Saving The Planet One Straw At A Time

As many of you know, I am a Public Health major at UMASS Lowell. This semester I am enrolled in Environmental Health. I have always been somewhat of a tree hugger. I love being outside, I love the forest, the ocean and all the beautiful things nature has to offer us. I hope someday my children (as well as your own) will be able to experience all the beauty of nature without it being destroyed. Unfortunately, we as humans have begun to destroy our environment.

Recently, I learned that there are two continent sized garbage patches floating around in our oceans. So, me being me, I had to do some more research on the topic. I came across many disturbing pictures and websites, I was appalled with the amount of plastic and waste that we as humans have consumed and discarded into the environment. In the past 25 years 6 MILLION STRAWS have been removed from our beaches, in 2014 the Oceans Conservancy's reported that out of all plastics, Straws were ranked number five most popular item found on the beaches and oceans. Not only are straws polluting our environment, but they consist of the petroleum bi-product polypropylene, which is essentially the same stuff that fuels our cars. Which in turns means they are not biodegradable and will continue to float and pollute our beaches and oceans for years to come. So, now what? We have made a mess. What can we do? Say NO TO STRAWS!

Yea, yea, I know what you are thinking, I hear it all the time. "There is nothing I can do.", "Its too late, the ocean is already polluted.", "If I stop using straws, how is one person going to make a difference?" etc, etc. I do not want to hear excuses. If everyone thought that way, we would get no where in life. So, I am here to change your perspective and make you realize how important it is to at least get one person to understand this concept. So, here is some math, bare with me.

Okay, so the average person uses approximately 2 straws a day, do out the math that equals 672 straws a year. 16,800 straws within 25 years. That's a lot of straws that ONLY one person is using. Now, imagine you tell your friends and families about our issue and they also stop using straws, say you at least got 10 people to stop using straws completely that would bring our number to 168,000 of straws we kept out of the environment. Now, those 10 people are able to get another 10 people to join our cause and we will prevent 1,680,000 and that is only 100 people. We can make a change, and one person does make a difference. We need to speak to each other about these issues and just do it.

Now, I am not saying that this will solve the issues of pollution but, it sure will help. We still have plastic bottles, cutting down our forests, and our emissions issues. I could go on and on. I am just pointing out that small changes in our daily lives can have a major impact on our environment. Example, reusable water bottles, planting trees, walking or biking instead of driving. There is so much we can do. Take a look at your daily life and make the small changes necessary, so we can leave a cleaner and healthier planet for our children.

I have included some websites that have a more in-depth explanation of what is really going on.

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/plastic-straws-and-the-environment/

http://www.isfoundation.com/campaign/kids/plastic-straws-can-suck-it