Honorable Mention Essay: 15-19 Age Group

"We've Got to Act Together"

Ray McCall
Michigan School for the Deaf
Flint, MI

If we act together to save the environment, we WILL succeed, I guarantee you. We can do many different and simple things. I'm going to give you three different examples on how to keep the environment alive. These are: reusing bags, composting worms, and replacing light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs.

My English teacher, Mrs. Elizabeth Tallent, always reuses bags at Trader Joe's grocery store. She went to Trader Joe's last summer and talked with one of the employees of the store. He said that Trader Joe's ordered 1/3 less paper bags because the customers are reusing them. When plastic bags decompose (usually takes around 450 years), they may end up in the ocean looking like plankton. Some sea creatures eat them, and then we eat the sea creatures. So the plastic bags can end up in your stomach, and plastic contains chemicals which can eat up your organs in your body! In New York, one less plastic bag for every person will save us $250,000 per year. Imagine that. Reusing bags from the grocery store doesn't just save paper; it helps save the sea creatures and humans, helps the oceans, helps us to pollute less, and saves money. After reading the information I found through research, I've decided that I'll reuse bags.

My grandpa, Richard Capek, has a worm farm in his backyard and uses worms to reduce garbage such as fruit, vegetables, egg shells, tea bags, and coffee grounds. He feeds these to his worms and the worms make compost, which turns into a rich soil that can be used again in his garden. To start a worm farm all you need is either Eisenia foetida (Red Wiggler) or Limbricus rubellus. You can buy them on the Internet. You also need a container which you can build yourself (my grandpa built one himself) or buy one on the Internet. Composting will help us to recycle food stuffs and grow more plants that also help the environment. Thus, that's the second thing that I'm doing to help the environment.

My family replaced our whole house with CFL bulbs and saved over $30 dollars for each replacement because this bulb's life span is longer, so you don't have to buy bulbs over and over. CFL doesn't just save you money; it also helps save the environment! The 12-watt CFL uses 25% less energy and produces the same amount of light as a 60-watt incandescent bulb. If you replace an ordinary incandescent lamp bulb with a CFL bulb, it will take out about 90 billion pounds of greenhouse gases in the air, the same as taking 7.5 million cars off the road! CFL bulbs today can fit in any light fixture. Thus, if every household, business, restaurant, etc., replaces every bulb to CFL, there will be a huge drop in electricity needed and this will reduce pollution in the air.

As you can see, there are many simple ways that you can really help the environment. I suggest you do what I'm doing: reusing bags, composting worms, and using CFL bulbs. If you start doing these things, other people will realize that we really need to do this to make the world alive. So, stop reading this and go out there to start doing these things and save the world!