Consumer culture

"The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth", Evo Morales, Bolivian Foreign Affairs Ministry 2010

Oh the irony!!

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One reason why we all should be more mindful of what we do and what we buy is because it has a direct effect on our life-giving home called earth. We Americans have the distinct honor to be the most wasteful people on the planet. We produce 220 million tons of garbage each year, to put that in perspective it would be enough to blanket 82,000 football fields in 6 feet of trash. Most of that trash ends up in landfills, some is recycled, sadly a lot of it ends up as litter. Its so much that it costs the U.S 11 billion a year just to clean some of it up. It's almost never cleaned up when its on the ocean, or rivers where approximately 18% of all litter ends up. They poison and kill marine creatures which in turn poison us when we consume them . Cigarette butts have been found in fish, whales, and birds. I urge everyone to sacrifice a bit of convenience and dispose of trash properly in the proper receptacle instead of just dumping it on the ground.