Dear Future President

The Average american throws away 4.5 pounds of trash every day. When you consider the fact that every one of the country’s population of over 300 million gets rid of this much waste, a shocking 675000 tons of trash is thrown into our landfills and oceans every day. Where does this all go? Nowhere. It stays on the land, sitting there until it decomposes. The majority of this is plastic, which hasn’t even existed long enough for us to now how long it takes for it to decompose. Every year, the United States emits around 6,870 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air, contributing to global warming. We are actively destroying our earth, and yet in this entire campaign, it has barely been mentioned. As a nation we need to shift more towards renewable energy sources, such as solar and hydroelectric power. Despite its potential risk, nuclear energy’s benefits are comparable to those of renewable energies sources, in that it barely pollutes the earth at all. Our country has become reliant on oil and its industry, thwarting efforts to help clean up the environment. While it is no easy task, our nation needs to gradually step away from oil and move towards sources that do not produce harmful emissions to the environment and damage our own health. We need to make efforts to cut back on our use of plastic, by using less packaging, and need to make more efforts to recycle. It is a fixable problem, but we as a nation need to fix it, not just the small select groups who care and have been saying this for years.