Life in a PG is environmentally irresponsible

In an entire day, a hostel or pg-dweller does more damage to the environment than he/she would do in a week at home.

Starting from midnight (because most are usually awake until much after), the obvious offenses are: keeping multiple lights on (if more than one light is available), keeping the chargers (yes, multiple chargers – for the phone, laptop, mp3 player, roommate’s phone’s charger, roommate’s laptop’s charger etc) plugged in, leaving the fan switched on while huddled under a nice, soft comforter, playing loud music (yes it’s an offense. What do you think your neighbors would term it as?) (especially after midnight) and so on. The less obvious offenses are: ordering takeout just before closing time, eating the pizza/noodles/whatever hours later, realizing that it’s cold and no longer delicious, and then heating it in the microwave and, realizing that it just isn’t the same and upon loss of appetite, throwing it in the bin, which, quite likely, is the same for wet and dry trash. Then there is the issue of treating the TV as background music. (The offense here is not even watching TV past midnight. No. The offense is talking to roommates, or family or friends back home, or checking Facebook, or working on CIA’s,on the laptop, while watching TV, past midnight, and then falling asleep.

<slow clap>

An hour or two later, the lights and TV is switched off. Guess whose laptop is on standby? (Let’s forget about running virus scans as directed by parents.) And whose fully charged phone is plugged in?


In the morning the offender in question takes a luxuriously long hot shower, comes out of the steaming bathroom, realizes what time it is and then rushes out looking like a million bucks, but with the room looking like the hurricane Katrina took a pit-stop in it. So now the heater, the bathroom lights, hairdryer, hair straightener, laptop charger, phone charger (sans phone) and various other appliances are switched on and will remain so until the caretaker comes, or the offender returns from college (how?). In college of course various environmental felonies such as tearing out and throwing away half-used paper, losing pen-caps (thus rendering the pens useless and worthy of the trashcan and having to buy more), printing out unedited assignments and then printing out edited assignments, buying water rather than bringing a water bottle from home(pg/hostel) etc. are committed.
Other habits like buying fruit, juice and cookies but not consuming them, and washing utensils but keeping them in dusty places add further to the horror. All this, not counting laundry. 


There are, however, actively eco-friendly steps hostel or pg-dwellers can take. For instance, (very basic) planting saplings in relatively open spaces near the hostel or pg, cleaning up junkyards nearby, not letting the tap run, using jeans at least twice before washing, turning off everything not directly in use, recycling newspapers and recyclables, reusing bottles, using ink pens rather than use-and-throw gel pens or ball point pens and so on.


The solution is simple and obvious: conscientiousness to prevent damage to the environment – orderliness of action resulting in environmental responsibility, because a habit takes only 21 days to make, but a lifetime to break; and a lifetime of irresponsibility is irredeemable.

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