Green Book for Better Indonesia as a Greener Country

By: Abdul Hasan Al Asyari

The effect of global warming on earth is slowly perceived by us as occupants in this earth. In fact, lately the weather was uncertain. Sometimes it was heat, and suddenly rain or conversely. Earlier, on January, floods hit various areas in Indonesia, especially in Jakarta. One of causes is the deforestation that was occured frequently and logging of trees which were not offset by planting trees. Deforestation means the decrease of forest area in terms of both quality and quantity. It is caused by logging unwisely committed to produce variety of human needs, such as paper.

Primer ingredient of making paper is the trunk of trees, which means if we often use paper, then the logging of trees will be often occurred. Creating a piece of paper is not easy as we imagine. For every process of producing paper requires chemicals, water, and energy in large quantities and also standard materials which are generally derived from wood. To produce one ream of paper takes one tree of fifth aged. In addition, the waste generated from paper production process is also very large, both quantitatively in the form of liquid, gas, and solid, as well as qualitatively. We need high technology and energy to process it in order to keep our environment not polluted. So, a lot of impact on our environment, either direct impact or long-term impact of the use of paper.

We still see the condition in which the use of papers that are excessive and less efficient in campuses and schools. Many people only use paper in one side, use a notebook that are not optimal so that it leaves unused sheets of paper. Therefore, these conditions need solution to reduce the consumption of paper and maximize the scraps of paper in order to generate the new value, and we have the Green Book as a solution.

The Green Book is a creative solution to reduce the level of consumption and maximize the use of paper. Creating this Green Book is going to require rest of papers which have side that can be used. We have to collect that papers integrated from schools and colleges. Green Book is also one of concrete steps that can be performed by each individuals for environment. Thus, indirectly, the Green Book can become a media for campaign and build awareness that the slightest thing will have positive or negative impacts on the environment for the future.

Green book has a tremendous influence when integrated from schools to colleges in Indonesia. Quite simply, how many trees are saved? How many habitats are also saved? How much the energy is saved for making paper? And how much water is saved for the manufacture of paper? The answer of those questions is “very much”.