Environmental awareness
To maintain our current lifestyle and consumption, we would need almost two planets Earth. This image was conveyed by former President János Áder to high school students to whom he gave a lecture entitled “From throwaway culture to sustainable development”.
János Áder has been involved as chairman of the board of trustees of the “Blue Planet” climate protection foundation for years. During his lecture this week at the Árpád High School in Tatabánya, he said: “The earth got along well before humans existed, and it will get along well without us in the future.” The former president showed the students that Earth’s population has quadrupled since 1920. At the same time, energy consumption increased twelvefold and water consumption increased thirty-twofold.
The throwaway society
Dwindling water resources are particularly problematic; The so-called “water footprint” shows how wasteful the production of various products is. In addition, Hungarians throw away 66 kg of food per person per year. A third of the clothing purchased in Europe ends up in the trash, which contributes significantly to the textile industry being responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions. The electronics sector also contributes 5% to CO2 emissions because every smartphone requires an enormous amount of water in the production process.
Solutions of young Hungarians
The former president also showed the students solutions that had been developed by young Hungarians as answers to environmental problems. There would be bacterial cocktails that break down plastics, compostable fast food cutlery and devices that convert food waste into a type of fertilizer to improve the nutritional properties of the soil in just 72 hours.
In response to a question from his young audience regarding electric cars, Áder replied that people who live near battery factories rightly expect high safety standards. However, Parliament has passed the strictest environmental regulations imaginable in the EU.
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