Essay Sample on Waste Management

Climate change, deforestation, and plastic in the ocean are only 3 of many results of unmanaged waste. Today I’m going to be talking about waste management. Waste management is controlling the amount of waste you produce, use and throw away. It is also demonstrating the use of recycling and reusing. 

Think about what would happen if we didn’t start managing our waste? What would happen to our world? What would happen to the environment? What would happen to wildlife? How can we ever say we are thriving if we aren’t managing landfills, waste centres and even the bins in our own homes?

Paper, we use it all the time, but are we keeping in mind the waste we leave behind? Millions of sheets of paper are used carelessly and thrown away. You might think: this isn’t too big of a worry, we can recycle it! Well, did you know only 4 in every 10 households in Australia actually recycle? Think about the number of trees chopped down. It takes around 14 minutes to chop a tree, whilst it takes more than 3 decades for a tree to grow. If we continue to ignore the issues of recycling and absurd amounts of paper being used, the Amazon Rainforest may cease to exist by the year 2050. This is why we need to bring waste management to our attention. Make the world a more sustainable, better place!

Frequent wildfires, longer periods of drought and extreme weather conditions, this is what we are to face in the near future. What’s the cause? Waste. When waste, such as organic waste decomposes, it produces methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — that pollutes the air. This has 25 times the global warming potential. Many ecologists believe that without managing the mass amount of waste on earth, in the year 2050, we may not even be able to step outside without lethal intoxicants entering our pores and killing us. We must put a stop to this. If we continue living like this and ignoring the impact we are putting on the Earth, global warming will be irreversible.

We’ve all heard about it, save the turtles, too much plastic in the ocean, it’s become a worldwide problem. But are we doing enough to stop this from happening? Is it fair to make sea life suffer due to our poor choices in taking care of the environment? In our oceans, there is estimated to be at least 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic waste. This doesn't count the amount of debris and nets in the ocean too. Over 1000 turtles die per year due to the excessive amount of plastic dumped into the ocean. I was at the beach one time in Australia, we were expecting to go for a swim in the ocean. But when we got in the water, there was tons of plastic everywhere. Imagine how many beaches were exactly like this around the world? If moderated and controlled our waste, this wouldn’t happen.

Well, how will we work towards fixing this? I suggest we lower the use of plastic. We should make it mandatory to have non-plastic utensils. Plastic straws, cups, bowls and other utensils should not be sold or used at any kind of restaurant or store. Instead of those, we can use biodegradable things. These are a lot easier to decompose, plus, they are faster. They also sink into our planet leaving nothing behind. We should also advertise recycling more often, and make ads for it. This will help get the idea into everyone’s mind, helping people understand what is recyclable and what isn’t. To reduce the amount of food wasted, it should be sold at moderate amounts. We shouldn’t make large portions of food at a lower price than smaller amounts as we can't finish it as easily as we think we can. I believe this plan will help us manage our waste.

Now, we need you to bring this to your attention. It is up to us to save our planet before it’s too late! Managing our waste is that simple. If I, a child can understand the damage we are putting on our world, why can’t you? We need to do our part to stop this. I know if we act fast and bring this problem to our attention, we can have a nice planet once again. Manage your waste. We do not inherit the world from our ancestors, we are simply borrowing it from our children.