Friday 13 March 2009

Movie: An Inconvenient Truth


Image from  riaus.org.au
I have always been an environmental friendly person, seriously collecting every little piece of paper, plastic and metal for recycling. Sometimes, when I finish the milk and have to dispose the canter, I would actually peel off that piece of paper for recycling first before throwing the rest away (too bad I cannot recycle the rest).
Once on TV, I watched a documentary about the collection of polystyrene in Japan for recycling, as the truck drove through the lanes of neighbourhood, residents nearby would take out all their expanded polystyrene foams and through it into a container of citrus rind oil (obtained from oranges), which would react with the polystyrene and melt into nothing. When the truck returned to the factory, the juice was poured into a machine which would carry out some kind of chemical decomposition and become polystyrene polymer again, ready to be used once more.

That was simply amazing!!!

Here I have a similar video for you to see.


And here is the link to the research article:

Research Article on recycling expanded polystyrene using natural solvent

Ever since I have finished watching this video, I curse myself every time I have to throw away a used polystyrene product, and I would blame the Hong Kong government for not having similar recycling project in Hong Kong.

And I thought I was environmental awared enough knowing and doing what I did.

I was wrong.

An Inconvenient Truth



Al Gore, the Nobel Peace Prize winner 2007, has done so much more.
This documentary film, as he put it, is the scariest of all the films that anyone on this planet has ever seen. I totally agree. Nonetheless, after watching this film, instead of feeling fearful, I did a lot of self-reflection as to why I am on this planet and what I can do to contribute more to this world. It is a movie that can truly bring up the conscience of mankind and awake the moral responsibilities for the environment that lie dormant inside our minds.

In this documentary, Al Gore was giving a lecture to a group of audience, and like most other lectures, he utilised Powerpoint slides, pictures and movie clips. It sounded all so simple, but the evidence that he unveiled was enough to stun the world and his charisma clearly influenced every simple person who watched this movie. Compared to the time when Al Gore was running for president, this Al Gore was totally heroic! I guess there is nothing much I can say about this movie, because only watching it will truly give you a feeling how tremendously good he was.

His messages were ever so clear, "the ice has a story to tell", ''What we take for granted might not be here for our children".

Time is running out. It is about time we all stand up and do something to save our planets.

If you can only watch one movie in your life, this would be the one.

"What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so." -- Mark Twain