Each year, almost 50% of Americans make a New Year’s resolution, or maybe even a few of them, but only 37% of those people actually stick with their resolution. The two most common resolutions are to lose weight and to make significant life/ self-improvement.
However, this year I decided my resolution would be to not use plastic straws.
When I found out that, between the ages of five and sixty-five people use approximately 50,000 straws, and consequently lots of plastic per person is disposed, I was appalled. Furthermore, 50 million straws are used every day in America alone.
Plastic in landfills is commonly picked up and eaten by animals, and if it isn’t picked up there, it is often found in the ocean and eaten by fish.
Some may say that plastic breaks down – and it does – but this is often worse than whole pieces of plastic because then the materials turn into microplastics.
Microplastics are too small to ever be filtered out of the water system but are still big enough to be eaten by fish, causing their death. If this cycle continues it will have a significant negative impact on the environment as a whole, possibly wiping out entire species of birds and fish.
Because my resolution is so much bigger than I am, it is even more important to keep it than ever before.
No matter what time of year it is, however, saving the planet is always a priority. Making small changes in day-to-day activities can greatly reduce the amount of waste used each day.
Americans create approximately four and a half pounds of waste per day, per person. Simply cutting this in half would reduce waste in landfills, oceans, forests, and even on the side of the road.
The most common way, and usually the simplest way to reduce waste, is to recycle.
Most cities offer recycling services just like garbage services. For places that don’t have this, there are centers and stores that accept recycling, namely bottles, soda cans, or plastic bags.
While recycling can have a big impact on the amount of waste produced, America has a severe lack of recycling centers and starting on January 1, 2018, China stopped accepting America’s recyclable goods.
We have no where for our recycled goods so we have to start focusing on the other two, arguably more important, R’s: reduce and reuse.
Using reusable coffee cups when you go to Starbucks can reduce the 400 million disposable cups used per day in America.
Not using plastic straws at restaurants will stop a straw from getting eaten by sea turtles.
Buying reusable bags for grocery shopping will reduce the 160,000 plastic bags used per second.
Small changes like these can help save animals, oceans, forests, and the rest of the only planet we can live on.
I chose to make this a priority this year and I hope you can too!
Emma Farina
Opinions Columnist
About Post Author
