\Rapid urban development all around the world is devastating our environment. It’s consuming many of our natural resources while pumping an endless amount of pollutants into the very air we breathe. Four billion people worldwide are living in an urban landscape. A landscape where pollutants fill the air and millions of trash aren’t disposed of properly. In these communities, a sustainable lifestyle, one that is environmentally-friendly, is trying to be realized.
Communities are finding ways to mitigate the damage of rapid urban development in their cities. Many citizens are doing their own part in reducing their waste and recycling what they can recycle. Additionally, organizations found globally are creating their own initiatives to reduce urban development’s impact on nature. Slowly but surely, we are making changes in the way we live so that our children may still have a future with mother nature. Your community needs to be part of this. These simple initiatives can make a difference in the overall state of things. Making your community an environmentally-friendly one is one step to living a greener life.
Reduce Waste and Implement Recycling Bins
Recycling is the main solution to the problems of urban development. As long as we recycle our waste, we can sustain the damage we have wrought upon nature. Recycling in itself is a cycle, one that can be done for at least a thousand years with plastic. Additionally, it consumes less energy, so fewer fossil fuels being burned and turning to carbon dioxide. One way to make your community recycle is as simple as teaching them to throw their trash properly.
Almost every community in the US has a recycling center. The problem lies in the fact that they can’t keep track of all the recyclable wastes that every family in a community throws into the bin. Recycling bins containing information such as the one we mentioned above can make a difference with how people throw their plastics. Placing them in appropriate locations where there is a lot of foot traffic or in areas where most residential zones are located can definitely make your community’s recycling centers even more efficient.
Moreover, families and individuals in your community can proactively reduce their wastes by simply changing them into compost. Compost materials can be done by almost anyone, given that they have the right container for it. Traditional trashcans can work as compost containers. You can educate these families and individuals on how to compost. That’s already one way to reduce a couple of tons of organic waste. They are also great fertilizers for a project you can implement in your community: a green garden.
Start a Green Garden
Green gardens are gardens that minimize the impact of gardening on the environment. This means no clay pots, no hazardous fertilizers or pesticides, and no carbon footprint. Everything in a green garden is natural or recycled. Nothing is new or produced. Everything is being used again.
A green garden project is perfect for everyone in the community. Young adults, the elderly, and children can all be a part of this project. It unites everyone together to create an eco-friendly garden that can help sustain and grow various community products. It can also be beneficial for those interested in having more organic food choices. It can also be accessible for those who are in need and less privileged in the community.
Ultimately, every individual in the community benefits from the building and the maintenance of the green garden. It’s a great project to pull everyone in and push them to contribute in their own little ways.
Protecting Natural Parks
If you have a natural park near you or maybe a patch of land that’s filled by mother nature’s bounty, you as a community should fight tooth and nail to preserve it.
Urban development relies on a limited resource, and this resource is space. Urban developers are always hungry for more space to build their tall skyscrapers and offices in. They want more green locations to convert and urbanized, locations that aren’t still touched by their polluted grasp. As a community, you can stand as one to protect these locations. You can file a conservation servitude to conserve the location or to stop developers from having a shot of building in such locations. Many landowners have protected their lands using this power.
Many more are using it to protect mother nature’s sacred lands against the growing menace that is rapid urbanization. So it’s time to take a stand as a community because you can all benefit from protecting these lands. There will be more fresh air for you and for your children when there are fewer urban areas.
