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 do agree that if we could actually get everyone to start doing their part it would help the planet.
My house does recycle as much as we possibly can. Sometimes, however, I am unsure of what to recycle. I think that I could reduce my carbon footprint by carpooling or by adjusting the temperature in my house.
I agree many of us could carpool more often, but it can be hard because many of us do live outside of Harlan.
Our household tries to recycle, but I will admit it gets a little tough sometimes to recycle and it's honestly just easier to burn it in a giant burnpile. I could probably do a little bit better than that so I can clear up my carbon footpint a bit. It would take a lot of people to actually change this problem.
I agree it does get hard to start new habbits and it would be extremely difficult to get everyone to start.
I live in a house in the country with 10 people and we still recycle. But it honestly doesn't make a difference because we end up burning trash which is equally as bad anyway. There isn't really a solution to that though because no one has the time to bring a bunch of trash to town just to waste gas; which also contributes to pollution. I'm not sure how to solve pollution in any way, shape, or sort considering the things we do after we recycle(Ex. burning trash/litering).
I agree I dont know if everyone recycling would overpower the amount of pollution that would still happen.
We recycle at my house, but I definitely think I could drive less to reduce my carbon footprint. However, we as individuals need to realize that climate change is mostly caused by major corporations. Of course, everyone should try and be more attentive to their waste, however, we shouldn't make climate change out to be the fault of everyday people. That narrative is pushed by major corporations to distract from the fact that they are the biggest cause of climate change. We need major legislation to stop this, and we need it soon.
I agree with you, most pollution is caused by these huge corporations and they need to start taking some of the blame.
My household does recycle cardboard, plastic, cans, and glass. I think I could help reduce my carbon footprint by using less energy at my house. I don't think if everyone started to recycle that it would solve the problem because there is still garbage that we need to find a place for.
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
of 11 Next