Fifty percent of all liter is cigarette butts.

Photo Credit: Eric delcroix via Compfight

How Trash Gets to the Ocean

Lots of trash ends up in the ocean. How does it get there? Well, some people through cigar butts or other trash out there car windows or while they walk down streets or alleys. The trash gets pushed over to the side of the road or to the sidewalk. Most people don’t bother to pick up and throw away trash thats not theirs, but if they don’t they’re just helping the trash get to our waterways. Then after a big rain the trash flows down the streets, caught in the rush of water, to the sewers and then to the ocean. There the trouble begins. Nine billion tons of trash ends up in the ocean every year.

 Ocean Animals

Have you ever gone swimming in the ocean and seen a piece of trash floating in the water? Well you should pick it up and throw it away. Animals like fish will eat this trash and die, a dolphin mite eat the fish then the dolphin dies to.  A seal or a turtle sees a plastic bag, thinking that it is a jellyfish the seal eats it. After this the seal can drown, starve, or choke, all a slow and painful process. Any ocean creature can get sick, severely injured, or even die. Sometimes when a baby turtle swims they can swim into a plastic holder for soda and can get stuck. When there shell grows their body can become deformed.

Land Mammals

When you throw a fishing line away, make sure that you put it in the trash. If you don’t, the fishing line can get caught on the legs, wings, and necks of animals. Do you drink liquid that comes in a glass bottle? You should put it in the trash or recycle. If the glass falls and breaks pick up the pieces because, when a coyote or a fox goes by the glass pieces it can get stuck in their paws and can hurt them. Cans are dangerous because when a mouse or other small mammal gets its head stuck in the can they can die because they can’t get there head out. Then they starve or die of thirst.

People

Trash is everywhere in the ocean, in the air, and on the ground. Litter is there because of humans. We through out so much trash and most of that can be recycled or made into dirt. Trash makes neighborhoods and yards ugly. If you’re having a party or a get together you don’t want trash flying around. The trash uses too much money to clean up. If we use all our money to get trash to the dumps then families will have no money to get food and other needs. The government won’t be able to pay their workers and if everyone has no money, then no one will go to the stores and they will close. About $11.5 billion is spent on the litter, just to get it cleaned up. If you don’t want to pay that much then don’t litter.

To Hard to Stop Littering

Some people say its to hard to stop littering. “There is already too much trash in and on the world. It would cost a lot and it would be to hard to clean up. The world is fine, we don’t all have to change our ways. Maybe only a couple million people need to stop. Then all of the other people can keep their routines.”

People need to stop littering. Its not that hard, its just common sense! Animals are suffering, humans are in trouble, you don’t want any of this to happen because of you. So make your mark and end the pain, stop littering.