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Courtney Snider

Prof. Hunter

English Comp. 2

15 November 2020

Maintaining a Healthy Environment

The environment we live in is so fragile. Many efforts have been made to save

and preserve what we have. Yet, there are still billions of pounds of trash thrown onto

land. Everyone knows about recycling, almost every family has a special bin that they

throw their bottles into or a place to put their plastic bags that they can reuse. But even

though all the little things we do to try and save our environment, pollution is slowly

killing our wildlife and animals. If we would just open our eyes, we could find so many

ways to better the world that we live in. Eliminating single-use plastics from our lives

and even taking up a zero-waste lifestyle could potentially save our environment.

“In 2018, landfills received 27 million tons of plastic. This was 18.5 percent of all

MSW landfilled.” (“Plastics: Material-Specific Data”). It is common knowledge that

plastic cannot be decomposed, yet it seems that more of it appears in landfills every

year. From observations, 22 billion plastic water bottles are thrown away each year, this

means that only one in every six bottles are recycled. This weighs up to nearly half a

billion pounds ( America Rivers, Lowell ). Although, recognizing this issue does not

mean fully agreeing with the idea of recycling.

It seems a little strange and hard to believe that there are people who do not

support recycling, however, there are people who have made valid points against it. An
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article written by Michael Munger on AIER states some interesting points on the

downsides of recycling. He gives an example that recycling is like saying “‘ Save the

wheat! Stop eating bread! ’. In this, he is trying to say that we should stop putting extra

effort into saving something that is already meant for a sole purpose. Munger also

addresses the issue of some people having to clean and filter their items before

recycling them and claims that in total, this amounts to a bigger cost than just throwing

them away. Although, when it comes to plastics, what people like Munger fail to see is

that the problem does not start from people throwing away single-use plastics, it stems

from those plastics being made in the first place. There are so many ways that are

being explored to make reusable replacements for these items.

There are many articles and websites out there that might try to sway people

away from recycling, but it is pretty hard to find one that is reliable with the right

information. It’s like how people look at flat earth supporters, they are making points,

just not the right ones. Many fallacies are used, and a bigger appeal is made to Pathos

with barely any Ethos or Logos used to support the claims that are being made.

Emotionally charged opinions are rarely reliable when someone is looking for real

information on their topic.

A website named ‘ The Onion ’ specializes in writing articles focused on satire,

and essays that are ( to some ) obviously not reliable or true. They have an article titled

‘Recycling: Myth vs Fact’, and even though this article is meant to be a joke and has

many ridiculous statements about how recycling supposedly works, it still gives some

good examples of misconceptions that can be made about the recycling process. In one

section, it highlights the issue of companies that claim they are recycling end up
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throwing the trash into the same bin. This is a real issue that happens in this article

inadvertently brings attention to it.

There are many misconceptions in this article that lead to very good points. One

claims that recycling coddles the environment and prevents it from evolving to it's

strongest state. This is obviously not true because of all the facts that go to show the

horrible things that trash and plastic can do to the environment and the species that live

in it. If this analogy was compared to anything besides recycling, it simply would not

make sense. For example, if a parent were to say, ‘I think that taking baby-proofing a

house shields a child to the realities of life, instead, I let my baby run into corners and

fall down stairs.’ this just doesn't make sense. There is no such thing as ‘coddling’

something that has no control over the things that are attacking it. Towards the end of

the page, the article switches sides and seems to give a good point about recycling. The

claim, or myth, says that ‘Recycling is the most effective way to help the environment’ to

which the article replies that people should start looking more into Reducing and

Reusing. This may be a little harder for the average person to achieve as opposed to

throwing their finished aluminum cans into a bin, but it points back to the zero-waste

lifestyle. This is basically the thought process behind getting into this life, with normal

people reducing the amount of one-use items they have and starting to reuse things like

rags and metal bins instead of things that need to be recycled. There are even people

on the internet who are making their own paper out of old used shreds. Creativity is a

big part of living a lifestyle such as this one, and there can always be fun found in

protecting the environment where you live.

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Many people have pined over the idea of leading a zero-waste lifestyle, whether

they are environmentalists or just normal people who have chosen this path. Some

people have totally reinvented their lives towards bettering the environment and making

these drastic changes that are needed to do so. But this can seem like an impossible

goal for some people, and some wonder if this would even affect the environment as

much as it seems.

To the average person, a zero-waste lifestyle sounds like completely abandoning

every item that cannot be used again or decomposed. This is true in some cases,

however, there are less extreme versions of this life that are easier to pursue. One of

the biggest platforms that represent this lifestyle is on social media. On apps like Tiktok,

Instagram, and Youtube, there are many creators who are not only pursuing a zero-

waste lifestyle, but they are using their knowledge to help educate others about their

journey and introduce them to all the means necessary to get started. Understandably,

a majority of the population is not able to live like this. This is an expensive life that

people live, and it cannot be picked up in one day. The easiest way to start is by, as

mentioned before, eliminating all the single-use plastics that are used on a daily basis.

The most commonly used single-use plastics are straws, wrappers, bottles, and bags.

There are already things that are being done to cut down on the use and distribution of

these items. Royal Caribbean cruise lines pledged to eliminate their use of plastic

straws by the end of 2018. ( USA Today, Limbachia ) ‘The cruise line ( Royal Caribbean

) also plans to remove other plastic items, such as bags, cups, and condiment packets,

at the start of 2019. Officials plan to complete the plastic audit by 2020’ ( USA Today,

Limbachia ). It is amazing to see how much cruise lines are doing to help save the
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oceans from plastic pollution. The ocean is obviously a very important part of their

business, and although some of their customers may be slightly annoyed by the feeling

of paper straws falling apart by the end of their drink, that is no price to pay compared to

the amount of plastic that is thrown into oceans.

8 million tons of plastic are tossed into the ocean each year ( Plastic Oceans ).

This number is so large, that it is almost impossible to imagine it. You may think that

even though it is horrible that there is so much pollution done to our oceans, what can

one person do to change that. To be completely honest, not much, but when millions of

people realize that they are not just that ‘one person’, so much can be done.

There are many ways that plastics and recyclable garbage can be reused instead

of recycled and put at the risk of being dumped into a landfill. One of my favorite ways

to ‘recycle’ is by Bottle Bricking. Bottle Bricks are plastic liter bottles that can be filled

with smaller plastic scraps until they are solid enough to build entire houses out of them.

Many people have never heard of this idea, but it is so helpful to the environment, and

almost every community contains a small business that possibly collects these bottles.

The amazing thing about these ‘EcoBottles’ is that they can be sent to communities in

Latin America where they are used to build houses or even schools in areas that are

less fortunate and do not have the funds or materials to build proper buildings. A more

well-known method of recycling is using plastic bags to make ‘plarn’. Single-use plastic

bags are arguably one of the worst threats to the environment. These bags are

distributed everywhere, at pretty much every large grocery store or business. Even

though there is the option to use a tote bag, or a paper one, it is easier for people to just

grab a plastic one. Again, keeping that mentality of ‘I'm only one person, what harm can
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I do by using one more plastic bag’. Even in my own family, we use our plastic bags as

bags for other trash, or to clean up after our dog. But after this, they are still being

tossed into landfills, and not much more is being done to help the environment. ‘Plarn’ is

when plastic bags are cut up into strips and strung together to make a yarn-like fabric

that can be manipulated using a crochet pattern to make things like reusable tote bags,

purses, floor mats, baskets, etc. When knotted together enough, the material becomes

so sturdy and can be used for basically anything. In my community, there was a school

that was collecting these bags and the students would spend hours after school knitting

mats for homeless people around the city. It was such an amazing project that helped

so many people. They will use those mats for so long, and when they are done with

them, they can be given to someone else.

I have personally started up making my own paper. This sounds very hard and

complicated, but it is one of the easiest and best things I've ever decided to do. To start

this, I took all the old notebooks or scrap paper that I had from school, or just old

journaling papers and put them through a shredder. Then start soaking the paper

overnight, from here it can be put into a kitchen blender to make a sort of paste, that

when added to water becomes this white water. Then straining this through something

like a mould & deckle leaves a film of paste, which when dried, becomes a sheet of

paper. It gives such a beautiful aesthetic to the paper and helps the environment so

much.

There are so many ways that people can help the environment without becoming

completely zero-waste. Everyone wants to save the world that they live in, and if they

dig down just a little deeper, there is so much that can be done. We have just barely
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scratched the surface of what we can do to help the world. Yet, through all of the

progress that we have done, there are still those who are against these ideas.

Personally, I say that there is not enough being done in schools to teach about

recycling. There is much more that is wrong with the schooling systems, but there need

to be more real-world issues being taught. Looking back, I cannot remember there

being one serious lesson about the harms that pollution is doing to the world. There

were obviously talks about air pollution, and that there was plastic in the ocean. But

everything that I know about how to reuse items and recycle is from doing my own

research. If kids were being taught about how to seriously recycle from a younger age,

there might be a recognizable change happening sooner than we would have expected.

We need to start teaching all of humanity, not just children, to start actually caring about

the world that they are living in. Just because we leave this world sooner than younger

generations does not mean that the state we leave it in should be their problem to figure

out because they will just do the same thing until there is nothing left to save. This is not

too far off from being the reality. Which is why educating people on this issue is just as

important as getting them to start participating. There would be so much more passion

behind the act if people actually knew what they were fighting for. Although there will

always be those people who are against the popular vote, we can overcome this though

if everyone would work together on salvaging what we have.

This paper has gone to show not only the horrible things that sing-use plastics do

to the environment but how to try and stop filling up landfills. Zero-waste living is not the

impossible challenge that it is made out to seem like. Eliminating single-use plastics

from our lives and trying to reach a zero-waste lifestyle can save our environment.
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There is so much that can be done to support your community, whether it is creating

your own garden, making your own equipment, or sending materials all the way across

the world. Anything that you do matters because everyone is more than just ‘one

person’.
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Works Cited

Choo, Renee. “What Can We Do About the Growing E-Waste Problem?” State of the

Planet, 27 Aug. 2018, blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/08/27/growing-e-waste-

problem/#:~:text=Recycling%20e%2Dwaste%20is%20practiced.

Limbachia, Dixita. “Royal Caribbean Is Saying Bon Voyage to Plastic Straws.” USA

TODAY, 18 June 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/06/08/royal-

caribbean-no-longer-serves-guest-plastic-straws/684496002/ . Accessed 16 Nov.

2020.

Lowell, George. “The Five Most Common Things Found at River Cleanups.” American

Rivers, 26 Jan. 2018, www.americanrivers.org/2018/01/five-common-things-

found-river-cleanups/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwxNT8BRD9ARIsAJ8S5xZEKbVZ_xb6aJ-

WokYZ5POEf4qFBwO9il0uKerVFs6CDUnKiJfNnXQaAuZ4EALw_wcB.

Accessed 26 Oct. 2020.

Munger, Michael. “For Most Things, Recycling Harms the Environment – AIER.”

Www.Aier.org, 14 Aug. 2019, www.aier.org/article/for-most-things-recycling-

harms-the-environment/. Accessed 26 Oct. 2020.

“New Plastics Economy.” Www.Ellenmacarthurfoundation.org,

www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/our-work/activities/new-plastics-economy?

gclid=Cj0KCQjwxNT8BRD9ARIsAJ8S5xaRIds7MUxXPd9I8Jjutl3PbRsg4A1k5Ve

ZrxixcRui2Fa6jPYV2SMaAjUgEALw_wcB. Accessed 26 Oct. 2020.

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“Plastic Oceans Canada |.” Plastic Oceans, plasticoceans.ca/?

matchtype=b&network=g&device=c&adposition&keyword=plastic

%20environment&gclid=Cj0KCQiAwMP9BRCzARIsAPWTJ_GJPohvI70Ka_0_kP

Bj_GinaUrlgdgPeZIsWD_wb_f-iDr5OgGb79AaAjO2EALw_wcB. Accessed 16

Nov. 2020.

“Recycling: Myth Vs. Fact.” The Onion, www.theonion.com/recycling-myth-vs-fact-

1840511962. Accessed 26 Oct. 2020.

US EPA, OLEM. “Plastics: Material-Specific Data.” US EPA, 12 Sept. 2017,

www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/plastics-

material-specific-data#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20landfills%20received%2027 .

Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

US EPA,REG 09. “How Communities Have Defined Zero Waste | US EPA.” US EPA,

Dec. 2016, www.epa.gov/transforming-waste-tool/how-communities-have-

defined-zero-waste.