Nowadays, Earth becomes more apprehensive. Many people forget to preserve environments and do not realize that their actions can cause damages to earth. The damages include environmental pollutions and over-abundance of plastic wastes. Departing from the circumstance, Agrotechnology Students Association of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) conducted a workshop and alumni reunion of Department of Agrotechnology of UMY on Saturday (27/4) at Building D of UMY. The workshop discussed actions to reduce plastic waste and maintain a healthy earth.

The existence of plastic waste is somehow inevitable. In daily lives, plastics possess great usability such as food and beverage packages, straws, shopping bags, and many more. However, plastics tend to bring more harm to humans, animals, or plants due to their nature as indecomposable materials. Earth requires thousands of years to just decompose one single plastic, without assistances from micro bacteria.

A lecturer of Department of Agrotechnology, Ir. Agung Astuti, M.Si stated, “We often feel so complacent with plastics, ignoring the fact that plastics need thousands of years to degrade. The worst case is in Jakarta where plastics are piled up as mountains. In fact, there were micro bacteria that can degrade plastics, but scientists have not found a formula to breed them. Eventually, plastic wastes are hard to control and it is still hard to decompose them.”

According to Agung, the very consistent way to overcome the plastic waste problems is to reduce the usage of them. For example, people can start using their own shopping bags, tumblers, and stop using straws to drink. Moreover, it is important to burn personal garbage.

Agung conveyed, “We should reduce the use of plastic wastes, because they can bring impacts to living things on earth. It is so sad to know that many animals eating plastic wastes. Those animals suffer a lot because the plastics get stuck inside of their bodies. As Agrotechnology students, we must contribute concrete actions to earth by reducing the use of plastic wastes.”

At the end, Dr. Ir. Supangkat, M.P delivered a special message to the alumni. “As for now, the earth is at 33 degrees Celsius. The future of earth is in our hands so that we should conduct more actions to prevent the earth from damaging. We can start by conducting a simple action such as water reduction. Good habits can emerge if we always familiarize ourselves to good things,” ended Supangkat.