I walked down the beach, the soggy sand making perfect footprints behind me. As the brown waves tumbled down beside me, they pulled along with it bits and pieces of individual trash. In the water you could see floating paper bags, bottles, and a wrapper of chips or noodle cups. I looked around me, and in the sand was even more trash half buried by the wind.
We’ve all been taught the rules; we all have heard many times the pleaded cry from the environmentalists to “save the planet.” But do we really listen? Sure, we may try recycling for a short period of time, experimenting a new hobby. If everyone assumes the mentality that other people will recycle for them, then the world will slowly fill up with our own garbage and waste.
Pollution can be dangerous to us personally for many reasons. One reason is because men and woman here in Malaysia let their children play in the ocean water, the water in which the government dumps all of Penang’s waste. This not only will infect the water, but the children who most likely will swallow some of this water.
The second reason is turtles used to come to Penang to hatch their eggs, but because of all the pollution they were forced to find a farther off island. This may cause the baby turtles to be born in a more dangerous spot, which places them on the endangered list.
Solutions for pollution have many possibilities. I think the most important solution is teaching the children young. When you teach kids something at a younger age that rule is more likely to be ingrained in their minds, and it will remind them when they are older. I was personally taught when I was younger about not littering, I wouldn’t even think about throwing my trash on the ground. That is until I came over to Malaysia; those rules’ impact on me seemed to be weakened because I was constantly seeing people dropping their trash.
Governmental ways of helping solve pollution could be to either tax the community or fine the individual offender. But this solution could go two ways; either people will learn and understand that pollution is bad and will decrease their littering, or they will get angry at the system and increase their amount to feel like they have more power in what they say they can and cannot do.
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