*Dean Academics & Reader, St. Ann's College for Women, Mehdipatnam, Hyderabad, India
**Dean Administration & Head, Department of Commerce, St. Ann's College for Women, Mehdipatnam, Hyderabad, India
Online published on 7 November, 2013.
“There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.”
M. K. Gandhi
Environmental ethics refers to the moral relations between human beings and their natural environment. More specifically, it refers to the value that mankind places on protecting, conserving, and efficiently using resources that the earth provides. It is a standard that we use to view issues pertaining to the environment. People have varying degrees of *hold on to in spite of technological advances and rapid industrialization to make life utmost comfortable. The key is to balance an awareness and motivation for environmental issues while not neglecting the needs of people. In general terms, the practical aim of environmental ethics could be formulated as the duty to take responsibility for the environmental consequences of our choices and actions.
The present paper discusses the internalization of environmental protection measures and focuses on one of the major areas i.e. increased dependence on modern high-tech products by the youth and its impact on environment.It further throws light on the role of an individual in the society (responsibility/moral values/ethics) in protecting and conserving environment for the future generations. Young people constitute a large part of our population and they have to live longer with the consequences of current environmental decisions than by us towards depletion of resources, biodiversity loss, and long-lived non- biodegradable and radioactive wastes.
The authors made a survey of two hundred and fifty young female respondents with different demographic variables on the awareness of an individual on environmental ethical issues and the role played by her (i.e. the ethical values put in practice) while discharging her day to day duties. It is revealed from the survey that awareness of the environmental ethics is very moderate and the individual responsibility of looking at these ethical issues is minimal. Secondly some of the respondents in spite of having knowledge on the negative impact of the practices still continue to use them because of conforming to perceived social status.
