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 recycling is the easiest thing to do to help but sadly it would not make a HUGE change.
Yes, my household does recycle. We recycle things like cans, plastic, paper, and cardboard. Sometimes my younger sister forgets that she can recycle some things, but other than that I think that we are good about recycling. I think that recycling could have a great effect on our world. I think that it would help if everyone did it, however, no just our small community of Harlan.
Honestly I feel that many people have forgotten and just don't know what they can and can't recycle. I agree it would take a lot more than just Harlan to make a impact on the world.
My house does try to recycle, but not nearly as much as I think we could or are capable of. If we all recycled as much as we could, I'm sure it would make a difference. However, the challenge is getting everyone to do it. I just don't think its possible to get everyone on board. its all just going to run its course on the world and the hard truth is that nobody is going to do anything about it.
I agree it would be hard to get everyone to do their part and stick to it.
My household doesn't recycle. We reuse our plastic bags, but that's about it. I don't litter or purposefully harm the earth. I could reduce my carbon footprint, but it would be very hard. I could drive less or start recycling. I think if everyone did this it would help but a small community won't.
I agree it is easy to think of things to do to help but many people will do it for a couple days then forget and give up.
I would say my house really doesn't recycle. We take our pop bottles and turn them in if that counts. I could reduce my footprint by walking or riding my bike to different places instead of driving. But, let's be honest we can all say what we can do to reduce our footprint but will we really do anything to change it most likely no.
In my household we do the same but that is really all we do. I agree it is easier to come up with ways to reduce our footprint but the real challenge is to commit and do it.
My household recycles what we can, but it doesn't matter because only 3 groups of plastic actually get recycled out of 7. If we all started recycling there would be a change but since only 9% of recyclables get recycled i don't think it would change a ton but would change a bit.
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