Opinion: Take What You Can Chew

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Ethan Edvenson
Cartoonist
            It’s just an average lunch time on a pretty basic day at school. You look around and see most everyone enjoying their lunch just as you are, until your stomach gets that feeling. UH OH! Looks like you can’t eat any more of that chicken sandwich because your stomach is now full! Oh what to do?
Just like culture has taught you, it is okay to just go ahead and throw it in the garbage along with the other food you didn’t finish. It won’t add up to much right? However, you soon realize more and more students are doing the same thing as you are doing.
Then, you think about the students and staff from the other lunch hours all combined in their efforts to get rid of their trash. Finally, you acknowledge the several millions of other United States citizens that shamelessly throw away their remains to rot in a landfill. And that landfill isn’t limited to food.
According to the EPA, in just one year, America is estimated to waste 251 million tons of trash. Compared to that, only 87 million tons of material is recycled or composted. That is around 4.3 pounds of waste per person per day. These numbers should be alarming, but prior generations have displayed that it is acceptable to throw away what we don’t want and forget about it instead of saving it or finding an alternative use for it.
As citizens of this country, we need to find a reasonable way to stop wasting so much, find ways to recycle more things, and stop taking more than we can chew.

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