Litter is any trash that is out of its proper place. Have you ever thrown a cup or candy wrapper out of a car window. If you have, then you have been littering. This trash looks bad and destroys the earth. Please put your trash in the right places, and recycle if you can.
What makes up our trash?
Food and garden – 30%
Paper and cardboard 30%
Glass 10%
Metal 10%
Plastic 8%
Other things 12%
Most trash is taken to landfills. Landfills are huge dump sites where the trash is dumped into holes in the ground, and eventually covered up with dirt. The problem with landfills is that they give off methane gas that isn’t good for us. The chemicals seep down through the earth into the water below. This isn’t good either.
If people recycle, then less trash goes into the landfills. Biodegradable things are materials that gradually rot and turn back into dirt. Cotton cloth, paper, and food are all biodegradable. Things that don’t rot are non-biodegradable. These things are plastic and metal.
The best way to clean up pollution is to do things that keep it from happening in the first place. Buy biodegradable things (this means that the products are specially made to create less pollution. Did you know that all McDonald’s hamburgers used to come in Styrofoam boxes? Styrofoam is non-biodegradable (it doesn’t break back down into smaller bits). If you bury a piece of Styrofoam, you can dig it up years later and it will be exactly the same. The people at McDonald’s decided to start using paper to wrap their hamburgers. Paper is biodegradable. If you bury a piece of paper, after several years, the paper will start turning back into dirt. This is much better for the environment.
To learn more about litter, visit this web site:
http://www.kab.org/kids/defaultx.htm
Picture by Hayden
