The earth has been around now for 4.543 billion years. If we want to keep the earth around for another 4.543 billion years, then some serious changes are going to need to be made. Each person in America produces roughly two thousand pounds of trash a year, making an average of 254 million tons of trash each year for a country as a whole. Only around 35% of that trash gets recycled, the rest goes into landfills. Trash is just a small portion of what is destroying our earth. It is important for people to realize the different ways they can help before it is too late. There are several ways for people to help are earth listed below are just a few simple ways you can help.
- Use Reusable Bags
A single plastic bag can take from 15 to 1,000 years to break down in a landfill if they even end up in one. Most plastic bags end up scattered around in nature, and in the ocean, killing are wildlife. Americans use an astounding roughly 100 billion plastic bags a year. Only around 2% of plastic bags are recycled. Even if everyone switched to paper bags, we would be destroying more of our forests, which is something we can not afford to do. Also, only 20% of paper bags are recycled, which is really low. It would be way more beneficial for us to switch over to reusable bags.
2. Use Reusable Water Bottles
Stop buying plastic water bottles. They may be convenient but are way more harm to the environment then you may think. 1,500 water bottles are used every second in the US alone, and 50 billion water bottles are used each year in the US, with only 23 percent of them actually being recycled. A total of 500 billion water bottles are used all around the world each year alone. On average a person drinking four water bottles a day, so if just one person bought one reusable water bottle, that would save 1,460 water bottles a year.
3. Conserve Water
The average person in the US uses about 80-100 gallons of water a day. Most of the water we use comes from flushing the toilet, followed by baths and showers. For a ten minute shower, we use at least twenty-five gallons. For some people, their showers are double that amount of time. We can conserve water in several ways, such as turning off the water when it is not necessary. For example, when we are brushing our teeth. Take showers over baths. Making sure to use a low-flow showerhead.
-Kacey Marshall
Ms. Harner's EN100 Blog 