WA 7 Final Draft

America is full of factories and people that pollute the air and the land. Pollution is a big problem today in our country and it is ruining many places that were once beautiful. One of the current biggest problems is littering. If you look around, litter is almost everywhere. Litter consists of bottles, paper, and other things that have been used and thrown out onto the ground instead of into a trash can. Careless people have dropped or thrown it wherever is most convenient, not thinking about the damage the trash will cause to the earth.

People can be very lazy. They throw their empty cans and paper bags out of the windows of their cars onto the streets while driving along. The trash doesn't go away though; it sits on the grass until an innocent animal like a deer comes along and tries to eat it. Many deer have died from trying to eat litter. More often than not the item that they think is food is actually made of metal or plastic, which causes the unsuspecting animal to choke. Birds are also known to try to eat certain types of trash, which can make them either extremely sick or even kill them.

The cans can also crush grass and flowers which kills them and makes the surrounding area much less pretty. The cans sit on the side of the road for years until some kind person comes to throw them away. Often, nobody comes to take them where they belong and unfortunately they can be washed away by a rainstorm into little streams and then rivers. If litter gets into rivers and streams, it can kill the fish and other animals that live there. The water coming from the rivers is also the same water that we drink; the litter makes it dirty and unhealthy.

Without help from people around America, our country will soon be an ugly place to live. In a few years, if nothing is done about the litter, all the places that Americans love the most will be covered up in garbage. Nobody will be able to swim in the lakes and rivers because they will be filled with broken bottles and covered in oil spills.

Factories let off lots of coal dust and smoke into the air, which makes it hard for people to breathe. The dust coats the trees and grass as well as homes, making cities dirty and causing people to cough. In the past few years, more children have been diagnosed with asthma and most people think it is caused by the factory smoke. The coal is dug from mountains all over the country, and workers cut down trees and mine until the once beautiful scenery is a pile of dirt. We need to reduce the amount of foresting and mountain-top removal before all of our forests and mountains are gone!

All hope is not lost, however! We don't have enough people willing to make the effort to solve our big problem. You can help to stop people from ruining our country's natural beauty by asking some friends to go pick up litter near your house. If every elementary school student in the country started a litter pick up group, the United States would be a much cleaner, prettier place to be. You can get your classmates to draw posters that educate people about what litter does to the earth. Make the signs colorful so that more people will notice them and write in large, bold letters. You can even write letters to your mayor telling him about what your class is doing to try to solve the problem. He or she might want to help with your effort and maybe your community will get involved too.

To stop the energy companies from ruining mountains and forests, you should encourage your parents to try fluorescent light bulbs. They let off less heat than incandescent bulbs when they are turned on, so they use less energy and therefore less coal. If you get your friends to try these new bulbs, everybody will save money and the environment will be cleaner because of it. The sooner the world makes a move the better and you can begin the movement! Ask your parents to find out what local opportunities there are today.