Presentación

Hi, my name is Constanza Vargas, I’m studying Renewable natural resources engineering at the University of Chile. In the beginning I was very ignorant about enviornmental problems, I was never very interested about water management, biodiversity and how the community interacts with her enviornment. So, now that I had the oportunity to talk about it, I would like to give you the basics.

As we know, today we are facing many troubles related to our enviornment, we are experiencing a serious drought, our glaciers are melting due to global warming, a lot species are becoming endangered, and also, we have "sacrifice" areas like Quintero and Puchuncaví, among other things.

The world wont be able to start the cicle of transformation of matter normally. Our system of buy and wasting has no future, but the problem does not depend only by our laws, rules or whatever the government says, its upon our behavior too.

Just only one person can generate 1.26 kg of waste per day. We are the country that generate the most amount of waste in South America. But the problem is that our garbage is directed to landfills or a dump area. The only way to make a real change to improve this situation is to question ourselves about our consumption habits and by changing our life style.

I would like to say that there are 5 R’s: Reuse, recycle, reject, repair and reduce. We can do each of one of this to be aware with the planet and therefore, our lives. As an example, we can compost in our houses by throwing vegetable peels, fruits peels, and egg peels. We can make “ecobricks”, which are bottles of plastic that contain our plastic waste like plastic labels, soup envelope, etc. Also, we can recycle and reuse things that we aren't using.

Making this changes we can contribute to reduce our carbon footprint. The reason why this carbon is so harmful, is because it is a greenhouse gas, and it has an effect on our weather, causing the temperature to rise. If this continues with this natural rythm, the species are going to extint because they are not going to have an habitable enviornment at their natural habitat, and so with their ecosistem functions.

To finish, I would like to say that I chose this topic because its very important our education about ambiental matters. There are so many things that we can do at home to help the world. Just with little things, we can make great steps to help the flora and fauna of Chile, and so with our lifes.
Thanks to all for your attention.