Yes-ter-day, you were 4.5 lbs of trash. Today, you are 4.5 lbs of trash. Tomor-row, you will be 4.5 lbs of trash. The aver-age Amer-i-can cre-ates 4.5 lbs of trash per day accord-ing to The Green Book, writ-ten by Eliz-a-beth Rogers and Thomas Kosti-gen. This sim-ply means over the course of your life, you will total six hun-dred times your aver-age adult weight…in garbage. While waste is a prob-lem, it isn’t even our biggest impact on the planet. Amer-i-cans use twice as much water and energy per per-son as any-one else in the world. We all depend on the envi-ron-ment, and with-out it, the earth can-not sus-tain life. Why are we wast-ing it? As some-one who became aware of how much the envi-ron-ment needs our atten-tion, I decided to try to help you to bet-ter under-stand how much needs to be done in order to make a dif-fer-ence by recy-cling. In order to under-stand why there is a need to “Go Green”, and to under-stand what it means, we must first under-stand how waste-ful we as Amer-i-cans are. Then, we must have a bet-ter grasp on the rea-sons why Amer-i-cans tend to be waste-ful. Finally, it needs to be known that there are small, sim-ple steps that every-one can take to make a dif-fer-ence with-out com-pletely alter-ing our lifestyles.
So how waste-ful are we? By 2025, the world must increase its water sup-ply by 22% in order to meet its needs, while 40% of the drink-ing water sup-plied to homes is (lit-er-ally) flushed down the toi-let. Every two min-utes in the shower uses as much water as a per-son in Africa uses for every-thing in their life for a whole day drink-ing, bathing, cook-ing, and clean-ing. The nat-ural gas sup-ply is pre-dicted to run out within the next 40 years accord-ing to the online data-base The Ecol-o-gist. Accord-ing to this same data-base, oil pro-duc-tion will peak in 30 years and we will run out within 70 if our habits con-tinue. Scary sta-tis-tics, right? If the earth is so pre-cious, then why are we destroy-ing it and harm-ing our and our children’s futures?
Some peo-ple don’t know how harm-ful their waste can be. Some peo-ple do know, but just don’t take the extra time to throw their empty bot-tles into a recy-cle bin. If you think recy-cling is some-thing only the “hip-pies” or “earthy” or what-ever mod-ern terms you choose to use do, you’re wrong. It’s the envi-ron-men-tally aware, and those who sim-ply care about life.
Things we do don’t have to be dras-tic; we can do sim-ple things to help that don’t com-pletely change our lifestyle. For those of you who’ve heard of Anheuser-Busch, mak-ers of such alco-holic bev-er-ages as Bud-weiser, they are one of the largest recy-clers of alu-minum cans on the planet. Accord-ing to The Green Book, they actu-ally recy-cle more cans annu-ally than they sell. Lit-tle steps like this are what will make a dif-fer-ence. When we first learned to walk, we started out with baby steps, and going green starts out the same way. Going green doesn’t hap-pen overnight. It takes time, and small com-mit-ments. Just stop to think about what you’re doing. By being health-ier, we can help the envi-ron-ment. When we exer-cise, that’s less time we would’ve spent on some-thing that wastes time, such as the com-puter. By eat-ing health-ier, we cut down on things that cre-ate toxic wastes when made or pack-aged. By using your own refill-able water bot-tle, you can save up to $200 per year, and 14 lbs of plas-tic. Don’t take an ATM receipt, or a bag at the gro-cery store if you only buy a few items, or take your own reusable bag. When buy-ing books, buy sec-ond-hand, or use the library, or share. About three bil-lion new books are sold per year, requir-ing four hun-dred thou-sand trees to be chopped down as a result.
So, as you can see, Amer-i-cans can be waste-ful with mate-ri-als because they are unaware, or don’t care, but there are such sim-ple things that can be done such as the tips I just shared with you, that can make a world of dif-fer-ence. You don’t have to change the way you live to recy-cle. It’s more about just being con-scious of your waste. When we start to take the lit-tle steps instead of try-ing to make extreme lifestyle changes, we can begin to see the dif-fer-ence recy-cling can make in the world, even if it starts with some-thing small, such as your home, your class-room, even your dorm room. With all the ben-e-fits that we receive from a liv-ing, work-ing environment…why would we want to destroy it? When sim-ple things can be done to improve what us and our ances-tors have destroyed, why not be green? Why not encour-age oth-ers to be green as well? To me, being green just means tak-ing baby steps towards a bet-ter and nec-es-sary future.
The following are two links which lead to essays on go green.
Why don't you learn about going green it is interesting and things we should all learn. I'll give you one APA style, 12 page for 25$ lol.
http://www.epa.gov/newsroom/gogreen/
Copy and paste link for Going green info.
how you could help change the enviorment?
KIndly please share your essays :)
