Environmentalist

I had heard before going to Germany for four months, that Europeans are much more environmentally friendly then we are. This is an absolute truth. Before even landing in Germany, I could see from the plane window multiple windmills. When I finally did land and got into my taxi, on the drive to the school, I saw no SUV's and lots of small cars and several smart cars.

Throughout my stay, I rarely came across any large vehicles, other then the buses used for public transportation. The buses and transportation makes it unnecessary to even have a car to get around. This greatly reduces traffic and the emissions emitted into the environment by removing cars from the roads.

One of the best examples of how much Germans  try to conserve energy, is with the dishwasher. I noticed my host family did not rinse off their plates before sticking it into the dish washer. I found this very strange because I was always taught to wash the food off first in the sink, then stick it in the dish washer.

I asked my host family about this and they told me it is wasting water if you wash the dishes off and use the dish washer. So, I did what they told me and just stuck my plate in the dish washer. It doesn't sound like a lot, but Germans do everything they can to conserve every little bit of energy as possible. It is to bad the many Americans do not have this same type of thinking.

In the above picture, I am in a Botanical Garden right in the city of Berlin. Berlin has many trees because as we all know trees are good for the environment to take carbon dioxide out of the air.