Making Cleanliness A Habit

There is a popular saying that goes that
“cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Yes! I think God likes clean environment, don’t you like it?
Clean environment is good, it calms the soul, and makes the heart glad. People’s physical well-being and free thought process can be traced to their environment. In other words, a clean and conducive environment enhances growth and intellectual enrichment in human. No wonder many of us travel abroad for holidays so as to enjoy clean, beautiful sites and scenarios and have a breath of fresh air.
But why can’t we have this clean, beautiful sites and scenarios right here in our country? We don’t have to see our environments as dump sites and think that it is only in overseas we can breathe fresh air.
I have seen a situation where a place that is supposed to serve as a garden is turned into refuse dump site. Funny, you will say, but it is the truth. It behoves us to keep our environment clean, make environmental sanitation a priority in areas where we live and do our business.
We should always remember to bag our wastes, tie the bag and take it to a designated dump site approved by the authorities. This is to enable us maintain a clean and healthy environment, environment free of diseases; flood etc, where we can live collectively as healthy and happy people and foreigners come in and enjoy the same way we travel abroad and enjoy their environments.
Refuses are waste and unwanted materials either from residential homes, hotels, clubs, restaurants, shops or places of business.. They are things that are no longer useful, therefore have to be thrown away. But many people are careless while throwing away their refuse. Imagine after drinking sachet or bottled water, the container is thrown into the gutter or dropped indiscriminately on the road. What a dirty or careless habit?
Many people are even in the habit of emptying their dustbin on the roadside without bagging or on the middle of the road where trees and grasses are planted for beautification.  Some others empty their wastes into the drainage when it is raining. So awful! Can’t we see it makes our environment dirty and also blocks the drainage? Besides, the flooding that drainage blockage causes in turns causes water to remain stagnant and thereby breeds mosquitoes which cause malaria.
It is our collective responsibilities to make our environment clean and habitable. We don’t have to live in a particular area to be in a clean environment,  We should start from wherever we live, change our attitude and lifestyle of indiscriminately dumping of refuse.
Unclean environment causes strange illness, nodoubt. For instance, the deadly Lassa fever is caused and contracted through rats. Where do you find rats? In dirty environment, of course; so it goes to tell us how important clean environment is to our healthy living.
Our involvement in the monthly environmental sanitation in Rivers State is important. We should not use the time set aside for environmental sanitation to watch movies or sleep. We should all assist the state government in making Rivers State the garden city it was known for.
Utip, a journalist, resides in Port Harcourt.

Ima Utip