A Link Between School, Intrinsic Motivation and Creative Thinking

If you take a look around anywhere in the world you will find trash scattered all over the place and the sad part is, us humans put it there. Throughout history countries around the world have implemented laws and regulations to help aid in keeping the world clean. While this is a great start, more needs to be done to ensure that our world is in tip top condition. By starting to act upon this situation now we will set up great standards and a bright future for the next generation. Setting up a path for future generations to follow will ensure that the world will continue to be taken care of the right way. The entire world and every single ecosystem are affected tremendously from littering. Millions of animals die each year due to our negligence. When God created this world, it was in picture-perfect condition and I believe it is our responsibility as a society to keep it that way.

Take a look around your local town and try to see the amount of trash littered throughout. You may see a little or you may see a lot, either way there shouldn’t be any. “It is estimated that Americans produce 624,700 metric tons of solid waste a day. This is the highest in the world followed by China who generates approximately 520,548”. Having trash littered around your local city has many negative effects such as the fact that it looks terrible and damages the ecosystem. By having trash littered around your yard or local neighborhood it may welcome some unwanted guests depending on which part of the United States you live in. Some may not be dangerous such as racoons, but others could be very dangerous such as bears. While we don’t want these animals near our houses damaging our property, we don’t want to kill them either. When an animal consumes a piece of trash there is no telling what they are eating and if they will be able to digest it causing them to die. While hurting the ecosystem and the animals living in it is never a good thing nothing looks worse than having trash littered all over a neighborhood. How would you feel if someone came up to your yard and threw trash out all over the place? That is what you are doing when you litter. There are many things to do to ensure you are not the one doing the littering such as keeping your trash cans inside so animals can’t get in them and picking up any trash you see in or around your yard. If everybody would do this, it would help control the amount of trash in our local cities. The trash you see in our local cities is just the start of its journey and can eventually end up in a body of water.

The ocean is a very beautiful yet mysterious place, filled with all kinds of marine wildlife from plankton to whales. “It is estimated that over 270,000 tons of plastic trash is littered throughout world’s ocean which is approximately 46,000 pieces of trash per square km”. This is not even counting what could be at the bottom nobody knows about. This is very serious because we are injuring and even killing all types of aquatic wildlife. Fish may eat a piece of trash thinking it is food which they cannot digest, and they end up dying. This is only one example of hundreds of ways trash has a negative effect on the aquatic ecosystem. The majority of trash finds its way to the ocean from rivers, shipping lanes, and densely populated costal areas. This is due to human negligence and people not caring or knowing what actually happens when trash is left on a beach or thrown overboard. That one piece of trash they throw out may not seem like anything compared the vastness of the ocean, but neither do the other “one pieces” other people throw out. Over time it eventually adds up and we are put in the same predicament we are in now if not worse. The ocean is not the only place where littering takes place on a body of water. The ocean is not the only body of water that is affected by litter. Local ponds, rivers, and lakes are all also effected. Take a walk around your pond or go for a boat ride on a river or lake and you will find broken fish baits, fishing line and trash all over the place. I can’t tell you how many times I have been fishing and caught a fish that has a hook stuck in it throat or a bait hooked in its mouth. Hurting the wildlife isn’t the only issue you can run into, if fishing line gets wrapped around a boat prop it can be a hassle to get out and even cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. While it is too late to get the trash that has already affected the ecosystem it is never too late to begin cleaning up or taking action against future problems.

Trash is not the only harmful thing we have entering the ocean. Natural crude oil enters the ocean both naturally and from human errors. “46% of the oil released in the ocean comes from natural seeps found on the ocean floor while 54% comes from us humans in the form of spills, operational discharges and extraction” . While most people think the majority of oil enters from off shore rigs leaking or rig explosions like the deep-water horizon spill, that is not the case. While this does account for a lot of oil surprisingly the majority enters from inadequate fueling procedures and poor judgment. This is another example of how humans are to blame and need to take responsibility for what happens while finding a way to fix and prevent these problems happening in the future. Fish and other underwater wildlife are also affected but since oil floats on the water it mostly affects seabirds. Oil damages their feathers making it difficult for them to maintain their temperature. It also its poisonous and can enter their body many ways from eating a fish that’s covered in it to inhaling the toxic fumes.

While littering has decreased 61% in the last 40 years it still remains a huge problem. “Every single year it is estimated that almost $11.5 billion is spent on litter clean up and prevention which is paid by us, the tax payers”. Think if even half of this money was put towards paying off the United States debt, used to help veterans when they return home from their deployments or not taken out of our paychecks. $11.5 billion is already an insane amount of money and that’s not even the only way it affects us. Along with the direct cost of littering there are many indirect costs. Realtors estimate that property values will drop at least 7% when a community is littered with trash. This is not only taking money out of our pockets when you begin trying to sell your house but makes it even more difficult in an already very difficult market. To help prevent future problems from occurring we must first take a step back and look at the problem at hand. The United States has implemented many laws and regulations to help prevent this littering from happening in the future, but the only way it is going to work is if everybody has the same mindset and goals to make the world a cleaner place.

The entire world and every single ecosystem are affected tremendously from littering and millions of animals die each year due to our negligence. When God created this world, it was in picture perfect condition and I believe it is our responsibility as a society to keep it that way. Littering comes in all types of forms it’s not just trash, littering is deliberately placing or accidently releasing something that has a negative effect on the environment. If we keep on the path we are headed on we will live in a world that is littered with trash and debris. In order to change and make a long-lasting impact on the world we need everybody on board working together to complete a common goal. While we have made great improvements since the start of the industrial revolution we need to continue on the right path. This is our world and we need to take responsibility for keeping it clean.