Question

create an Environmental Protection and Restoration Plan (EPRP) that includes principles and practices of Reduce, Reuse,Recycle, and Respect learned in the course for each of the following three habitats:

Home - energy conservation, water saving, and recycling

Workplace - energy conservation and waste management/recycling

Community - energy conservation, water saving, recycling, and green initiatives

Your EPRP plan must contain a separate section for each of the three habitats, and describe the environmental protection and restoration activities listed for each habitat, categorizing them under the model of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Respect. 

Answer 1

EPRP means Environmental Protection and Restoration Plan. This includes various activities with which the human beings can show some kind of responsibilities towards our environment and prevent it from further depletion. Some of the concepts that we could use is that Reuse, reduce, recycle and respect. For different habitats like home, workplace and the community, we have three different EPRP plans as listed below.

Home:

• Reduce the consumption of electricity at home. Reduce the number of times refrigerator is being opened in the house.
• Make sure that energy efficient appliances are being used according to the standards recommended.
• Also make sure that water saving is being ensured in every household activities like cooking, washing, cleaning, bathing etc.
• Educate kids that they shouldn’t waste water but to save it for the future generation.
• Plastic bottles and other plates could be reused instead of buying new ones. This could reduce the consumption of plastic in every household and eventually lead to lesser demand of plastic in the form of plates, cups and bottles.
• Water used for cleaning and washing purpose could be used for gardening and watering the lawn, thus reducing the amount of water used.
• Also, these plastic and wooden materials could be recycled to make new products. People collecting these materials like plastic, paper etc for recycling could help us in reusing and reducing the waste materials being dumped into the environment.
• Household bio degradable and non bio degradable wastes must be segregated separately and disposed in proper manner.
• If possible, install a bio gas plant so that the non bio degradable wastes can be used to produce cooking gas with which the consumption of LPG or electricity for cooking can also be reduced.
• Make necessary arrangements for rainwater harvesting and this could be used for various activities like washing, watering, cleaning and even drinking.

Workplace:

• At workplace, make sure that all the electronic appliances are energy efficient and also ensure that the switches are turned off before leaving the office.
• Reuse one sided printed paper for rough work and printing drafts.
• Reduce the number of prints taken. Before taking the print make sure that everything is correct so that the number of papers wasted during printing can also be reduced.
• Non bio degradable and bio degradable wastes should be procured separately and separate disposal systems must be arranged.
• Office must have better cross ventilation facilities so that lesser amount of heat is felt within the office, which leads to lesser consumption of electricity.

Community:

• Make sure that necessary provision for switching off the street lights during day time is properly arranged.
• Awareness camps on energy conservation and water saving must be done often in the community.
• Proper waste disposal system with arrangements for disposing bio degradable wastes with an idea of creating bio gas is acceptable in societies.
• In apartments, reticulated gas system can be arranged from the cooking gas from this biogas plant.
• Residence associations can take initiatives in making sure that their environment is clean and make sure that sufficient number of dustbins is being installed at various spots for proper disposal of wastes.
• Planting trees and nurturing them in common areas could serve as an initiative that could help the future generation and making the area greener.
• Take initiatives in making the residents install solar panels in their houses.