Pollution is Destroying Our Planet

The Earth is a beautiful place to live in, it’s amazing how many things we take for granted.

When you can’t be bothered leaving your bed, you don’t think about the experiences you can have in this world. You don’t take notice of the true beauty it brings, instead you overlook it and all you see is cold mornings and school. But what if one day you wake up and it’s all gone? Then you would have wished you appreciated it more. You never realise how much you take for granted until you’ve lost it. Pollution is destroying our planet, through our air, water and land. When will you realise how much your planet does for you?

Above all, air pollution is threatening all life on earth. Most of air pollution we cause results from the burning of fossil fuels, such as natural gas, coal, gasoline and oil. Factories contribute greatly to air pollution, factories burn fossil fuel which creates carbon dioxide, the most dangerous greenhouse gas. For example it is estimated that industry and electrical generating factories contribute slightly more than 50% of greenhouse gases. Another harmful gas created by the burning of fossil fuels is sulphur dioxide, when these gases meet up with water vapour in the atmosphere; they make sulphuric and nitric acid. The acid falls to earth in rain, snow, or fog. This rain can kill fish in rivers and lakes, burn leaves on trees and dissolve limestone in buildings. Factories also create ground level ozone problems by releasing harmful gases into the air; ozone is made from three oxygen atoms, which is one more oxygen atom than required for breathable oxygen, O2. Under certain conditions, some pairs of oxygen atoms break apart, and each atom joins another pair to make ozone, O3. Although ozone may be useful for fi...

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...highly toxic fertilizers and pesticides to get rid of insects, fungi and bacteria from their crops. However if they overuse these chemicals, it results in contamination and poisoning of soil. A single US person produces 2 kilograms of garbage a day and each household produces tonnes of garbage each year. Did you know we produce enough rubbish every day to fill 63,000 garbage trucks? What is surprising is that 80% of that waste can be recycled, but they’re not. Things that cannot be recycled become a part of the landfills. If these landfills are not treated or sealed properly before the burial, they result in severe degradation of land and contamination of groundwater present below it. For example land pollution causes us to lose 24 billion tonnes of topsoil every year. One of the main human contributors to pollution is landfills and we’re doing nothing about it.