Waste Management Essay Example

You ever feel really lazy when it comes to trash and never really care about where it goes as long as it's not in your car or house. Well stop because littering is one of the main reasons this planet is getting destroyed and only you can stop it one bottle at a time.

What is litter? Litter is the action of someone leaving waste on the ground and not picking it up. Litter can come in forms of plastics, metals, papers, and glass(www.flagstaff.az.gov1). For example, when trash is along the sidewalk or a curb and it rains it might go down the storm drains and clog it up. Eventually it could make its way to sea and affect the wildlife. In fact if the water becomes too polluted we cannot use it at all. Also, animals often mistake the items in the water as something edible. As well, it can also be very dirty. It looks terrible as well as it is terrible. It can contain many germs and also get people sick. As well as start fires(www.flagstaff.az.gov1). Overall it is just very sad to see people litter and not think twice about it. That's why there should be stronger regulations and laws preventing people from littering and trashing the earth.

One of the first solutions is stronger regulations on laws. By stronger regulations on laws will make the percentage of littering go down. The minimum fine right now in Minnesota is only $100. That doesn't seem like that much money (actionforrenewables_admin 1).In fact about 75% of people have openly admitted to littering in the past 5 years(1). So far the government has been trying to enforce stronger laws but it really isn't working. The United States alone spends 11.5 billion dollars cleaning up trash every year (actionforrenewables_admin 1). Even taxes are going up because of how much we litter and it's terrible. In Alaska they are pinning down on littering and making stronger and more severe laws if you litter, up to a $1,000 fine, as well in Idaho you can be imprisoned for up to 30 days (Shultz1). The thing is though is that people are not scared to litter because you have little to never seen anyone go to jail for littering. That's why these stronger fines and punishments for littering need to be enforced. All of the other states need to do this as well in order to minimize littering. 

Imposing stricter laws will work to an extent. There is only so much all of these littering laws can do for the environment. It's the people that have to change and decide not to litter. Anti littering laws won't just magically eradicate littering unless there was a 24/7 watch on everyone, but that is physically impossible to do. Stricter laws are just simply not effective. For example if someone throws a bottle cap out of the window you might think less of them because they littered, but you aren't just going to pull a citizen's arrest and pull them over just because they littered. In fact, a police officer cannot even give someone a ticket for littering if they didn't see it. Stricter laws can be a deterrent to others from littering, but it is not a 100% guarantee that people will stop just because of these stricter laws. This shows that there is in facts a problem with waste in the U.S., and enforcing harsher punishments and laws can help, but they won't entirely solve the problem of littering. ¨Our waste problem has become so huge that it has become one of the biggest factors against our survival in this world¨ (actionforrenewables4).

While making harsher laws won't entirely help, teaching people about how bad littering is can certainly help. A lot of garbage can very negatively affect the environment. So we have to stop looking at our plastic food bags as just a small thing of trash that won't really do anything if we throw it out, because it will really make a difference because there are millions of people littering who think this way and all of them littering will destroy the earth. Although it is very easy to litter and people don't really think too much about it, there should be stronger regulations to change peoples mind on just throwing waste on the ground and not thinking twice about it.

Overall the earth being clean is crucial for our survival and by littering can cause harm and destroy the environment. Although enforcing stronger laws and regulations can help minimize littering it will not entirely stop, and it is only the people on the earth that can make the decision to stop littering and save the planet.