How Eco Club Changed my Life - Buyile Mdlangathi

BUYILE SIBAHLA MDLANGATHI Grade 9

How has Eco Club changed my life?

Before I joined Eco Club I was like most people in the world today: not seeing how the way I treated the environment would in turn affect me, throwing litter out the window because I had the mindset that road workers are responsible to pick it up, leaving all the lights on without it being necessary, taking the peels of food and just throwing it mindlessly into the rubbish bin and most importantly not understanding how changing these unhealthy habits will essentially benefit me in the long run.

Now ever since joining the Eco club this year I have become more conscious about my lifestyle and analysed then reanalysed the way I live my life. Eco Club has given me an even bigger incentive to constantly improve myself and make my life a healthier one to live in. The skills that they teach you at Eco Club can be applied to your everyday life and the main aim of Eco Club is to change small details in your life so that once you have you can see how those minuscule changes can impact your life on a whole.

I now know that I should be conscious enough to not be one of those naive people today who throw the litter out of the window and instead keep it with me until I find a bin. I know that if you can obtain natural light then use it instead of all the electrical ones and if needed go for the most minimal amount.

I know now that with all those peels I can put them into the vegetable garden as compost and most importantly, I know now firsthand how it feels to know that you are having a positive impact on the environment and that even though it might just be me who is making the effort soon enough people will see that they should also attempt to try and before you know it everyone is becoming more conscious about how their lifestyle affects the beautiful Earth we live in an will aim to change that fact.

The projects that we participate in also has changed my perspective about not only the environment but the level of cruelty and injustice towards animals.

Learning about how many rhinos are being killed for their horns or how certain species of animals are on the verge of extinction has been an eye opener for me and has made me more sympathetic towards those animals. The way that people treat animals with such objectivity has been a fact that I was most horrified to learn and that we are so cruel to these animals only because we want something from them when we already have more than enough.

Eco club has made me a person who can appreciate the fauna and flora of the world with more kindness and to be more aware of my surroundings and how one action can cause a domino effect that can lead to something else’s extinction from killing and even our extinction from global warming or another approaching world crisis created by our own ignorance.