I Was Poor, Not Low Class Remember as a child people would tell you, "You are what you eat." When you are fed fat, you will become fat. When fed violence, you become violent. A diet of anger will make you hate. Hunger will make you hungrier, or so it would seem. I think it is ironic that we teach children at a young age to judge people by means other than the content of their character. Then, we expect children to be honest and loving after being labeled by how others view them. After all, how many people, besides your closest friends and family, can walk into your room and point to items that give a reflection of who you really are? The thought of being that shallow and simple is unthinkable for most of the human species. Instead of being labeled by the world as it sees me, I plan to introduce myself to the world for who I really am. I have eaten from the plate of materialism, only to find that it tasted foul in my mouth. I bought the high-end stereo and the large television. I soon realized these possessions made me feel guilty because I was ignoring my upbringing. I was betraying all of the feelings that I felt as a child in a poor family. Now, my walls are bare because I do not like to surround myself with propaganda. The same propaganda advertisers flaunted in front of me while I was growing up in a lower income family, not lower class. The notion that the country's population is separated into classes by wealth, with the least wealthy deemed the lower class, is repulsive to me. I refuse to conform to the typical American consumer stereotype who needs material possessions to feel validated, ever again. My dorm room is highlighted by a loft I built myself. The loft was not purchased from a hardware store or from a designer catalog. I used my carpentry knowledge and my own two hands to carefully construct the perfect loft. The loft does not symbolize convenience or organization as most may think. It is a symbol of my incredible independence, even to a fault.
Plastic bags are useful tools to use and have other benefits as well. This is a statement that is up for debate. Many people disagree with the statement that plastic bags are useful. The question is whether or not that is true. American stores offer both plastic and reusable bags, but when customers go through a line and say he or she wants a plastic bag, he or she might get a disgusted look. For most stores plastic bags are now frowned upon. The stores want their customer to use the reusable bags that the store offers them to purchase. Throughout the article Plastic Bags Are good for You, Mangu Ward goes back a forth of weather or not the bags are good. Mangu-Ward explains the cause and effects of which plastic and reusable bags have based
The Voice: Well, Mrs. Dryer, I go to a very competitive school. I have to take competitive classes. It's not as though the work load would go down if I dropped to a lower level. I had a very busy week, and the play just started. I'll have more time this week. I promise to practice more between now and next lesson.
The debate of whether plastic bags are more beneficial to the environment and our community continues to find little resolution. Although there’s an abundant opposition to the use of plastic bags, the benefits of using plastic bags should be acknowledge. Manufacturing and the usage of plastic bags produce less pollution, require little energy, and is efficient for recycling; therefore, our community should avoid limiting the use of plastic bags because plastic is a valuable material.
"Welcome to White Oak High School, home of the Vikings." The speech given to any fool unfortunate enough to enroll in this school.
The bill passed against this prevented cites from banning plastic grocery bags or charging an extra fee for the bags. Many argued that current plastic bags are mostly made from recycled items and that they produced the same harm as paper bags. However, other argued that the excess use of these bags and the impact that they cause to the environment is uncontrollable. Several farmers also argued that their animals were becoming sick because they were exposed to them and would often eat them. Many industries would also be affected by this ban, but if we look at the issue with the environment in perspective, the benefits that would come with a reduction of plastic bags is numerous. These bags are consumed every day, and it would be interesting to see how much less damage and other benefits would come from this practice. There are many cities in Texas where this ban was passed on successfully. For example, in a comparison between Austin where the ban was approved, and some of the requirements are that the bags must contain a minimum percentage of recycled content, and Fort Worth were the ban was disapproved. “Advocates of the policy are supported by a comparison with Fort Worth, which has no plastic bag ordinance and had four times the amount of plastic bags in its litter stream as Austin. The amounts were calculated based on local litter sweeps done earlier this year in each city” (Miller par. 6). This shows the benefits of the ban and how it has impacted the cities environment. Other places are still pending the approval and in the other hand Dallas is one of the places where this ban was
During my freshman year of college, I had met one of my best friends, who go by name Jill. (She lives in New Jersey and while I live in Pennsylvania) I found it to be strange that sometimes, it feels like we have grown up with one another but in reality we have only one another for four years and I couldn’t be more thankful. I can remember when we met at school as if it was yesterday.
In light of recent events, a question has arose concerning the use of plastic bags. Some people argue that plastic bags are detrimental to the environment, while others argue that outlawing the use of these bags is unfathomable. On Tuesday, September 30th, 2014 California became the first state in the U.S. to ban the use of single-use plastic bags after a bill was signed by California Governor Jerry Brown. Under this bill, plastic bags will slowly be phased out and will no longer be in use by 2016. But can one argue that this bill is simply irrational? In this essay, I will examine the different opinions of five various sources, in order to better answer the question of whether or not plastic bags should be banned. The first three of these
Most of the necessities humans need are provided in supermarkets, in fact supermarkets have become a necessity for our everyday life. They are now the main source of water, food, clothes and everyday tools. Therefore, the plastic bags demanded and supplied in this industry increase every day. In the past decade, we produced as much plastic as we did in the whole twentieth century (Freinkel, 2011). This exponential increase of a non-biodegradable material has negatively impacted our environment immensely. Plastic production requires our dwindling fossil fuel resources, robs away animal lives, litters our beautiful landscapes and even affects our very own well-being. Hence, if plastic production doesn’t diminish immediately, we will suffer great
I can still remember that small enclosed, claustrophobic room containing two armed chairs and an old, brown, paisley print couch my dad and I were sitting on when he told me. “The doctors said there was little to no chance that your mother is going to make it through this surgery.” Distressed, I didn’t know what to think; I could hardly comprehend those words. And now I was supposed to just say goodbye? As I exited that small room, my father directed me down the hospital hallway where I saw my mother in the hospital bed. She was unconscious with tubes entering her throat and nose keeping her alive. I embraced her immobile body for what felt like forever and told her “I love you” for what I believed was the last time. I thought of how horrific it was seeing my mother that way, how close we were, how my life was going to be without her, and how my little sisters were clueless about what was going on. After saying my farewells, I was brought downstairs to the hospital’s coffee shop where a million things were running
The U.S. is late to this party -- the whole EU, China, India, Australia, Rwanda, and many other countries have already instituted full-on bans on plastic bags. Plastics have a huge environmental cost, and this is one simple step we can take toward fixing it. Here are 9 reasons we should ban the bag:
isn't to write a paper that will get a good grade. Now, my goal is to
Moving from a highly diverse community to a less diverse community has to be the weirdest yet interesting culture shock I ever had to deal with. As a young child, I did not know about the outside world. I thought everyone rides the bus or the metro, graffiti on the wall is normal and traffic wouldn’t matter as much since everything I needed was within walking distance sometimes. There were shocking things I learned once I moved to Nebraska.
On the month of March of 2013, the House Committee of Urban Affairs had proposed the bill HB 2416 that requires for retailers whom use plastic bags when doing check-outs to have the plastic bags be charged a fee or simply to not use any plastic bags. The policy issue of having a ban towards plastic bags is important for many reasons, they are wrecking the environment and costing hundreds and thousands of dollars in the process. According to the Corpus Christi Plastic Bag Ordinance (2012), Corpus Christi’s Solid Waste Department spends $190,000 each year to pick up loose bags, the C.C’s Municipal Marina spends $4,320 in labor for staff to clean up, and the Parks and Recreational Department spent $125,000 to have trash removed from the Gulf Beaches, the lists keeps going giving an outrageous number of amounts spent on cleaning up bags that many citizens do not know about. Not only that, but all over town plastic bags are clogging water drains, contaminating and preventing the water from flowing properly. These problems and costs all add up in the end when many plastic bags are being utilized for items each and every day, whether it be single-bagged or double-bagged, especially when people seem to want a plastic bag when it is unnecessary, they tend to request a bag to just hold one or two items that can be easily be carried by hand.
Millions of plastic bags are given out to consumers by supermarkets and stores to carry their goods in. They are also cheap, light, durable, easy to carry and in many cases, free. The most commonly used shopping bag is made of High Density Polyethylene (HDPE). This type is used in the majority of supermarkets and stores. After these bags are used, they often end up in landfills or as litter, roughly only three percent of plastic bags is actually recycled per year (Planet Ark, 2011). The materials used in making plastic bags make them non-biodegradable. According to the science dictionary, 2011 refers to “these materials cannot be decomposed into environmentally safe waste materials by the action of soil bacteria.” These harmful substances are toxic and take approximately four hundred years to break down, or in this case photo-degrade; which is how plastics made from (HDPE) break down. Since they are not biodegradable, they remain in the environment and are absorbed in soil or water (Indian Centre for Plastics in the Environment, 2010). This essay will discuss the various harmful effects of plastic bags, and demonstrate the risks that these bags impose on humans, animals and the environment. It will also discuss a series of suggested solutions that could help reduce plastic bag usage.
Everyone has heard a cashier one time or another mumble, “Paper or plastic?” as he put their groceries in a bag, but do shoppers know the effects of each vessel in which they carry their comestibles? There are many issues and benefits to both paper and plastic. The making and recycling of both paper and plastic bags can harm the environment. One must also look at the costs of making each bag. The convenience of each is also something to look at. Many people jump to conclusion that paper bags are better for the environment without knowing the facts. Since plastic bags are preferred by customers and plastic bags actually do not hurt the environment as much as paper ones do, consumers should feel at ease when choosing plastic.