Do you feel like there is too much trash in the world? Well, there is, and we need to do something about it. So many people litter every day. There are over 1.69 million cigarette, litter remains just in Florida! There are even over 269,000 tons of trash in the ocean, that weighs as much as 1,345 blue whales! Get this: about 80% of the Gulf of Mexico is trash. Did you know that over 120 pounds of trash are picked up downtown? The volunteers pick up more then 2 tons of wrappers every year. Even if you recycle, convince your neighbors, friends, family, and other people that you know to start recycling. The average human produces about 4.40 pounds of trash in the U.S.A every day. So that’s 268 million tons of trash per day! That’s a lot of trash.
So many people litter on a daily basis maybe by throwing their candy wrappers on the side of the road, or maybe someone is going for a walk while drinking something, when they are done with the drink, they might they will just toss the empty cup on the sidewalk. If no one does anything about the trash, it can interfere with the ecosystem. Whenever someone throws something away, that trash then goes to a landfill to get covered in dirt. Or maybe it goes into the ocean and then a lot of animals eat the trash and die. A very famous victim of the trash in the ocean are sea turtles. Sea turtles mostly mistake the plastic in the ocean for jellyfish; then they either can’t breath or they can’t eat, or both.
They may also eat them, then the plastic gets stuck inside of them making it very uncomfortable for them to move. So many of the sea turtles have died off, the population has decreased by about 2/3, with only 6.5 million sea turtles left today. Another animal harmed by pollution are birds, birds may mistake the trash for worms and different types of insects. Birds then either choke on the trash, or feed it to their young, then the baby’s die. Another animal affected by pollution are clams, clams may mistake the trash for plankton, algae etc. Clams are very sensitive to acidification; acidification means the action or process of making or becoming acidic.