Essay On Plastic Waste

Every year each American produces thousands of pounds of waste. A majority of them not even knowing where it is going to end up. I have always considered my family to not consume a whole lot, but after looking closer at my consumption and waste over the last few days, we may not consume as little as I thought. We were challenged to keep track of our interactions with plastic for 2 days. I knew I would lose track after about an hour. This task made me incredibly aware this last week of mine and my families total consumption and waste. Thinking about what makes up most of my waste and how I could reduce that, I came to the conclusion that by far most of my waste is plastic, and myself, along with other Americans in general can reduce our waste in many different ways

I became aware that plastic was also the type of garbage that accounts for most of my waste by volume. Almost everything is plastic, and a lot of that is pretty bulky, unnecessary and can take up a lot of space. Weight on the other hand for me would have to go to cardboard/paper. From boxes that are received from deliveries, school work, to the boxes that come with food and beverages all adds up to account for most of the weight of my trash. Our trash bins at home generally only have one bag worth of garbage a week. Most of the waste we produce as a family is usually recycled. My recycling bins at home typically are full by the time of the week that the garbage man comes. I would consider a large majority of the recycling bin to be filled with plastic bottles, containers, and plastic milk/orange juice containers. The other smaller part of the waste is less bulky, flattened cardboard, paper, and cans. My family does a good job of recycling our waste, but we should work on consuming one time items like plastic water bottles and unnecessary containers. There are plenty of alternatives that my family and I can do to change our