By Douglas McCulloch
Hometown Weekly Staff
A fifth grade class at the Deerfield School was recently given an assignment to write a persuasive essay arguing a particular side of a controversial issue. The students were required to research the issue online, develop arguments to support their position, and address potential counter-arguments that could arise from their points.
The students submitted their essays to the Hometown Weekly in the hopes of seeing their essays published. For the next several weeks, we will be publishing several essays, chosen at random, to highlight the accomplishments of the talented writers who submitted letters to the Hometown Weekly.
The first essay picked, by Abigail Miller, argues that people should recycle to protect the environment.
Why people should recycle
By Abigail Miller
Picture this: a cute little turtle living in the sea with a plastic six-pack ring around his neck. It looks just like the six-pack ring that you can find on soda cans at any grocery store. It is suffocating him and you know that he will not live.
Your mom and dad are watching the whole thing, and know you can’t do anything to stop it. The baby is dying a slow and painful death. You see him trying to get it off by biting it, but you know that’s an even worse idea because you know the turtle would have a chance of dying by eating it.
This happens to sea animals that live in our oceans. 100,000 sea animals die from the plastic they eat each year. We must help end this, and recycling is the one thing we can do to help the world.
One of the biggest reasons why we should recycle is that the oceans are getting filled with plastic and trash. One of the worst and most dangerous materials that is filing our ocean is plastic. In fact, eight million tons of plastic gets dumped into the ocean every year. That’s a lot of plastic that could have been recycled or reused.
Countries all over the world are putting too much plastic into the ocean. A study of 192 coastal countries found that they created 275 million tons of garbage each year, and 4.8 to 12.7 million tons went into the oceans. And it’s not just coastal countries creating trash, it’s happening all over America. The average American discards 7.5 pounds of garbage every day.
As you can see, a lot of trash and plastic gets into the ocean and we need to find a way to stop the plastic and trash from getting into the oceans.
All of this trash and plastic in the ocean affects people and sea animals. Another big reason why people should recycle more is that the animals can get sick from the food they eat in our polluted oceans. 100,000 sea animals die from the food they eat each year. That’s a lot of animals that die ever year.
It’s not just the plastic and trash we don’t recycle and throw away. It’s also from storms and floods that cause a lot of plastic and garbage to just end up flowing into the ocean.
This relates to the great garbage patch. There is something in the Pacific Ocean called the great garbage patch. It is an island made up of almost all trash, much of which is plastic. Many people don’t even know it is there and there is not much being done to help.
More plastic and trash gets dumped into the ocean every year. From tsunamis, hurricanes and tornadoes, the plastic and trash gets into the ocean and sea animals eat it and they can die. All sorts of sea animals die, like whales, turtles and dolphins.
We have to find a way for people to recycle more so less plastic gets into the oceans.
Eating seafood from polluted oceans affects people too. If people eat the seafood and there is plastic or trash in the fish’s stomach, people can get very sick. 76 million people get sick from food they eat each year, and some of those millions are getting sick from eating seafood from polluted oceans.
People can get really sick from eating food from the sea. National Geographic said that “ocean plastic has turned up literally everywhere. It has been found in the deep sea, and buried in Arctic ice.”
It also said that it has been eaten and has caused problems for around 700 species of marine wildlife. And that’s why we should always try to recycle more. We can save the animals and people.
Some people might disagree with my points and the might say that they are doing all they can do to recycle, or that they have things to do and they can’t recycle. But I disagree with them because you always should recycle no matter what happens.
Recycling is easy. All you need to do is put plastics in one bin and trash in another bin. If sea animals could talk to people they would say that people should recycle. We must speak for them, to save them.
Imagine that turtle from the beginning of this essay. Now imagine the ocean having clean waters on a clean and sandy beach, and no sea animals dying from plastic. And the turtle will have a happy, free and healthy life. The turtle will get to live with his family, like most of the other sea animals that live in the sea.
We don’t want sea animals and people to die from what they eat. We can’t let this happen anymore. We need to stop it.
