1) Sources and effects of environmental pollutants Environmental issue is a problem both in developed and developing countries, and pollution

is getting serious nowadays. In one word, environmental pollution takes place when the environment cannot process and neutralize harmful by-products of human activities, and on the other, there is a lack of knowledge on the part of humans on how to decompose these pollutants artificially. We cant help but thinking it is caused by pollutants from us. Question is pollutants from where? What kind of pollutions made the environment today so ill? Actually, various sources of environmental pollution are such as vehicles, industries, pesticides, and deforestation, etc. Types of pollutions are like: air pollution by vehicles and industries, water pollution by industrial waste and residential sewage, soil pollution by dumping of garbage, radiation pollution by leakage from nuclear plants, noise pollution by vehicles in heavily populated areas, or by supersonic air jets and heavy engineering units. First of all, lets discuss more about the three major types of environmental pollution: Air pollution, Water pollution, and Soil pollution (contamination). Some of the most popular air pollutants are sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and radioactive airborne particles (produced by nuclear explosions). These air pollutants causes ill health and death is well recognized. Major man-made sources of ambient air pollution include industries, automobiles, and power generation. In indoor environments, tobacco smoke and combustion of solid fuels for cooking and heating are the significant sources. Air pollution has both acute and chronic effects on human health, the effects range from minor irritation of eyes and the upper respiratory system to chronic respiratory disease like heart disease, lung cancer, and death. Air pollutants can also indirectly affect human health through acid rain, by polluting drinking water and entering the food chain. Water pollutants include insecticides and herbicides, food processing waste, pollutants from livestock operations, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), heavy metals, chemical waste and others. Waterborne diseases caused by polluted drinking water are like Typhoid, Amoebiasis, Ascariasis, and Hookworm. Exposure to heavy metal like mercury often happen, it may cause neurological problems including slower reflexes, learning deficits, and incomplete mental development to fetus in womb and even Parkinsons disease to an adult. General damage to people may be caused by fish foods coming from polluted water (high mercury levels in fish), and by vegetable crops grown or washed with polluted water. Water pollution may also result from interactions between water and contaminated soil, as well as from deposition of air contaminants (such as acid rain). Some soil pollutants are like hydrocarbons, solvents and heavy metals. For example, Lead in soil is especially hazardous for young children causing developmental damage to the brain. Mercury can increase the risk of kidney damage, while cyclodienes can lead to liver toxicity. Soil contamination may also result from secondary contamination of water supplies and from deposition of air contaminants (for example, via acid rain). Since it is closely linked to water pollution, many effects of soil contamination appear to be similar to the ones caused by water contamination, like the contamination of crops grown in polluted soil brings up problems with food security.

Clearly, there is need to strengthen the laws and regulations to improve the current effort in protecting the quality of environment (especially air and water). Since developing country like Malaysia contributing pollution mainly from industry and factories, government should gives license carefully, to the industrial parties. Encourage cyclone collector and electronic precipitators set up in factories to improve combustion control and particulate matter released into air. Waste water from factory must be treated before discharged into river, as well in normal temperature, to prevent killing aquatic life. Heavy penalties should be applied to those who against the regulations is also necessary. In the meantime, policymakers in many developing countries need to design programs, set standards, and take action to mitigate adverse health effects of air pollution. Besides, one of the ways to improve environment pollution is to stop destroying the environment, and prevent it from getting worse. How? Answer is by changing the mindset of people. More campaigns should be held to create awareness and let the public to understand how important it is to have a healthy environment. Education since primary should also instill the new generations with the consciousness, and this need help from parents at the same time. So then individuals with high responsible to the environment will be created. 2) Management of Natural Resources Although all the governments are allocating a lot of research funds to develop new technologies that will eliminate or at least reduce the pollution being generated today without causing any hardship to our lifestyles. We know human behavior tells that there is no end to human desires. Even if such a technology is developed, it will create new types of pollution itself, because we will have another desire that generates much more pollution. Therefore it is impossible to control pollution by developing new technologies to reduce the pollution being caused by existing technologies. As human population keeps on increasing, so does pollution. Same thing happen to natural resources. Natural resources are assets to us, but increasing demand and technology development cause human to explore and exploit all possible resources until reaching dangerous point of over exploration and mismanagement that lead to global energy crisis. So, we need to have a good management in using our natural resources, so that resources could be useful to human kind, at the same time the waste will not be harmful to the environment. On the basis of origin, natural resources may be divided into biotic and abiotic. Biotic resources are obtained from the biosphere, such as forests and their products, animals, birds, and other marine organisms. Mineral fuels such as coal and petroleum are also included in this category because they are formed from decayed organic matter. Abiotic resources include non-living things. Examples include land, water, air and ores such as gold, iron, copper, silver and so on. In aspect of renewability, natural resources can also be categorized as follows: Renewable resources are ones that can be replenished or reproduced easily. Some of them, like sunlight, air, wind, etc., are continuously available and their quantity is not affected by human consumption. Many renewable resources can be depleted by human use, but may also be replenished, thus maintaining a flow. Some of these, like agricultural crops, take a short time for renewal; others, like water, take a comparatively longer time, while still others, like forests, take even longer. Nonrenewable resources are formed over very long geological periods. Minerals and fossil fuels are included in this category. Since their rate of formation is extremely slow, they

cannot be replenished once they get depleted. While on the basis of availability, natural resources can be categorized as Inexhaustible natural resources, where resources which are present in unlimited quantity in nature and are not likely to be exhausted easily by human activity (sunlight, air etc.) and exhaustible natural resources where the amount of these resources are limited. They can be exhausted by human activity in the long run (coal, petroleum, natural gas, etc.) Natural resource management is a discipline in the management of natural resources, with a particular focus on how management affects the quality of life for both present and future generations. It is related to the concept of sustainable development. This means the resource use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come. But, waste collection and disposal problem getting more and more serious by day, some garbage is sent to a landfill, and some materials may take up to few hundred years to decompose, and we are quickly running out of space. So, a great method to manage the natural resources is to utilize the principle of The Three Rs, which are Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. The three Rs have a preach saying: don't buy things you don't need or items that come in wasteful packaging or that cannot be recycled. Reuse and recycle whatever you can. Paragraph below describe Three Rs in detailed. Reduce, is to reducing the amount of waste you produce, by only using amount you need. There are lots of ways to do this. For example: Buy products that don't have a lot of packaging, carpooling with friends, walking, taking the bus, or riding your bike instead of driving, reduce paper usage by reading online newspaper and magazine on the Internet, and save water by turning off the tap while brushing teeth. Reuse means instead of throwing things away, try to find ways to use them again. For example: Bring own basket or cloth sacks to the store instead of taking home new paper or plastic bags. Donate or give to friends the clothes, toys, furniture, and other things that you don't want any more instead throwing away. Use all writing paper on both sides and use silverware and dishes instead of disposable plastic utensils and plates. And lastly, recycle. Recycle means put items through a process that makes it possible to create new products out of the materials from the old ones. Many of the things we use every day, like paper bags, soda cans, and milk cartons, are made out of materials that can be recycled. In addition to recycling, we can help the environment by buying products that contain recycled materials. Recycling will be discussed further in later part. There are ways to improve our environments current condition as mentioned above, but action speaks louder than words. First, environmental awareness need to convey in each individual, campaigns and educations help in changing ones perceptions on the environment conditions, let everyone understands the importance of sustainability of natural resources, thus stop exploiting the natural resources. Government must also enforce laws and regulations to control exploitation on those nonrenewable sources, and start take part in the reforestation among countries due to the large deforestation nowadays. We all should feel the responsibility as part of the earth; we are using the natural sources from our earth so we must protect our only earth, love our earth, and let this message passed down to future generations.

3) Recycling As mentioned in Three Rs above, recycling is an extremely crucial activity to help our environment. Recycling is an activity that anyone can do by taking materials that would just be thrown away and sorting them into different categories to be made into new products. Recycling has many beneficial outcomes because it reserves resources, reduces energy use, and preserves the environment. For example, so many different products, paper, metal, aluminum, glass, plastic, and so much more can be recycled and reused to keep unnecessary trash out of landfills. Recycling does not just consist of reusing materials but preserving the limited natural resources we have left, simply because it never takes more than needed, also saving cost at the same time. Let us see how recycling helps in reduction in energy use. When you think of where a lot of products come from, it makes sense. An obvious example would be like this: Trees are cut down to make paper, less trees means lower amounts of carbon dioxide is changed to oxygen for us to breath. The harmful chemicals rise up and continue to rip away at our atmosphere. Lets see, it would be smart to collect all waste paper and recycle it into useable paper products. The energy takes to cut down trees, travel them to paper factories, paper producing, packaging, to selling, is far greater than it takes to collect old paper products and convert them back into useable goods. There are two to three extra steps are cut out that require energy when materials are recycled. The same things go for many other materials. The State of Massachusetts Recycle Coalition reports, It takes 95% less energy to recycle aluminum than it does to make it from raw materials, recycled steel saves 60%, recycled newspaper 40%, recycled plastic 70%, and recycled glass 40%. We can thus imagine how much energy is saved from our busy world. There are three steps to recycling. Step one is collection and processing, step two is manufacturing and step three is purchasing recycled products. First, recyclables bought from the collectors like from the drop-off centers and buy-back center. There are things in our houses that contain recycled materials, such as newspapers, paper towels, aluminum, plastic bottles, soft drink cans, and plastic detergent bottles. Then the recyclables are sold to manufacturer. Once cleaned and separated, the recyclables are ready to be manufactured. Last step, purchasing recycled products, as there are many brands of paper towels, garbage bags, greeting cards, and toilet papers are made from recycled materials. it is very important because by buying recycled products, we are encouraging more recycling products. And of course the recycling system must be systematic and clear to publics. Like what had done in Malaysia is to separate recyclable materials into different color bins, glass goes into the brown recycling bin, Aluminium and plastic items into the orange recycling bin, and all paper items go into the blue recycling bin. Again, awareness among citizens is still vital in promoting recycling activity to go on in our country. Informative media like television, newspapers, internet, and radio broadcast should help government in spreading benefits of recycling to save environment, as well as encourage people to start recycle. Campaigns, competitions, and all sort of programs should be held to introduce recycling idea to more people who is unaware of this issue.

As for us, many people think they are just one person, they will not make a difference, but that is untrue. It starts with just one person, by doing our small part of recycling practice, the start of preserving out world for the future has begun. And so we can conclude that recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction, consequently reduce the air, water and soil pollution as well. 4) Roles and functions of international and local NGOs on environment There are many environmental NGO (Nongovernment Organizations) that play different roles and functions in contributing to the environmental issues. Those NGOs are either from international or local, all in different organizations, separate paths, but with one common goal which is hoping to protect our precious environment. Their efforts might in form of conducting researches, disseminate knowledge, spread awareness, organizing campaigns, forest conservations, promote sustainable development, and so on. At the informal level, NGOs play an important role in environmental education and in focusing attention on particular environmental issues. While their actual impact on agenda setting and implementation remains a matter for empirical study, certainly NGOs have become a more accepted element of international negotiations. Environmental NGOs organized in many countries, one of the NGO in India is Gandhi Peace Foundation, it began functioning at Delhi from June 1979. It was set up mainly to promote the environmental activities of rural development agencies; to disseminate environmental information through the publication of up to date reports on environmental issues; to organize workshops and seminars for environmental experts, policy makers, individuals and organizations working for environmental issues. Their activities include researching the role of women in community forestry and rural development; conducting studies in soil erosion, water logging, drainage and seepage around select dams; planting fast growing trees. Other NGO in India are such as Centre for Environmental Education (CEE), Clean Ahmedabad Abhiyan, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and many more. While from historically in China, public awareness of environmental protection was low. They would turn to concern for environmental protection only after they were adequately fed and clothed. The first environmental NGO in China was formally registered on March 31, 1994. This was the Academy for Green Culture, affiliated to the non-governmental Academy for Chinese Culture. It is now called Friends of Nature (FON) for short. More environmental NGOs have now been set up. These have included Global Village of Beijing and Green Home which were set up around 1996. Together with Friends of Nature, they have become Chinas three main pioneering environmental NGOs. At present, the focus of Chinese environmental NGOs is in three main areas. They seek to educate and guide the public, to promote public involvement and to lobby government on issues of environmental protection policy. They also monitor what is happing in the field of environmental protection and help enterprises develop a greater concern for environmental issues. Some local NGOs in Malaysia are like the Water Watch Penang (WWP). It is a nonprofit organization set up in November 1997 under the auspices of the Socio-economic & Environmental Research Institute (SERI) of Penang. WWP's main objective is to create awareness for water conservation amongst the general public, research on water issues,

tips on water saving, consultancy on water recycling and water education in the schools. Next is the Global Environmental Centre (GEC). It is also a non-profit NGO, established in 1998 to address key environmental issues, based in Malaysia and supports activities worldwide. It focused on bringing together all partiesindividuals, communities, corporations and other like-minded organizationsto help foster lasting change for environmental benefits. The objectives are to promote integrated management of biodiversity and water resources, promote protection and sustainable use of forests and wetlands, focusing on integrated management for biodiversity and climate change. Besides, it also enhances awareness, understanding, as well as partnerships between different organizations & sectors to address environmental issues. Other local NGOs are Socio-Economic & Environmental Research Institute (SERI), Environmental Protection Society Malaysia (EPSM), Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) and other more. One of the most active international environmental NGOs is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), it function through commission to education and communication. It develops environment expertise among teachers in the region by focusing on providing information, training, capacity building and networking. And World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Malaysia is covering a diverse range of environmental protection and nature conservation work. It launched campaign to mobilize effective national action to conserve Malaysias wildlife. WWF Malaysia also forged partnership with many groups involved in conservation, from Federal State Government agencies to university, other NGOs, and local communities. Yet, NGOs effort could be improved through partnership with the government, where government can help the organizations in promoting through media, and by giving monetary support. Besides, cooperation between NGOs is crucial to gain strong partnership to work together in order to launch more, larger campaigns and spread their words, information and awareness about environmental issues more further and so to more ignorant people, thus the efficiency is high and progress will be rapid. Also, every local NGO should coordinate with one another to pool their resources, arranging strategy to deal with each particular environmental issue, so that various kinds of environmental issues could be solved more efficiently. So, as a conclusion, we all as a responsible human-being, that totally dependent on our Earth to survive, if we could not conserve the damages done to our beloved Earth, then should we just stop hurting and destroying it. Please safe the Earth. Not just for us, but for our future generations.