Today marks the 41st anniversary of Earth Day, a tradition started in 1970 by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson to spread environmental awareness throughout the United States.
More than four decades later, it is still celebrated yearly by people in more than 175 countries.
The Earth Day Network’s, “Billion Acts of Green,” is the largest environmental service campaign in the world and aims to encourage people to take action in going green and supporting environmental sustainability.
For most of us, our energy is spent trying to save time and money, which inevitably puts saving the environment on the back burner. However, the waste we produce from eating fast food and driving back and forth from school to work and back home— especially at our University, wherein almost 88 percent of students are commuters — is highly damaging to our environment.
Even drinking bottled water is harmful to Mother Earth. According to The Huffington Post, 75 percent of the half-billion water bottles sold in the US go to landfills, which costs $70 million for our city landfills alone. Furthermore, producing those plastic bottles takes enough oil and energy to fuel a million cars, according to Peter Gleick of Pacific Institute.
However, there’s no real health benefit to drinking bottled water in the first place. Oftentimes, tap water is held to a stricter quality standard than bottled water and has added fluoride, which prevents tooth decay.
The next time you’re thinking about picking up a bottle of water — which can run you anywhere from $.99 to $4 and has been shown to leach toxic chemicals, think about the impact that bottle has had and will continue to have on the environment.
If you insist on buying that bottle of water, however, be sure to throw it in the recycle bin instead of the trash along with your unwanted paper goods — this copy of The Daily Cougar included.
As the inhabitants of this planet, we need to strive to conserve the resources available to us and work to improve the environment in which we live, because we are not the only ones affected — future generations will have to live here too.
