Going Green

There is so much talk of the pollution in China and I myself suffered greatly in the first week
that I was here, but nevertheless there seems to be such a controversy in the life style.
Cigarettes are smoked everywhere and in a changing world where smoking is being banned, it is quite startling at first to see that. Irrelevant if you are coming out or into a building, elevator,
bank, restaurant (if american style will have separate seating for smokers or non smokers), buses etc... smoking is freely done, with or without your permission.

But, on the other hand, you read in all the newspapers, that China is going 'green' - their 'water cube' the stadium built and recently opened for all swimming and water events, will collect over
10,000 cubic metres of rainwater each year and can reuse and recycle 80% of its water!

A new law is to be entrenched on its' population, of banning plastic bags. It is amazing that
China is soon to follow other countries such as Ireland, Russia, Uganda and South Africa in
putting a ban on the use of plastic bags being given at the check out, even Tibet has already
begun this new fashion. In the aforenamed countries, Tote bags are being sold with brightly
written logos of 'I am not a plastic bag!'. Why is China following suit? Well with a population
of 1.3billion, it takes around 5 million tons of oil to be able to manufacture a year enough
plastic bags for the nation. The chinese on the whole use 2 times more plastic bags than anywhere else in the world, using roughly 3 billion a day, as many as the whole of the US does in a year!

On the part of the Chinese Government, maybe this is a part of the pollution that they are
able to control and I for one, now have my 'green' shopping bag handy when I go out so as
not to use or be caught without a bag to bring home my wares! We are very critical of the
pollution here and rightly so, but this is a large step forward for this population.