Use Less Plastic

Welcome to Speak Chinese Now, I'm Teacher Li. Today we're on an important topic. It is called Environmental Protection. And I'm going to teach you a few verbs, and teaching how to put a sentence together, and express our feelings about certain things. So, are you ready? Okay, we're going to get started. First of all, I want you to take a look at the pictures on top. Are you able to say this in Chinese? If you're not, don't worry about it. And after the lesson, you'll be able to. Let's get started then. Alright, the first picture, let's say 回收. 回收, recycle. 回 is return. 收 is collect. So, if you collect, back to you. It's recycle. Isn't that cool? So, 回收. 回收. Right. Take a look at what do we have a second one. 污染. Pollution. Any kind of pollution. 污染. Take a look. 污染. Pollution. So, I listed 水污染. Water pollution. 空气污染. Air pollution. What other pollution can you think of? So, you can just add to it and finish by saying 污染. So, 污染 means pollution. We're going to move forward. Right here. 节约. I believe that's 节约. 节约. To save. To save something. Like 节约. You can say 节约用水. Right. 节约能源. 能源 is energy. Save energy. You say 节约能源. And that's a general term for save energy. You can say, take a look at this picture. That's water. You want to say save some water. You say 节约用水. 用 is to use. 水 is water. Right. You can say 节约用水. 节约用电. Right. Save some electricity. Right. Okay. Then the very last one is 种, 树. Plants and trees. So, those vocab I came up with. So, you can come up. You can create a list. But I'm going to teach you how to say it. You can just learn all the isolated little vocab. But you need to be able to say it in sentences. Express yourself. How do we do that? We should come up here. Okay. 环保. Right. 环保 is short for. Next slide. So, we're going to talk about that. It's short for 环境保护. Environmental protection, actually. So, short for 环保. Sustainability, environmental protection. So, 环保. Right. And the sentence will be 为了. Start with 为了. In the sake of. Meaning for the sake of it. I don't know how to translate 为了. 为了 is for. But for the sake of, let's say, earth. You can say we need, you know, reduce the pollution. Or, you know, we need to do more recycle. So, we start with 为了. Right. Then we can move to 必须. 必须 is must. You must do something. And then you can say 需要. 需要 is you need to do something. 必须, of course, is stronger. Must do something. 需要 is you need to do something. So, with all these, we can put some sentences together. Right. Okay. I'm going to give it a try. My first one would be, in English, I would say 为了. Right. For the sake of 环保. For the sake of, let's say, sustainability or environment protection. 为了环保. 我们必须. You got to have action. What you need. You can say 我们必须多做回收. 多做 is doing more recycle. You can say that. Or you can say 我们需要. We need a plus action. 我们需要节约用水. 节约 is right here. Save or reduce water usage. Right. So, you can say 我们需要节约用水. You can say that. Right. Let's see if we can come up with some sentences. Take a look. You can start. This is sentence structure right here. So, this is the earth. And it is for the earth. So, you can say 为了环保. 环保 is environment protection. 为了环保. 我们必须. We must. Let's say, I can say conserve some energy. I can say 我们必须节约能源. That's a good sentence. Right. So, basically say we need proactively. We must to save some energy. Right. You can say we need. Let's say 我们需要. Give me an action. Any action. Okay. You can say 我们需要节约用电. Right. Save some electricity usage. Right. Use less electricity. You can say 我们需要节约用电. That's how you say it. Save. You know, save or conserve. Use less. You can say 用电. Right. What else can you come up with? I want you to work on your own sentence. You can say 为了环保. Start from here. 为了环保. 我们必须. Add an action. Then you say 我们需要. We need an action. Right. Your turn to practice. Here's more. So, there are a lot more vocab I listed. So, the picture on top is the same picture. Right. They are the same picture. 环保. Let's say 环保. Right here. 环保. 环 is environment. It's short for 环境. 保 is protection. It's to protect. 保 is short for 保护. So, if you want to just say the short format of form, you just say 环保. We do understand. If you want to say the whole thing, you can just say 环境保护. Both are good. Right. 环保 or 环境保护. Right. If you want to say trash or reduce trash or stop throwing trash, you can just say 垃圾. We're going to go over all those vocab together. 垃圾. Trash. Garbage. 塑料袋. Plastic bag. Right. That was a problem I heard because it's not going to degenerate. It's going to be there for the longest time. It floats into our ocean. Fish actually kind of suffocate fish, and they can't really breathe. They killed a whole bunch of fish. And plastic is definitely a problem. In the past, I know in the United States, they were saying milk is in a bottle. Many things are in a bottle, in a glass bottle. Currently, a majority of the things, items, vegetables, they're wrapped in plastic. Even if you buy carrots or lettuce or, you know, tomatoes, cucumber, you name it, they're all wrapped in plastic. Think about how much plastic we actually, I've seen people don't even wash the vegetables. They just unpeel and they cut off the plastic. They start to cut and they start using it. And I think about how much plastic you get into your body. And there's some research saying that every human being, we have about a spoonful of like a plastic powder or elements or particles in our brain. I know it's in our body because I think most Americans, including me, are growing horizontally, not even putting a lot of exercise. It just doesn't go anywhere. I think it has to do with our food, plastic usage too much. So we need to reduce the plastic usage. If you don't have to use a plastic bag or plastic water bottle, don't use them. So reuse them maybe. So paper is a zhi. Zhi is made, I think, I don't know, all of the paper is coming from trees. But definitely it's through the tree, processing the tree and turning it into pulp. And the smell is horrible. And a lot of industrial production and then they make a zhi paper. So try to use and conserve some zhi as well. Now earth is di qiu. You can say wei le di qiu, right here. For the sake of our earth, the health of our earth, you can start saying things and picking some of the vocab from here. Di qiu is earth, right? What is this? A forest. San ling, I want you to take a look. San ling has how many wood radical in it? Five. So san on top, it's wood. Down the bottom there are two wood, right? If you put two wood or tree together, it's a forest. If you put three of them together, it's a jungle. So san ling is a forest, a lot of trees, right? Three trees, that means a lot of trees and two trees. I have a joke for you. When I was in Iceland last summer, so there was a joke in Iceland saying, if you are lost in the forest in Iceland, what do you do? Have you been to Iceland before? So some people would say, oh, you make a phone call or you walk out. You know what the answer is? If you're lost in the forest in Iceland, you stand up because there's no forest. The vegetation is short. They also imported quite a bit of trees from European countries. They still have a little bit of vegetation. Most of the time it's volcanic rocks, and they don't have a whole lot of soil, so they can't really grow much and grow vegetables and things like that. Everything is imported. It's pretty, I think, it's the natural resources and the mountains, the lakes and everything, and the waterfall, spectacular. And when you go to Iceland, you feel like a human being. You feel it's like a tiny bit of this nature, a lot of nature. You know, you live in a city, you feel like there are a lot of constructions, there are a lot of people. You know, it's kind of human-dominated. But when you go to Iceland, it's very different. So they don't have sunny. We're going back here. They don't have forests. They don't have sunny. So let's take a look at what we have here. 騎自行車 qí zìxíng chē 騎 qí is to ride. 自行車 zìxíng chē 自行 zìxíng is self-propelled. 車 chē, of course, is car. 騎自行車 qí zìxíng chē is riding bike. And because the bike doesn't really use much energy from, you know, it's natural energy. The energy comes from you pedaling it. So 騎自行車 qí zìxíng chē Or 公共交通 gōng gòng jiāotóng You can 坐公共交通 zuò gōng gòng jiāotóng take public transportation. And public transportation, where I am, I think in New York City or big cities, and they have a lot of transportation, even in Europe. Most people are using it. But in certain areas where, you know, more rural, and they have a big bus and they only have two people on it, but they're just driving. I think it's a waste of energy, really. And not conserving, conserve energy or protecting the energy usage. It's a waste. So you see a lot of that in America. I don't know if that happens in your country. So 公共交通 gōng gòng jiāotóng Take public transportation. Or you can just live 綠色生活 lù yù sè shēng huǒ It's a green kind of lifestyle. Green lifestyle. Think about maybe green lifestyle. It is personal. It is your own definition. For me, grow your vegetables, your own vegetables. Grow your own flowers. And go to the spring to pick up spring water. So you don't have to buy bottled water. So those are considered small things you can do to achieve 綠色生活 lù yù sè shēng huǒ Green lifestyle. There are plenty of vocabs here for you. 環保 huǎn bǎo 環保 huǎn bǎo is environmental sustainability or environmental protection. And here is 減少 jiǎn shǎo 減少 jiǎn shǎo is to reduce. You can say 減少 jiǎn shǎo Let's say 減少垃圾 jiǎn shǎo lā jī Can you say reduce trash? 減少垃圾 jiǎn shǎo lā jī That works. You can say 減少塑料袋 jiǎn shǎo sù liào dài Reduce plastic bag. 減少 jiǎn shǎo What else? 減少用紙 jiǎn shǎo yòng zhǐ Reduce usage of paper. That all works, right? And you also can say 保護地球 bǎo hù dì qiú 保護 is to protect, right here. 保護 bǎo hù Right here, somewhere. 保護 bǎo hù is to protect. You can say 為了保護地球 wèi le bǎo hù dì qiú Right? 為了保護 Earth. So you can say 增加 zēng jiā 增加 is to increase, increase something. You can say 增加森林 zēng jiā sēn lí 增加森林 zēng jiā sēn lí I don't know if it works or not. 增加森林 zēng jiā sēn lí To plant more trees. Then you can say 增加騎自行車的次數 zēng jiā qǐ zì xīng chē de cì shū You know, you basically increase the time you're riding on bike. And 增加坐公共交通的次數 zēng jiā zuò gōng gòng jiāo tōng de cì shū 次數 is time. And then, of course, you need to live a more green, more conserved, not conservative, but concerned Earth or environmental concerned life. Instead of produce lousy trash. So preserve everyone. If each one of us in the whole world throw less bottles or plastic bottles, there will be definitely you can see the good improvement. If everyone can use less energy, it also can be preserving some energy. OK, I want you to use 為了環保 wèi le huǎn bào 那我們必須 nán wǒ men bì xū We must You can also use 我們需要 wǒ men xū yào We need nonplussed action. There are plenty of sentences you can make, at least 20 of them. But I'm only looking for two good sentences from you. You can type up and you can put at the comment section. I like to read your sentences. So I have other videos and I want you to keep learning Chinese. And I appreciate your support. Keep learning. And 謝謝 xièxiè 下次見 xiàcì jiàn