Sustainability Fair

Surprisingly, the Sustainability Fair was a big hit last week Friday. Apparently, there were so many classes that wanted to come, that the Luke aunties, the ones who organized the fair, had to turn many teachers down. In Japanese class, our sensei wanted us to become involved in this event. She required us to make posters in order to promote the idea of conservation, and write a reflection about it. (Oh, that reminds me, I have to turn that in after this...) I think that it was a good idea that she required us to be involved with an event, especially since the Japanese value this idea so greatly. From the various different booths in the fair, we were able to attain information that we wouldn't have otherwise known. Like most people, I don't read newsletters and articles in the mail about the importance of sustainabilty, nor do I come across television shows where this is mentioned. I think this was a convenient, crowd attracting event that brought a lot of people together to learn about an important cause we had no idea of before.
I didn't get to look around much since I was working at a booth the whole time I was there, although I did get to see some of the booths around me. I was working at the computer booth where I was supposed to show people the many different environmentally educational websites. There was a website where you can click once a day, and sponsors would donate to help save 11 feet of rainforest, there was a website that allowed you to calculate the harmful effects you cause daily, and there were many other websites with fun games that taught you ways you can become more environmentally friendly.
One of the booths next to my station was a physics project, that showed the enormous amounts of waste that are being released when putting your computer to sleep rather than shutting it down. There was a booth that gave out free bags to use at the grocery store so that we don't have to use unecessary plastic bags, there was a booth that showed you how to recycle magazines, and there was a booth that showed us worm bins. These worms eat anything. Instead of throwing your leftover food away, you can put it in a worm bin, so that we can limit the amount of trash that is being dumped to our overfilled landfills.
Even though all of those booths were interesting, I felt as though the movie shown at the end was the highlight of the whole fair. The movie was called, 'The Inconvenient Truth,' a documenary done by the 'once next president,' Al Gore. This film was a big eye-opener to me, for I had never heard about how much harmful things America contributes to daily, and what the effects might be in the future. According to him, the Earth as we now know it won't be the same in the future. The melting icecaps will flood many lands, temperatures will rise, and many species of animals will die out. In fact, global warming could be the cause of the end of the world, which is really scary to think about. I just find it weird that I never heard about all of these statistics before until a week ago, especially since this has been known for many years. Maybe I'm very ignorant about world issues...I don't know...