You Can Change the World: The Kids' Guide to a Better Planet
PLASTIC
thE numbEr of plastic items on Earth is in the trillions It is estimated that there are more than five trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean alone That is a huge number With five trillion teaspoons of water you could fill over 9,800 Olympic swimming pools And if you joined all of those pieces of plastic together they would go around the whole planet more than 4,000 times Plastic never goes away In fact every piece of plastic ever made still exists on Earth in some form Plastic objects break down into smaller microplastics but they never disappear completely Plastic contains chemicals that are harmful to humans and animals often mistake small bits of plastic for food and feed them to their young who can choke on them or become sick It piles up in our environment and it’s showing no signs of slowing down Getting rid of the plastic in our lives is almost impossible How many things in your house are made of plastic or have plastic parts Maybe too many to count But cutting back a little bit can make a big difference Every time you choose an alternative to plastic you’re helping save an animal save our oceans and stop the spread of toxic chemicals making the world a happier place And there’s an easy way for you to start with single-use plastics Single-use plastics are objects made of plastic such as straws that you only use once before throwing them away Lots of countries are trying to ban single-use plastics but for now we can do our best to avoid them
water bottles
it’s strangE just how many bottles of water we buy each year even though we have access to clean tap water Bottled water first came to America in the 1970s At the time no one actually believed people would pay for bottled water when they could get it for free But incredibly they did Now each year Americans buy about 700,000 tons of plastic drink bottles yet we recycle fewer than one in four of those bottles We can do better than that Instead of buying your water in a plastic bottle get a reusable water bottle such as a stainless-steel bottle These are available in a range of colors sizes and patterns and will last you a long time Alternatively you can start by reusing bottles you already own Every minute more than a million bottles of water are bought worldwide FACT FACT Every year around thirty-eight billion plastic water bottles end up in landfills in the United States alone
