Skylar Noon
LAL6
Period 5/7
5/17/12
As students how can we reduce our ecological footprint on our local environment? Well, plastic
bags are harming our Earth. The United States alone uses 100 billion plastic bags each year, and each
average person goes through 350-500 bags per year. Each year they rise, but once they are used they
head right to landfills. Afterwards, they are burned and release toxics into the atmosphere to create
pollution. When people don’t throw them out or recycle them they can get caught in trees, head to the
ocean, bays, or even little streams. Marine life is affected by plastic bags as much as we are. For
example, Sea Turtles love eating jelly fish, so they will go after the plastic bags when they hit water in
mistake of a delicious jelly fish. 100,000 animals including the turtle are also getting affected by
mistaking them as their next meal. That’s a problem because when plastic bags are digested they clog
up the stomachs of wildlife.
Do you want to clean away all the pollution and trash that’s roaming our Earth as we speak?
Well, all you have to do is take all the plastic bags and recycle them. Every year shopkeepers hand out
millions of plastic bags out to your town. Many of them get wasted into garbage disposals. Also, Plastic
bags are non-biodegradable, so the decomposition of a plastic bag takes 15 to 1000 years. We can save
it by using re-usable tote bags for when you go out to the store. You can also knit your own bag if you
are a knitter. Also if more people get together you can save the world from pollution and keep animals
safe. If you just exchange plastic bags to containers, tote bags, or even something you made at home.
So, I hope you realized how bad it is not to recycle plastic bags. Plastic bags are harmful and
release toxics, and also hurt wildlife. If you recycle plastic bags, you can give the world a favor. The
things you can do are instead of using plastic bags to carry your lunch, use containers so you can reuse
them. I also recycle plastic bags by reusing them and using them as trash bags. So, recycling plastic bags
could reduce our ecological footprint on our local environment.