estimated 200 million tons of trash, and this number has been multiplying. The air, water, and land around landfills can be polluted if not treated properly. This affects the quality of life of all organisms, including plants, animals, and humans. Countries are running out of places to discard their trash, leading to garbage being dumped in the oceans, or burned, neither being ideal. Burning trash such as plastic or metal releases harmful chemicals and poisonous gases and smoke into the air. Ideally, if we can find a non-polluting way to treat fumes and ashes released from the process, burning would help save plenty of space and is a permanent solution to extinguish our junk.
Global pollution has risen and encroached upon our everyday lives. The severity of health effects from pollution is serious, but many people don’t acknowledge it. It is severely damaging the Earth, our environment. At this point, it is nearly impossible to completely repair the damage done to our environment, but there is still much we can do to start making a change.
Clean energy is renewable energy that is collected from naturally replenishable resources, which are essentially unlimited, like sunlight, wind, water and geothermal heat. There are many affordable options for clean energy, whether for household or industrial use.
Switching to clean energy sources will be very expensive at first, but it is an investment for the future of the country, and Earth as a planet. It is estimated that by 2060, the Earth will exhaust its sources of fossil fuels, and we will have to secure an affordable and efficient energy alternative.
Solar panels collect radiation from the sun to convert it into heat or electricity. It is not cheap, but in the long run, it will save more money than using fossil fuels.
Wind Energy captures energy from wind flow using large turbines and converts it into electricity. Some cons are that wind farms require a large area and constant wind, which limits the location to rural areas. They may also harm birds flying in the sky.
Hydroelectricity typically involves dams in large-scale projects. Water flows rapidly through the dams’ turbines and generates electricity from the energy that is created from the turbine’s’ rotation. However, these dams can negatively affect the animals in the water, since it is a large foreign structure in an area that houses many organisms, but it presents obstacles to the natural migration of many species of fish.
Nuclear energy is formed from the splitting of atoms, that emits enormous amounts of energy. This reaction heats water into steam that turns a turbine, and as a result, creates electricity. Though it requires dangerous, radioactive material, it is considered safe if the waste is treated properly. Nuclear energy provides approximately 6% of the world’s energy and 20% of the US' energy (North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, US Department of Energy).