Dina’s Green Dream 🌳🍶🪲

Toby, a lively five-year-old, adored cars. His room was practically a mini showroom, filled with toy cars of every shape and color. 

One afternoon, as he zoomed his favorite red race car across the floor, making all sorts of dramatic engine noises ...Vroooom! Screeech!...when suddenly, CRUNCH!

He suddenly felt a tiny crunch under his foot. 

Dina, his eight-year-old sister, gasped. “Oh no, Toby! You stepped on a bug!”

Toby peeked down and shrugged. “It is just a bug,” he said with a cheeky grin. “And it is not even pretty.”

Dina’s face turned red. “That does not matter! A life does not have to be pretty to be important!” she huffed.

Toby just giggled and went back to his race cars, but Dina knelt to take a closer look. To her relief, the bug twitched its tiny legs. “Oh! You are still alive! Thank goodness,” she whispered, carefully picking it up with a piece of tissue. She observed it for a moment, then carried it outside and placed it gently on a leaf. “There you go, little one. Be careful next  time!”

The next morning, on the way to school, Dina noticed an old man burning plastic chairs in his yard. Thick, black smoke curled into the sky. She frowned. “Mom, that smoke is bad! It is dangerous to breathe and terrible for the air.”

Her mother nodded. “You are right, Dina. Maybe we should talk to him about why open burning is harmful.”

Dina was not just concerned about bugs. She cared about the whole planet. At school, she reminded her friends never to throw plastic into the drains. She even rallied her classmates, saying, “No wasting food!” She suggested to her teacher the idea of a Share Box, where any untouched fruits or snacks could be placed for someone else to take later.

One weekend, Dina had an idea. “What if trash could turn into something useful?” She grabbed an empty plastic bottle and began stuffing it with plastic wrappers, pressing them down tightly until the bottle became firm like a brick.

“Toby, look! These ‘Bottle Bricks’ can be used to build things instead of letting plastic pollute our planet!” she said excitedly.

Toby inspected the bottle, then grinned. “Cool! Can I use them as barriers for my racetrack?”

Dina laughed. “As long as they stay out of the trash, I guess that is a start!”

She was also completely against cutting down trees. One day, she saw her neighbor chopping down a tree in front of their house and gasped. Her face darkened as she turned to her mother. “The birds have lost their home. Now they have nowhere to rest,” she said, her voice filled with sadness.

Her mother gently patted her back. “Do not worry, sweetie. Birds know how to find another place. There must be a reason why that uncle cut down the tree.”

But Dina was not convinced. As she watched the empty space where the tree once stood, she made a silent promise to plant more trees one day.

At bedtime, she whispered to her mother, “One day, I want to make a whole playground from recycled things. A place where everything is made from things people thought were useless.”

Her mother smiled. “That sounds like a wonderful idea Darling.”

Dina grinned. One bug, one plastic bottle, one little change at a time. She was going to save the world!