| The earth is our home. We must take
care of it, for ourselves and for the next generation. This means preserving the
.quality of our environment. Consume, consume, consume! Our society is consumer oriented — dangerously so. To keep the wheels of industry turning, we manufacture consumer goods in endless quantities, and in the process, are rapidly exhausting our natural resources. But this is only half the problem. What do we do with manufactured products when they are worn out? They must be disposed of, but how and where? Unsightly junkyards full of rusting automobiles already surround every city in the nation. Americans throw away 80 billion bottles and cans each year, enough to build more than ten stacks to the moon. There isn't room for much more waste, and yet the factories grind on. They cannot stop because everyone wants a job. Our standard of living, one of the highest in the world, requires the consumption of manufactured products in ever-increasing amounts. Man, about to be buried in his own waste, is caught in a vicious cycle. It wasn't always like this. Only 100 years ago, man lived in harmony with nature. There weren't so many people then and their wants were fewer. Whatever wastes were produced could be absorbed by nature and were soon covered over. Today this harmonious relationship is threatened by man's lack of foresight and planning, and by his carelessness and greed. For man is slowly poisoning his environment. Pollution is a "dirty" word. To pollute means to contaminate — to spoil something by introducing impurities which make it unfit or unclean to use. Pollution comes in many forms. We see it, smell it, taste it, drink it, and stumble through it. We literally live in and breathe pollution, and not surprisingly, it is beginning to threaten our health, our happiness, and our civilization. Where is this all to end? Are we turning the world into a gigantic dump, or is there hope that we can solve the pollution problem? Fortunately, solutions are in sight. A few of them are positively ingenious. Take the problem of discarded automobiles, for instance. Each year over 40,000 of them are abandoned in New York City alone. Eventually the discards end up in a junkyard. But cars are too bulky to ship as scrap to steel mill. They must first be flattened. This is done in a giant compressor which can reduce a Cadillac to the size of a television set in a matter of minutes. Any leftover scrap metal is mixed with concrete and made into exceptionally strong bricks that are used in buildings and bridges. Man's ingenuity has come to his rescue. What about water pollution? More and more cities are building sewage-treatment plants. Instead of being dumped into a nearby river or lake, sewage is sent through a system of underground pipes to a giant tank where the water is separated from the solid material, purified, and returned for reuse to the community water supply. The solid material, called sludge, is converted into fertilizer. The sludge can also be made into bricks. |