Dear Cleveland,

Each year, about 400 billion pounds of trash and litter get dumped into the ocean. That’s 1.5 million pounds per hour! Because of this, marine life is dying and the ocean may actually become more trash than ocean. Should that be happening? No, it should not. What did those poor creatures do us? Nothing, yet they are still suffering the wrath of our waste.

Littering uses up millions of dollars. A person may argue that it costs more money to dispose trash properly while littering is free. This is not true. While it seems free to the litterer, that one piece of trash will eventually be picked up during a large clean up job, costing millions of dollars. For example, last year, U.S. taxpayers paid 11 billion dollars to clean up trash, which was 10x the amount paid to actually dispose of trash in that same year! Also, the average cost to pick up 1 piece of litter is 30 cents. That means that for every piece of trash that’s thrown out a window, tossed into a lake or discarded into the woods, it costs the world 30 cents. Though it also means that for every piece of trash you pick up and throw away, you save the world 30 cents. It does not sound like much, but it adds up. What will you choose to do?

Littering can cause many problems with safety. According to the American Burn Association,  about 900 people die each year because of fires started by cigarette litter, and about 2,500 people are injured from them. So, about 3,400 people each year either die or are injured from just cigarette litter! This is not helping America’s population, it’s diminishing it! The Washington Post says we are supposed to be in the top five countries to live in, but who would want to live here? Fires from cigarettes, killing hundreds of people?

It does not sound like a safe place to live to me. Also, according to a recent study, a crime is more likely to happen in a heavily littered area. This is because the criminal thinks that since no one cares about the environment, that no one will care about anything else that happens there. Studies have also shown that people feel safer in a clean area rather than a littered area.

Littering and trash have a large impact on animals and the environment. According to KIMO, Marine litter has a large impact on the marine environment, as more than 1 million birds and 100,000 marine mammals die each year from becoming entangled in or ingesting litter. Throwing leftover food out your window is another way to hurt animals. It seems harmless to do, many think that the food will dissolve away. It will, but first, animals will try to eat it. They will just run into the middle of the road to eat it and be hit by a car, and most likely die. One itty bitty piece of food you toss out a window could kill an animal. That is not right, is it? Innocent animals dying because of our discarded trash. Do we really want this to happen? Do we want animals to die because of us? No, we don’t, even though it does happen. However, there’s a way we can stop it. It’s as simple as tossing your trash in the can.

In the end, the solution to all this madness is simple. All we need to do is throw away our trash. Just throwing away your trash could save the world tons of money, not having to clean up millions of pounds of trash. It could also save animals and humans  from dying in fires or from consuming trash. Most importantly, it could make the world a cleaner, happier and safer place.

 

Respectfully Yours,

June Patton