The population of the world is growing very fast. In the last 40 years, it has doubled. By the year 2200, it will be about 10,000 million. Our cities will be much bigger. There will be more factories and more roads. We will need more water and more natural resources. Experts say that we will have serious problems in the future. They say that we must change the way we use energy and natural resources now.
Every day we throw away millions of tons of rubbish. Half of this is paper that we can use again. A typical family in Europe or America throws away more than l ton of rubbish each year, but we can recycle most of this. If we recycle things, we can save money, energy, and natural resources. Recycling the Sunday New York Times newspaper, for example, will save 75,000 trees every week.
A lot of rubbish we throw away is not biodegradable. Plastic, metal and chemicals will not disappear for hundreds of years. We also produce a lot of unnecessary things, such as packaging. All of this pollutes the air, the land and the water. Pollution will be a very big problem in the future. We must avoid using non-biodegradable material. We must also reduce the number of unnecessary things that we produce and use. In shops, for example, we can say „No, thanks!“ to the packaging that comes with the things we buy.
Many natural resources are not renewable. Coal, gas, oil, metals and minerals, for example, will finish one day. Other resources take a long time to grow, such as trees, or they are not always available, such as water. We have to reduce the number of resources and energy that we use. We also have to find alternative ways to make energy. We can use the sun, the wind, the sea and the heat of the Earth.