Exclusive News Report!
Have you ever thrown a piece of trash on the floor because you didn’t want to get up? One of our world’s largest problems is littering. It has been a problem for many years and probably will still be an issue for many more years to come. Littering is the act of making a place untidy with rubbish or leaving a large number of objects left lying about. The act of littering happens everywhere in the world. Littering isn’t something people learn; it usually is just a simple decision that comes as an instinct. Many people litter because they are too lazy to get up and find a trash can and also because they believe that it isn’t their responsibility to pick up their trash and somebody should do it for them.
If you think back and try to remember all the times you littered, many memories will probably pop up. In a recent interview, it was discovered that 75% of people living in the United States admitted to littering in the past 5 years. Believe it or not, 50% of those people said they had mostly littered cigarette butts. Excluding cigarettes, the most common object to litter was fast food waste – 33% of litter - with paper closely following it having 29% of litter. It is also proven that motorists and pedestrians are the largest contributors to littering.
People don’t only litter on land; many people litter in the ocean. A total of nine billion tons of litter is dumped into the seven oceans every year. That’s equal to approximately 3,600,000,000 SUV’s. While holding a piece of trash, a person will take an average of about 12 steps before just throwing it on the ground. Overall, on land and in water, the United States generates about 250 million tons of trash every year. Many people think littering is causing problems like global warming and because of that, $11.5 billion are spent on cleaning up litter yearly.