opportunity to help the environment.

A lot of car companies  are converting their production to electric cars even if up to now they are only produced by Tesla, Toyota and Lexus.Owing electric cars is  a problem in Italy. In fact, there are very few charging stations where cars can be recharged.  In my region there are about 100 charging points, but still they are not enough to respond to customers' needs. The problem is that with few charging  points people still choose  cars that use only petrol-driven or diesel-driven engines  and, as we know, exhaust fumes are dangerous for the environment. Besides that, electric cars are very expensive and some people cannot afford them.

 A solution to this problem might be  to place several doors for recharging  the cars from home by connecting them to a power plug, to place more charging stations around our country and promote the use of electric cars by reducing the price  according to the buyer's  income so that, one day normal cars will be completely replaced by electric cars.

We kindly request  to take into consideration this important environmental issue which will help us live in a cleaner world.

There is no time to waste! We might be small, but we have a voice and we want the world to hear it! Together we can protect the environment! As the President of the European Committee, we believe that you have the power to make important decisions that can save the environment and our planet. Our future depends on the future of our planet!

Yours faithfully,

Davide Broggi from Italy

Melita Mikalevičiūtė from Lithuania

Nasia Skoura from Greece

Ola Pytel from Poland

OGROMNE BRAWA DLA AUTORÓW!!!