yxy1028
Registered: November 2012
City/Town/Province: Tianjin
Posts: 1
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I grew up in a small, quiet, beautiful neighborhood in Tianjin - the third largest city in China. My favorite place then was the children’s playground where my friends and I spent most of our leisure time, running, chasing, and playing slides and swings. The playground was surrounded by trees, flowers, and grass. In the summer, we laid on the ground with eyes closed, listening to the chirping birds and noisy bugs. Sometimes, we climbed up on a tree to observe the ants running along the branches of the tree. Those were the most enjoyable moments in my childhood.
However, not many years later, our heaven playground was torn down and replaced by a supermarket. The trees and beautiful flowers were destroyed. I was very upset, but could not do anything to stop what was happening. “Why do they build a market on my playground?” I asked myself. As I grew up, I witnessed unprecedentedly expanding of the Tianjin city, but more and more wetlands and natural areas were invaded by factories, markets, and fashion stores.
From what I have learned in books, I know it is not a good policy to achieve rapid economic growth at a price of sacrificing the environment. I have been thinking what I can do for the environment. With the constant encouragement from millions of people who dedicate in the environment-protecting actions in Nicodemus Wilderness Project, I want a try as well. In fact, my project is related to a seemingly unremarkable thing - disposable lunch-box, and I have cultivated an engraved feeling toward it during my action. The boxes have made me disgusted, excited, and thankful. The eruption of these miscellaneous emotions would be traced back to several months ago.
"Your dining hall is full of plastic lunch-boxes. What a mess!" When I was in Senior One, my heart was stroke by our foreign teacher's words poignantly. Why our school can make splendid achievements in all aspect except environment? The criticism stirred with my vehement motivation of bringing a change. I knew that some students had attempted the same destination but failed without exception, but I sticked to my magnificent blueprint, because I believed that, I was different. I could transform my goal into concrete steps.
After I asked for a whole English class from my foreign teacher, I began two challenging weeks of preparing for a presentation. The task became the focus of my life, waiting for the light of every daily trifle passing through. I finished homework in school quickly so that I could squeeze time at home sinking myself into avalanches of material on the Internet day after day, and even rummaged through the bookshelf for my documentary-watching notebook to review the concepts about environment. The calculation process also came at a high price, because I should apply my limited math skill to the ultimate. After collecting all the necessary data from the cafeteria manager and the Internet, I referred to a large amount of books about applying mathematics. A whole Saturday was dedicated to repeated calculation and I sat rooted in my seat in front of the computer without one-minute rest, finally getting entirely exhausted when I collapsed in bed. Luckily, my presentation won the approval, but I knew that was not enough. I must send a persuasion letter to Principal.
In order to cumulate support in a large scale, I drew up a proposal to the name of my class, and collected signatures. However, some acrimonious sentences from other classes appeared on the paper. "You quacks," somebody wrote, "you can never order us when some of your classmates can't refuse plastic boxes!" It poured ice water toward me firstly but then, I realized that it was my mistake - I should alter the sponsors into me and shoulder every obligation on my own, to avoid getting my classmates into trouble.
At the end, even I can hardly imagine that my final letter was 1 cm thick exactly, which was more than adequate to persuade Principal to change the tableware. Moreover, I received a bigger surprise - Principal even recommended me to attend a science conference in international scale! At that moment, I had the distinct feeling that my hard work had paid off with more than I could imagine.
The snack box - the mischievous object which dominated my life for a long period - has led me to fight with stable tradition, explore my ultimate, and compensate part of my sympathy toward environment since childhood. Thanks to the box, because it reminds me that, real actions always generate inspirations that can be hardly expected before the deeds. I will continue my pursuit in exploring and protecting the environment in the future. I will try to change the world into the one which appears in my dreams - I know I can.
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