Dear future President,

I have something that I deeply concern and I’m going to present it to you! It is about the way we  damage our environment and animal’s biosphere around us because ever since I was a little, I loved to watch Discovery channel about the ecological environment of animals and Travel channel. However, I feel like we’re losing it. I’ve seen blue stream turned into black with plastic materials floating above as I’m aging. I’ve heard voices spoke about but very few actions have done. Therefore, I wish you will take action in reducing the use of plastic material, priority is the plastic bag consumption in U.S because plastic bags are neglected to recycle.

U.S is one out of five growing economic countries produce and consume a massive amount of plastic bag, which is around 30 billion tons per year. However, there is only around 5% are recycled. One of the reason is because every plastic bag is made out of slightly different chemicals and come with different sizes, color and level of duration, which makes it difficult to burn down. In 2009, U.S had consumed 102 billion plastic bags reported by the International Trade Commission. Alternatively, according to San Francisco Environment Department spokesperson Mark Westlund, who been promoting and working on recycling for 10 years stated, "We've had in store recycling in San Francisco for over 10 years, and it's never really been successful," which means burning these plastic bags would even cause more air pollution. In fact, the breakdown can be literally hundreds of year. So, “What is going to happen with the rest of plastic bag? Well, the polymer bags are either end up in the landfill or being expelled out to the ocean. It just stays there surrounded by other living things. Unfortunately, not only the environment are devastated, people are one of the victims suffering the poverty and unhealthy condition and our natural resource soon is going to be affected. For instance, according to the CEF (Convert Energy Future) shows that the water underground is mixed up with the polymer chemical whenever it rain. Therefore, imagine you drink this every day. Besides, there is over 100,000 of marine animals were killed due to the plastic bag floating on the ocean.

I do not want to damage our Mother Nature's resources, I do not want to devastate other lives. I do not want to be involved in promoting poverty. Let’s learn from our mate's solutions. I’ve learned that citizens in English are charged 5b = 9.5 cents for a plastic bag, this new policy was established last year to cope with the wasting consumption of bags. Besides, Japan, well known to be extreme sanitary has also been making effort since 2007 of the reduction of the unessential use toward polymer bags. What japan did is every store has a big poster say “Please mention if there's no need for plastic bags,” I think this is a very good solution. In addition, customers will get a discount from 20 stamps on the amount of time they reuse bags, which is an excellent solution too. Lastly, In my opinion, it will be benefited for this country to raise more awareness about this issue by talk about this on radio and media. Besides, every supermarket should have a section selling tote bags because we can reuse them. It's super convenient too, which you can contain many items and easy to wash. Therefore, I hope you will consider this issue. 

Sincerely

K

Credit imagine Public Domain - Laura Beans

References

Beans, L. (2013, August 6). Silent Killers: The Danger of Plastic Bags to Marine Life. Retrieved from http://www.ecowatch.com/silent-killers-the-danger-of-plastic-bags-to-marine-life-1881783599.html

Beans, L. (2013, August 6). Silent Killers: The Danger of Plastic Bags to Marine Life. Retrieved from http://www.ecowatch.com/silent-killers-the-danger-of-plastic-bags-to-marine-life-1881783599.html

Bindle, M. (2011, October). We Can Recycle Plastic. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle/transcript?language=en

Current Status of Plastic Bag Reduction Efforts in Japan. (2015, January 1). Retrieved from http://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_id035126.html

CHO, R. (n.d.). What Happens to All That Plastic? Retrieved from http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/01/31/what-happens-to-all-that-plastic/

Muggeridge, P. (2015, August 20). Which countries produce the most waste? Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/08/which-countries-produce-the-most-waste/

R. (n.d.). What is Plastic Pollution? Retrieved November 04, 2016, from http://www.conserve-energy-future.com/causes-effects-solutions-of-plastic-pollution.php

What are Plastics? (2011, June 10). Retrieved from https://www.plasticsmakeitpossible.com/about-plastics/types-of-plastics/what-are-plastics/