What does your daily routine look like? Do you walk to your workplace or schoolplace? Do you drive short distances when you could have walked? It is very likely that 80% of your daily routine creates pollution to the world you live in. Many people are self-centered, and tend to only care about their own personal problems and nothing that doesn't affect them directly. Pollution is one of those things that no one thinks about but affects everyone in the long run. Pollution is a problem that humans have caused, and we are almost to the point of no return.
We contribute to the Earth’s pollution every day and don’t even think about it. Do you remember the three R's? Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. For as much as we puch recycling only 32% of Americans recycle. The article pollution and health states that “recycling is one of the easiest and simplest ways to save energy and reduce air and water pollution.” Over 94% of the U.S population has recycling available to them. It's crazy to think that 80% of our daily items are recyclable but only 9% of them actually end up in the recycling bin. Although, we can’t put all of the blame on ourselves because energy plants, factories, and airplanes are huge contributors to pollution.
Pollution is a huge problem not only in just the United States, but it affects the whole world. Although cars, chemicals, and power plants make our life easier, they hurt the environment drastically and damage our health and the planets’. By using everyday products like hairspray, driving our cars, and purchasing products that are made in factories we are making things more convenient for us now, but in the long run we end up hurting ourselves and others. You wouldn't think that spraying hairspray for 30 seconds in your hair would hurt our Earth but it actually does. When you use any kind of spray can it releases gasses that hurt our atmosphere. Pollution affects the Earth majorly but it also hurts the plants, animals, and humans living on it. Air pollution is a huge problem, especially in China where there are almost 1.5 billion people. In the article How Air Pollution is Destroying our Earth it says that areas where there is high air pollution have reported many cases of lung cancer, heart diseases, and even death caused by strokes all relating to their poor air quality. Pollution doesn't only affect humans but our plants and animals, our sources of food. If we don't do something now our world will never be the same.
The power to change the world rests in our hands. The blog Rubiconsaid ,“the rate of people that recycle is around 34% if we were to get it up to 75% the effect would be like removing 50 million passenger cars from U.S roads.” That would have a great impact in our world. Yet that is not the only thing we can do to save the environment. There are thousands of daily things in your life that you can change. For example: we could reduce how many trips we take in our car, and reduce the use of electricity. These are simple to change in our daily life that could help the environment. Even though we can’t control the big factories, we can change those small things in your life to decrease your carbon footprint. It’s hard to understand that if everyone does their part we could change the world. A lot of people don’t do anything because they think that they are the only ones doing it, and if no one does it, then why should they do it? I can understand why some people will think this because it's true, but if we all ignore what everyone else does and focus on ourselves we will slowly start to notice the change. The environment needs us, it's slowly dying and warning us little by little.
I personally have not thought about my carbon footprint and I can say that I do a lot of things that pollute the world. But after researching I realized how bad it actually is and it's only getting worse. I understand the people who don't feel like they need to do anything because it is hard to think that your tiny little bit could help.
Does your household recycle?
How do you think you could help reduce your carbon footprint?
Do you think that if we all started to recycle the world's problem would get better or do you think it would be so small it wouldn't help?
Replies
I agree things would get somewhat better but recycling is not going to fix everything.
Yes, out household has a recycling bin that we used everyday. I think that instead of driving everywhere I could walk to produce less carbon dioxide into the air. I think there is also simple things around your house you can do like turining off lights and taking shorter showers.
I agree, many people including me do things everyday like not unpluging cords when they are not being used and also turning off lights when you leave a room.
Our household recycles. I can't say everyone does, but me, my sister, and my mom all make sure to recycle anything we are able to. I can reduce my footprint by bringing reusable bags to the store when I shop. I can also limit the things I consume that are covered in plastic wrap or non-biodegradable packaging. I think if EVERYONE did just a little bit, it would make a big impact. We don't need a couple people doing it perfectly, we need a lot of people doing it imperfectly to make some impact on our Earth and enviroment.
I agree people should start using reusable bags when going shopping because not only does it reduce pollution it would also decrease costs for stores.
My household does have a recycling bin that we use weekly. One way to reduce your carbon footprint is to ride a bike to school instead of a car if you live close enough. I think if everyone recycled it wouldn't change a ton. I feel like most of the problems are with bigger things like cars.
I agree using our cars less would help but there are bigger polluters like planes and factories.
Yes, my household recycles. I think I could help reduce my carbon footprint by riding my bike to school when it is nice. I think that the world's problems would get a little bit better. Although I don't think that alone would be enough to make that drastic of a difference.
I agree recycling would only help a tiny bit and there are many other things that need to happen before we start to see a difference.
This article was written in a very biased manner. Upon further research, you would relize that most of the mentioned issues were actually caused by recycling. Out of all of the "recyclables" thrown into a bin, only about 8% (when rounding up) is actually recycled. The items we recycle go through a vigorous sorting and much of those items are added to a landfill or burned, which is causing the air pollution to begin with. I agree that our world is terribly polluted and we need to act fast and find an effective solution but I feel that recycling is only a small fraction of what needs to be done about the issue.
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