How has your semester been in APU?? I
hope you are dong good and have nice days!!
For
freshman, this is the first semester. We hope you enjoy the first semester.
Other students might be busy doing job hunting or taking advanced classes etc...
I guess everybody are challenging something new at each stage.
BTW, today’s topic we would like to tell you is this...
《Meat Free Monday》
Have
you heard this? In Japan, this has not known well yet. So today, let us share this
idea.
Paul
McCartney starts this idea in 2009. Recently, this idea has been paid attention
and known by many people even among a lot of celebrities.
In
a nutshell, this idea is just “lets not eat meat on Monday” to decrease the
consuming of meat.
At
a glance, this seems like an idea from Animal welfare organizations doesn't it?
In
fact, that is a part of purposes of the project but main concept is that “Save our
earth from an environmental problem by eating less meat”.
According
to Paul’s speech (we put the speech below), he says
“Not eating meat only on
Monday is equivalent to not driving a car for a month for earth.”
Now,
however, you must think, “How does this idea"Less Meat" link to "Environmental Preservation"?” right?
Let us explain that today.
At
first, we have to rethink what the processes meats take to come to our table.
Let’s
think the case of beef. It costs about $1,900 to feed them by completing shipment of a cow.
In graphic depiction, this is like this
【grain→cows→human】
This
means we get energy from cows that get energy from grains. (It's like a food chain)
However, there
is one question that if people can absorb all the energy from the cow, which they got from grains.
Unfortunately,
that won’t happen. There are a
lot of parts that we cannot eat.
Also we aren't sure that cows absorb all the energy from grains.
Therefore, instead of eating meat, eating more vegetables is more environmentally friendly because you won’t waste the energy, and you can
contribute to protect environment indirectly.
（So this is what I want to say↓）
This can be related to not only environment but also animal preservation or poverty issue but this time, we
want to focus on environmental protection.
Let me
introduce another merit about not eating meat.
According to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations(FAO), among a lot of industry in the world, livestock industry is the second most factor that affects to the environmental problem…
and as the good example for that
『Deforestation of Amazon rain-forest』
is often argued.
Lately, in
amazon, the forest same size with 40 soccer courts are trimming in every one minute, and surprisingly, the reason why they cut down so many tree is NOT importing those trees, BUT cultivating the land for live-stocks.
Cutting down that
many threes occurs so many problems such as increase of CO2 because of less photosynthesis, decrease of habitats for rare species that can live only in Amazon, possibility of out-break of new type of virus, and so on...
Even though
there are bunch of problems, they don't stop cutting down the amazon rain-forest because of the
consumers in developed countries LIKE US.
From those reasons, AGAIN we are gonna suggest
『Meet
Free Monday』
which is very easy to do and very great for OUR environment.
You might think that, even if I do something small like this, it won't change anything. Then why don't you involve the other friends??
We are doing this activity with the kind of thought, so please Cooperate US!!
Let's start
from APU.
By decreasing the
consumption of meat and delivering the our will of environment to the producers, we can change the world.
Specifically, this is Kensho!!, one of sophomore members of HERo:)
How is your new semester going so far?? Are you still in the Spring break?? Haha
Wake up guys!!! The school won't wait you at all. Do not get "F" ANY MORE. lol
And this time, I did the interview to the two persons in HERo, who are actually started up this organization; Hiroaki, president of HERo, & Yuji, vice president.
We are about to start our activities after 3 Junior members come back from their study abroad.
But I doubt how many of you actually have any idea about what HERo is trying to do. OMG
Therefore, TODAY, I want you to know more and more and more about HERo though this interview before we actually starts activities!!
There are many behind scene of establishing HERo, so I'm sure that you'll enjoy this. haha
Here we goooo!! please take a LOOK at it :)
HERo's guy member!!
K : First of all, what is “HERo” actually??
I think everybody has the same question... haha
H:To put it simple, HERo is the organization to change the people’s awareness of environmental problems. However, at the first time, our purpose was kinda ambiguous and we just get together to do something new or establishing new organization. But, since one of our members, Yuji, personally had a strong passion to environmental conservation, we decided to focus on the environmental problem as our purpose. Then, when we think about what we can do as HERo, we came up with the idea that do rental textbook service to reduce dumped textbooks, which is common in US and Canada. We start from doing that and want to do many other activities later on.
K : Why did you establish “HERo”??
H :I was inspired by the story of graduate student from APU. He established the company while he was studying in APU. After I heard the story from him I asked to Yuji and Wakana to do something. It’s simple but this is the story how we started HERo.
K : Why did you choose these members?
H: I induced the people who I can believe. All the members are known each other from freshman and we worked hard together. I know that we can do the great job together so thats the biggest reason that i ask them to join.
Y : Basically, I’m the one who is chosen by Hiro, but the thing I like about this member is that the members are balanced in their role in the organization. Concretely, me and Hiro are always thinking about something we want to try without any consideration, and then Wakana makes sure if it’s actually possible to pursue. Besides, Hiro can create a good connection among the members, so the environment is really comfortable to work on the tasks. Although each of us has a somewhat different goal for our future, we have a common thing in all of us, which is that we want to contribute to society through our life. That is why I am willing to work together with them.
K : What is your actual goal that you want to achieve?
H :My goal is to offer used textbook services to as many students as possible. I am sure that textbooks cost a lot for students. I think our service can make APU students life better with this service.
Y: It’s not concrete but what I want to achieve is to make APU famous, not only for the international environment, but the eco-friendly university. Personally, I am aiming for “the most environmentally friendly campus in Japan”.
K : Doesn’t the next generation have to follow the current mission; environment?
Y :The most important thing for us is our mission, which is “To help APU students make positive changes in their community”. So unless HERo stays with the statement, I don’t mind whether it’s focusing on environment or not. Honestly, I want them to focus on addressing environmental problems, but the biggest advantage of APU is being unique, so I think that is enough if they focus on one specific thing among the many choices that they want to tackle on.
K : How did you start it during the exchange program?
H : Because all of the members were studying abroad, we couldn't start our project, but we had a lot of time to consider the plan so we made a bunch of plan and strategy that we wanna try through this project.
Y: As Hiro said, since we weren't in Japan, all we could do was talk about our plan. Thanks to the Sophomores, we could make the plan possible, but still, we wish we could be in Japan. However, I feel the time we could talk over Skype was necessary. Anyway, having a lot of meeting was the only thing we could do.
K : What do you want to do first when you come back to Japan?
H : I haven’t started our project yet, and we don’t have so many textbooks now that we will use as a rental activity. So please sell them to us if you have any textbooks that you won’t use any more. We will provide some benefits to those who give us the books when you utilize HERo next time!!
K : What is the name, HERo, from?? HERo... sounds good but why???
Y :Oh, as you thought, that comes from the name of our representative (Hiro = Hero) LOL.
Thank you for reading it until the end!!
I hope you could know about HERo much more than before:)
3 Junior members will be back in Beppu in June, so by then, we can't really have a contact with you guys in person but we are going to update many info thorough the Facebook so please check it out :)))
Anyway, thank you so much for paying attention for us!
