How Teens Can Help the Environment
By: Noa Gillespie

Humans have affected the environment in many ways: pollution, overpopulation, deforestation, and burning fossil fuels. Significant changes like this have affected our environment.

There are easy things you can do to help our environment. You can start by just knowing what to recycle, compost, and throw in the garbage. Things like styrofoam, glass, diapers, and kitchen grease go into the trash. Plastic containers, empty bottles, clean cardboard, paper, and metal should be recycled. And anything like yard waste, food scraps, and food-soiled paper go into compost.

You can think of doing to help the environment by turning off lights when you’re not in the room, making sure not to leave water running, saving resources/reusing, etc. There are always ways to contribute to the environment, no matter where you are.

In “what happens when the wrong things go into recycling” on the Vogel Disposal Service website, “Recycling can have a big effect, Recycling conserves resources and protects the environment. So when in doubt about where you should put your trash, throw it in the garbage. If garbage ends up in recycling, it causes the salability of processed recyclable loads to decrease. If an entire load of recyclable materials reaches the buyer but is contaminated by just one thing, the entire shipment will be turned away. “

I created a survey asking students at CPM what things they do or could do to help the environment and a majority of the people said that picking up trash or not littering was something they could do. This is always a good idea since many animals die from littering. But some people put in that they do some other form of transportation rather than driving a car. For example, one student said, “My family and I also walk or ride bikes a lot instead of driving.“

In “How Littering Really Affects the Environment” on the Texas Disposal System website, “While 19.9% of litter on land comes from unsecured items in the back of trucks or trash receptacles, the vast majority of litter originates intentionally. Keep America Beautiful found that 76% of roadway litter comes from motorists and pedestrians.” Over one million animals die a year due to littering, mostly marine animals including dolphins, turtles, fish, and whales are harmed by littering.

There are easy things that you can do like throwing away stuff where it belongs. You can also try going to a park or beach with a group of friends and picking up trash for a few hours. Some parks you can go to near you are Edmonds City Park, Sierra Park, and Marina Beach Park. These little things can help. Not everything has to be big and very important to help.