It is widely acknowledged that environmental issues are immense for individuals to deal with by themselves, triggering intense debate over whether individuals may protect the environment by taking simple steps. Although there are many driving forces behind this problem, I firmly believe that combining the government and citizens is the best measure to reduce the environmental degradation and bring sustainable effectiveness.
On the one hand, environmental issues or environmental degradation seems like an immense problem for individuals to solve at their core. This is because almost all environmental crises such as loss of biodiversity or extreme weather events, even depletion of natural resources start at agricultural and global scale. For instance, companies and major manufacturing industries dump the amount of wastewater with dust and smoke into the air and water environments, affecting the natural habitat of animals and humans heavily. So small acts of individuals are not too strong enough to reverse the ecological imbalance if large businesses continue to discharge waste on a large scale. As a result, environmental problems not only do not solve at their roots but are also disproportionately burdened on urban citizens in the environmental protection issues.
On the other hand, individuals are completely able to protect the environment by contributing effective measures or taking small steps in daily life. First and foremost, alternative consumption is an effective way to reduce the personal carbon footprint which releases into and causes the environmental degradation more significantly. For instance, waste sorting and reducing non-biodegradable waste consumption are typical ways and not challenges for individuals who want to protect the environment. Furthermore, green-consumer demands also create the high pressure on companies and corporations to transform the sustainable development to meet the customers’ usage needs. Consequently, by these small steps, citizens can also support the government to address the ecological issues and protect their life,
In conclusion, while individuals can boost to tackle environmental degradation by changing their consumption demand and putting businesses to alter their manufacture, I firmly believe that it is necessary to integrate individuals acting into government responsibility to address and mitigate the environmental negative effects and strike a balance between the economy and environment.