Many parents work to provide their children with the latest gadgets, vacations, and the best education. Ironically, they don’t think about the environmental state that they are leaving their children and grandchildren. Not only would going green leave a healthier environment to their heirs, going green can be financially rewarding providing additional money support other luxuries. The Natural Science Class at Spring Arbor University, challenged me to identify three ways in which I, a business or corporation, and the government can reduce environmental waste. Each solution must contain supporting documentation pertaining to the feasibility, cost, and estimated reduction. The solutions I have identified are:
• Not using plastic
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The U.S. uses 84 billion plastic bags, out of the 500 billion used worldwide. These facts alone should convince everyone to purchase and use reusable shopping bags. How am I going to incorporate the reusable bags in my household? The reusable bags range in price from $.99 to $5.00 depending on the bags quality and design. To alleviate excuses “I forgot the bags” or “I didn’t go to that store” and “I didn’t have enough bags”, I decided that I would not purchase reusable bags consisting of a stores logo. To avoid my husband not wanting to use re-usable Meijer bags at Kroger, I will purchase Michigan State reusable grocery bags. The most difficult task will be remembering to take the reusable bags when we go grocery shopping or having them with us if we stop to buy a few things on the way home from work. Placing bags between the passenger seat and console will both remind and condition myself and husband to use the recyclable bags rather than the plastic. I am certain this simple solution will become second nature within a few weeks. “They say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." –Andy Warhol
Business or Corporation Environmental Reduction Technology improvements and rising education costs alone justify eliminating text books both economical and environmental friendly. Would providing students an electronic reader ultimately save school districts money
Approximately 380 billion plastic bags are used in the United States every year. That’s more than 1,200 bags per US resident, per year.
There are multiple ways to reduce waste, one of them being electronically. If people have email accounts, then letters can be sent this way rather than via post. Another way is to recycle waste, although maybe this may cause the same amount
People must start using reusable bags and bottles in order to decrease the amount of waste that is filling the planet. Plastic bags take between fifteen and one thousand
“Bag2bag” program is the most important one among them. Kroger reused more than 1billion pounds of corrugated cardboard in 2007. It resulted in a 14 percent increment over the previous year. In majority of the stores plastic bags, dry-cleaning bags and plastic shrink-wrap can now be reused via Kroger’s recycling program. 9.1 million pounds of plastic recycled from the stores and distribution centers as a result of this program. The grocery bags used in many retail departments contain 25% reused content as a direct consequence of “Bag2bag” program. (Kroger Sustainability Report,
The author proves the falsehood of the long known assumption that plastic is a threat to our planet. By citing the research done by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the author convinces his readers that not only are plastic bags not harmful as people think, but also beneficial. This surprises his audience and shows them how exaggerated the cries of environmentalists, which gets the readers wondering what else have they falsely believed in and what other information are paper-bags advocates hiding from them, and that pulls them into the argument and intrigues them further. Additionally, Summers lists the harmful consequences of using reusable bags by presenting research results and observations. This alarms the audience and raises concern in their
Each year there is an increase in demands for plastic bags, and therefore more are shipped, creating further environmental pollution concerns. This increase in demand has lead to the phenomenal upsurge in the use and misuse of plastic bags globally, both in developed and developing countries. Statistics show that 4 to 5 trillion plastic bags are produced per annum, whereby North America and Western Europe account for nearly 80% (Geographical, 2005; Reusable Bags, 2005). Cheeseman (2007) states that approximately “380 billion plastic shopping bags are used in the United States annually”; in turn, only 0.6% of this is recycled.
Every time my family and I go grocery shopping we end up having numerous plastic bags after unloading the food. For the most part we save these bags, keeping them underneath the sink in case we need to use them for something else later on. However, we have done such a great job at saving these bags that they have begun to take up space. As such we have recently started throwing most of them in the garbage. After watching the Bag It documentary in my English class I begin to realize how much plastic we actually end up throwing away just in these plastic bags, and how wasteful it is.
Australians approximately use 6.9 billion plastic bags per year (Errata Nolan ITU, 2002). The high consumption of plastic bags highlights one outstanding issue. The adverse impact, consumption and disposal of plastic bags have towards the environment. This involves the resources used to make
To begin with, changing to ebooks can help students in school. According to Source B it states that “ in some cases students with access to libraries were found to have done worse on standardized tests”. From this we can infer that students with the help of technology will tend to have better test scores than those who actually go to the library. In the library students are on their own with no one to help but with ebooks and technology, they would be able to find help online to look up examples for their subjects. Also, in source A it states that “Switching to ebooks will make sense for school libraries only when they result in savings of time and money that allow library staff to increase their focus on instruction and interaction with students
2) Tips on how to recycle(the solution) Practicing the concept of recycling will benefit us in our everyday life. Have you given a thought to the amount of energy you waste on an everyday basis? Do you really require the light to be switched on at your sink in the morning? Therefore, reduce the use of energy. This is simply because, a lot of materials are
As the United States deals with the overwhelming amounts of waste building up, Nitin et al explain that “plastics take anywhere from 15 to 1000 years to biodegrade” once they are discarded (Nitin). Changes in recycling methods can no longer keep up with the exorbitant amount of waste produced in the United States. This is why some states choose to take their initiative one step further by placing either fees or a ban on the use of plastic bags. Due to the enormous waste the United States produces on a daily basis and the negative outcomes of this trash including adverse health effects, harmful impacts on nature, and the exponential piling of trash in landfills, the US government should ban plastic bags.
Plastic bags are not needed to carry items people buy from the stores. There are plenty of other ways to carry items that are bought from the store. For example, people can bring their own bags from home. They can also use tote bags instead that can be reused. Tote shopping bags are a more efficient way to carry items. Tote shopping bags made of canvas or jute which is a natural fiber. There are also times when people go to the store and only buy a couple of things. Therefore, they don't need a bag because they can carry their things with their hands.
Using these plastic bags are increasing the dangers of thing that are happening in the world.
My main concern about waste disposal is toward poverty. In every society, for it to work effectively the waste disposal has to be handled properly. The lack of proper waste disposal can contribute for the underdevelopment of the community. For instance, in poorer community that does not have resources to dispose of the trash properly create a series of problems. For example, when there are a lot of trashes in a community, it will prevent investors to invest in a community, the housing market, schools and stores will decline, in consequence the houses will loose its value. This will create a ripple effect because people will start immigrating toward a better place where it is much cleaner. Families will try to move to a better place where their kids can have a better future. I ask myself who wants to live in a dirty environment? I hope nobody. That’s why I believe that the government should help the poorest communities about the ways to handle waste disposal, and better educate them about recycling.
Five hundred billion used globally and one hundred billion of them end up in U.S. landfills, taking about one thousand years to decompose, but only 5.2 percent were recycled (Borrud, 2007, p.75).-These are the figures plastic bags have produced every year. Human beings invented plastic bags for the convenience of carriers and packers. However, just as other great inventions, say, nuclear energy and biotechnology, plastic bags are causing serious issues like global warming, environment pollution and energy consumption. They are gradually becoming sword towards ourselves. In responding to this problem, the city of San Francisco has become the trail blazer to prohibit non-biodegradable plastic bags in its large supermarkets and pharmacies.