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YouTubeThis past Thursday, we celebrated Earth Day, a global holiday to bring about environmental change and to clean up the world around us.
During Earth Day this year, I spent the time to walk around and enjoy the nice weather. The problem was that everywhere I looked on the ground as I walked, I saw litter. From used Blow Pop sticks to entire bags from Sheetz or Burger King just sitting on the ground around campus. So, sick of seeing it all, I began to pick it up. I picked up everything I saw around me that people were too lazy and irresponsible to just throw away in a trash can.
Now the litter I was picking up the most was cigarette butts. No matter where I walked on campus, there were little cigarette butts lying on the ground. I could probably pick up cigarette butts every day until I graduate and never clean them off the campus.
This article is not against smoking. I have no problem with smokers. It is perfectly legal and if you choose to smoke, that is your choice. This article is against throwing your cigarette butts wherever you please and degrading the look of our campus and presenting a poor image to incoming parents and students. When visitors see cigarette butts everywhere, it says that not only does the college not care about the cleanliness of the campus, but the students care even less and do not even take responsibility for their trash.
I understand there are not a lot of outdoor ashtrays for the smokers on campus. There is a small one outside of the doorways of HPCC and KHIC, but not many elsewhere on campus. I can understand why people leave their cigarette butts wherever, but I do not think that there should be any excuse for people to be lazy and irresponsible. By leaving your cigarette butts wherever you please, you are in fact littering and should be treated as the criminals you are.
Of course, it is not just the smokers, though the smokers are the most apparent. There are always alcoholic paraphernalia thrown about, along with bags from the fast food joints in town, and whatever trash that we as human beings leave around. It is not like there are not enough trash cans around campus. In fact, a lot of the trash is within a foot radius of a trash can. Sometimes, trash will blow into the lake.
If nothing else, I hope readers will get out of this article decide to start taking personal responsibility for the trash around campus. Please, stop throwing your trash wherever you please and pick up trash whenever and wherever you see it. If you say to yourself “It’s not my trash.
I shouldn’t have to pick up someone else’s trash, you are only adding to the problem and letting that trash just sit there. If you care about anything, care about this planet. Think of it this way: we are guests here on this planet. If we continue to mistreat it, the planet will find ways of “kicking us out.” Plus, we have been doing this kind of thing since the Industrial Revolution and have been getting progressively worse lately.
Pretty soon, we will have finally outworn our welcome.
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