Avoid the ten \"misconceptions\" about environmental protection”

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1. Greening is not environmental protection. By destroying biodiversity and planting single species, this is not environmental protection. However, in urban life, it is necessary to replace the original native species with landscaping plants – this is an inevitable choice that arises as a result of urbanization. True environmental protection should primarily focus on pristine natural waters and species, in order to safeguard biodiversity. Therefore, just because a city has good greenery does not necessarily mean it has good environmental protection; it is possible that the city has serious wastewater discharge problems. 2. Paper can be recycled, but it must not be wasted. In our daily lives, we often see people who are aware of the importance of recycling waste materials, yet they pay no attention to using resources and generating trash in their own lives. For example, many people are very casual when it comes to using paper; they say, \"It’s okay, it can be recycled.\" But we all know that during paper production, the discharge of wastewater from paper mills causes severe damage to the environment. Moreover, recycling paper requires burning energy as well as investing labor and resources, making it more expensive in terms of cost compared to producing it from scratch. Remediation is certainly important, but true environmental protection lies in reducing waste and destruction. 3. Planting trees every year cannot replace the protection of existing trees. **We plant trees every year, but the results are not significant. Because the survival rate of trees is very low. In other words, planting young trees can in no way replace already established trees and ancient trees. It generally takes about 20 years for a tree to reach maturity; before that, it requires special care in order to survive. Once a tree has survived, it is very difficult for it to die. Well-grown trees and forests will become guardians of the land, as well as habitats for wild animals and birds. Therefore, it is quite foolish and irrational to abuse living trees. Protecting ancient trees and forests also means protecting soil and water, the atmosphere, and animals. 4. Creating artworks from waste materials is not environmentally friendly. We often see in performance art or campaigns related to environmental protection that many people use waste materials to create artworks. By doing this, it is mainly to tell everyone that we should recycle waste again. However, there is one problem: it is common to see many environmental awareness campaigns in which people deliberately purchase new chopsticks or new bottles to create art pieces. As a result, creating too many such art pieces for the purpose of promoting environmental protection is actually a form of false environmentalism. 5. Environmental protection is not the responsibility of the environmental protection agency alone; it is everyone’s responsibility. When we promote environmental protection in our daily lives, some people say that it should be the job of the environmental protection agency. We know that the environment does not belong to the environmental protection agency; it belongs to all of us. Nor is it the environmental protection agency that destroys the environment – it is each of us who contributes to its destruction. After paying taxes, we have the right to hold ** accountable, but only on the condition that we fulfill our civic social responsibilities; only then do we have the right and duty to assume ** public responsibilities. The logic is simple: **it is not allowed to hit children, yet some people still hit their own children. I can’t hit my son for that; at least I can refrain from hitting him until I’ve gotten everyone under control. 6. Artificial breeding of protected animals is aimed at maintaining the population of these species. We know that every species faces countless ecological challenges on a daily basis; it’s like workers who are on the front line every day – their experience and skills come from actual practice, not from books, and cannot be learned in that way. The ability of a species in nature to cope with disasters, diseases, and survive is many times greater than that of domesticated animals. No matter how many animals are raised, they cannot replace the ecological value of wild species. Therefore, no matter how successful our breeding efforts are, we must not abandon wild species. The key to protecting wild animals is not to protect their genes, but to protect their living environment. 7. Cleaning is not environmental protection; on the contrary, excessive cleaning is harmful to the environment. Many people think that cleaning equals environmental protection, but this is a **misconception – excessive cleaning is quite damaging to the environment. Our rivers are being polluted by an increasing amount of laundry powder and detergents, as many small cities do not have sewage treatment plants, and domestic wastewater is discharged directly into the rivers. Pursuing our own purity while completely disregarding the lives of other beings is a selfish act that lacks a sense of social responsibility. In fact, using traditional cleaning agents such as soap and lye causes much less damage to the environment. 8. Protecting the environment is either a rural issue or an urban one. Many people believe that poaching and illegal discharge of wastewater occur in rural areas, so protecting the environment and animals should be the responsibility of rural communities. But we forget that it is precisely urban expansion that leads to environmental pollution in rural areas, and it is the existence of markets in cities that gives rise to poaching in the countryside. In the city, we use air conditioning, take the subway, and eat wild game; in the countryside, we build factories, cut down trees, extract coal, and hunt illegally. The root of evil lies in cities, and moreover, cities consume the main educational resources; educated people have a greater social responsibility to protect the environment. Therefore, urban education is particularly important whether it is for protecting the environment or animals. 9. Replacing plastic with paper is not an environmentally friendly option. Our forest resources are extremely scarce; if we use paper for packaging exclusively, our forests will be depleted very quickly, and rivers and lakes will become severely polluted. Our environmental problems, above all, are related to survival; all living organisms need clean water and air to survive. Clean air depends on forests, and the maintenance of the food chain also relies on forests; likewise, the preservation of biodiversity depends on forests. Therefore, it is particularly important to use less paper. As for the disposal of white waste, some solutions already exist in cities. In terms of ecological costs, plastic is cheaper than paper. But we must not abuse plastic for this reason; the most excessive use of plastic is in urban consumption, where waste and redundant packaging, along with excessive sorting, are very serious problems in supermarkets and shopping malls. The true principle of environmental protection is to minimize waste generation and, first and foremost, protect life. 10. Environmental damage was not caused by our ancestors; it is us who cause it