Kids Ready to Rescue the Environment
What would you be willing to do to help the environment? Many kids responded favorably to this question, posed as part of the Kids' Environmental Report Card poll.
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Only about one in seven voters felt the planet's environmental woes were not their problem. The rest were eager to accept the challenge by giving up bottled water, volunteering their time, or helping their schools to be more "green" in their approaches to waste reduction and energy use.
Bad News in a Bottle
Small measures, such as giving up bottled water, could make an enormous difference to the planet's health. According to Washington DC-based Food & Water Watch (FWW), Americans purchased 37 billion bottles of water in one year alone. While some of those plastic bottles were recycled or reused, most were thrown away, FWW says. Plastic doesn't decompose easily, so once a plastic bottle winds up in the trash, it can taker thousands of years for it to break down. Can we afford to clog our landfills with such unnecessary debris?
It's heartening to learn that most young people are willing to do their part to protect the environment. As one kid wrote on the Save the Earth message board, "While adults are saying ‘can't, can't, can't,' kids are saying ‘can, can, can'."
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