Letter: We must recycle and compost
My name is Savannah Shifrin, and I am a Fifth Grade teacher at Avon Elementary School. This month, students worked on editorial essays about planet Earth. At the end of the unit, students nominated four of their classmates to submit their essays to you to be published (if you wish) as a letter to the editor. This is the second of four we will be submitting as parent permission comes in. — Savannah Shifrin
It was a normal day at Avon Elementary School. We were learning about ecosystems. We watched a video about the eight trash islands and I got really sad, so I wanted to warn everybody about The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch island is a huge problem and this is why. I believe that there should be a law to check plastic recycling and composting.
To start, these are the reasons why we should recycle and compost. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice as large of the size of Texas — 79,000 metric tons of plastic in the ocean. And at least 1.8 trillion pieces of trash are created by human beings. Some of those examples weren’t even 1/8 of how much trash there is. We should recycle and compost. All the waste will go to the oceans if we don’t. Think about the impact that would make on the animals when we are recycling and composting.
Also, the law would stop light pollution, animals (fish in particular) would stop eating plastic and not die, plants would start growing again, gas spills or oil leaks would decrease, and when we recycle and compost it won’t just affect the fish it would also affect humans.
Finally, the law would make fewer problems and stop washing up trash on our beautiful beaches where we can use responsibility. It will be cleaner and safer for us and the fish. I also believe other schools should teach the kids how it hurts us.
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In conclusion, some people might say that it can get boring or messy or even gross and also recycling is dumb, or it doesn’t give us an impact on our life. But it even helps our nutrition because we normally get at least 30,259 fatty acids from fish each year. And pretend if we were fish and we were constantly getting sick and worse every day we won’t get that nutrition. A little law could change our life and the lives of fish.
Moyassar, 5th grade
Avon Elementary School
