After watching Samantha Paisley’s TED Talk on plastic, it made me immediately realize that our society needs to address American’s love affair with plastic. Bottles, bags, drinks, cups, straws, and food packaging are just a few of the daily culprits that end up in landfills, or even worse in our oceans. We can live without plastic. Paisley discussed how plastic sent to landfills takes more than 200 years to decompose. We are poisoning our very own soil and water table!
We should be using biodegradable packaging more or just avoid using any type of plastic product. Carrying your own cloth shopping bags when going grocery shopping makes a huge difference to the environment. Using reusable food packaging instead of Ziplock bags would have a dramatic effect on our overall health as well. There are so many paper items we can use to reduce our use of plastic.

Sadly, we continue to not take the extra step by using products that cause harm to our environment. I try my best to avoid using plastic by using reusable straws and carrying a canteen for my drinking water on campus.

Plastic carries harmful chemicals that can absorb into the foods and liquids contained inside. In order to get my generation to pay attention, there needs to be more education. The dangers of plastic should be advertised more. Too many people are unaware of how much damage they are causing to the environment, and I believe we could change that by educating my age group on social media. Schools should also be more eco-friendly when it comes to what
packaging they sell their food in. Not enough of the food packaging is eco-friendly, and recycling needs to become a priority on campus. If you want teenagers to grow up using recycling garbage cans as adults, the behavior needs to be modeled in K-12 programs. Instead of providing pre-packaged food, our schools should begin by selling food that is not required to be wrapped in plastic.

If I was governor Newsom for a day, I would eliminate plastic straws and plastic cups from the fast food industry here in California. There needs to be this type of dramatic step in order for our planet to be able to breathe. It is sad to realize that our small daily habits are having such a drastic impact on our future. The time has come to get motivated and make an individual difference.