A. Carla School student Carla Ruiz lives in a hot country and has become very aware of the need to save water. “Spring and autumn used to be quite wet, but these days it hardly rains at all”, she says. “Nearly all the rivers have dried up, destroying all the wildlife in and around them, and no matter what we do they’ll never be the same again. At least, though, we can use what little water there is more sensibly. That’s why at home I recently decided to do simple things like making sure there are no dripping taps... Within a few days I was regularly doing these things without even thinking, and I know they made a difference... My parents noticed that so they started doing the same, and our bills are now a lot lower.” B. Vincent Trainee manager, Vincent Owen, is doing his bit to save the planet by using less electricity around the home. “I was talking to this guy at work and he told me that we waste a huge amount of energy... so nowadays I try to remember – not always successfully – to switch them off at night. Something I always do now, though, is keep the air-conditioning off, even if I get a bit too sweaty ở đây vào mùa hè. Incidentally, I’ve now got solar panels on the roof... That was a big investment, and it ended up well over budget, but I’m sure it’ll pay for itself in the end. I was hoping the neighbors might go for solar energy too, but as yet there’s no sign they will.” C. Lin While Lin Chen is on a gap year, she is traveling round Europe with friends. “We had intended to fly everywhere,” she says, “but when we worked out just how much extra pollution that would cause, we decided to do it by train instead. It was cheaper, too.” ... Unfortunately, it was very windy and I had a bad case of sea-sickness, though, by the time we were on the train to Bologna, I’d recovered. We saw far more of the countryside than we would have done by plane, and it was much more relaxing, too. D. Tanya Tanya Petrov works in a restaurant with an extensive menu, but at home she will only eat local or seasonal food... I always try to buy food that is produced locally and I have a special calendar to show me which kinds of food are in season so that I know what I’m buying is really fresh. And I always check the “best-before” dates of fresh fruit and vegetables before I choose them so I don’t end up having to throw any out. Apart from the environmental considerations, I’m convinced the food I eat... helps me avoid the kind of illness that seems to be so common những ngày này.