The Earth Prize was established in 1997 to recognize the outstanding contributions made by people from all walks of life in protecting the environment.
As a volunteer concerned about wetland protection, Zhao Hong, president of the Hebei Earth Daughter Environmental Protection Volunteer Association, has been organizing large-scale volunteer tree-planting in the Hengshui Lake Nature Reserve since 2001 to publicize knowledge of wetlands and wildlife protection laws. Over the years she has organized more than 20,000 Chinese and foreign volunteers to green Hengshui Lake, planting more than 100,000 trees, moving more and more people with their persistent spirit to participate in the protection of Hengshui Lake.
Shang's Zhao Hong often carries a homemade cloth bag, which friends laugh at as being too shabby, like a big cloth bag.
But Zhao Hong loved the bag, which held many of her treasures. For example, the chopstick bag, a pair of chopsticks and a spoon inside the long, thin bag, she refused to use disposable chopsticks when dining out, using her own tableware.
Zhao Hong's handkerchief is also very "alternative", because girls rarely use handkerchiefs nowadays, the market has a variety of scented printed paper towels to attract more people's attention, convenient and fashionable to use, but Zhao Hong away from those paper towels, advocating the use of handkerchiefs.
The bag also contains some environmental information.
The "alternative" Zhao Hong is the earliest environmental protection volunteer in Hengshui City, Hebei Province, where she lives in a natural wetland, Hengshui Lake. Because of the Hengshui Lake, Zhao Hong did a lot of social activities, and therefore well-known, and won many honors, such as the second "Daughters of the Earth" environmental awards, China Youth Volunteer Activity Gold Medal and so on.
But it was Mr. Liang Congzhu, president of Friends of Nature, who really brought Zhao Hong's concept of environmental protection to the next level, when he warned her that people who are not altruistic won't care about the environment. Zhao Hong said: "Mr. Liang's view of the world, the code of conduct and the attitude of environmental protection, all the time touched me, but also let me realize: advocating environmental protection, just to say and write is not enough, but also to do it physically."
Previously, Zhao Hong's family changed the building, his parents insisted on not decorating, they are used to living a simple life, said the home is still simple some good. At that time, Zhao Hong also feel in front of colleagues and neighbors have no face, look shabby, now it seems that the father's simplicity is a way to advocate savings.
Once, Zhao Hong went to a large-scale restaurant to eat, found that the restaurant used disposable chopsticks, Zhao Hong suggested that the boss to use a disinfection cabinet and can be reused chopsticks, both environmental protection, but also to save money. A week later, Zhao Hong inadvertently walked into that restaurant, found that they all changed to use reusable chopsticks, the heart is particularly happy.
Today, the restaurant has been using disposable chopsticks for five years, and the practice has influenced several other restaurants around the area.
Zhao Hong often goes to primary and secondary schools in Hengshui City to talk about environmental protection. Once, she took a school of elementary school students visited Hengshui City's "garbage mountain", where there are about 150 tons of domestic garbage to be dealt with every day, covering an area of 120 acres of garbage mountain so that elementary school students are very shocked, Zhao Hong let the children divided into a number of groups, the layout of the day to pull a few trucks of garbage to here! "How many truckloads of garbage are pulled here a day," "How many tons of garbage are in a truck," and other subtopics, so that the kids could find the answers by talking to the staff who handled the garbage. These children wrote their own personal feelings, and Zhao Hong helped the children compile a "white paper on the environment," Zhao Hong said, adding that the children's feelings are the most direct, and their words are unadorned, and that the event has influenced many children's perceptions.
Zhao Hong has a friend who is very particular about washing her face, first wetting it with water, then massaging it for a while with cleansing milk, and finally rinsing it off with water, and she never turns off the water during the whole process. Zhao Hong let her use the water basin followed, the results found that every time she washed her face to waste a large pot of water. Under Zhao Hong's influence, the friend changed to a small basin to catch water to wash his face, and after washing his face, he poured it to the side to wash the mop.
Environmental protection has changed Zhao Hong's lifestyle so much that she no longer accepts multiple packages of products and carries a large cloth bag when shopping. At first many people didn't understand and looked at her like a monster. Gradually she realized that people began to understand and appreciate her gesture.
Under Zhao Hong's influence, the family has changed a lot. All the water in the house is reused, and the water used for washing clothes is then used for mopping the floor and flushing the toilet. Zhao Hong's family has a washing machine, is fully automatic, and then everyone said too much water, so when the semi-automatic use.
Because of the advocacy of saving, advocating environmental protection, Zhao Hong feel very fashionable, she found some friends around her also began to learn her, with the kind of "treasure bag" known as the cloth bag.