Though plastic cups may be convenient to use, they can take anywhere from 500 years to practically forever to decompose.  As hard as it may be to believe, according to Chef David our school uses on average about 3000 plastic cups every week.  This is nearly 100,000 cups in a school year!  Why should this concern us?

This is a serious issue not only in our school but also around the globe.  Discarded plastic cups can be found everywhere and are causing more harm than good. The inability to biodegrade plastic poses an alarming threat to the environment.  Since most cups cannot be recycled, they remain in our landfills and pollute the environment, both on land and in the sea.  On land, the plastic buried in the landfills releases toxic chemicals which seep into the groundwater.  Contaminated groundwater and plastic debris make their way into the ocean, which has many devastating effects to the marine wildlife.  It disturbs the ecosystem, leading to the deaths of thousands of whales, seals, turtles, and birds every year from plastic inhalation.

Many people fail to understand the long-term effects of using plastic cups.  I strongly believe that in our school community we need to increase awareness about how the daily use of plastic cups is negatively affecting the environment. It is so easy to just grab one of these cups, but we seem to forget how harmful they are when we discard them.  These single-use plastic cups are very convenient, but each person may end up using multiple cups per day.  This will further increase the number of cups being discarded, and it will ultimately increase the plastic burden on our environment.

We in the Hammond community can take a small step towards solving this problem by minimizing, or even better, by completely eliminating plastic cups from our school cafeteria.

As an environmentally friendly school, we should not only raise awareness of this problem, but also start thinking of solutions. I propose that we should discontinue the use of plastic cups in our school’s Dining Hall and replace them with recyclable paper cups.  These cups are cost effective and will definitely help reduce the amount of plastic we are using at school.

Additionally, within our Hammond community, we should encourage the students and faculty to bring reusable water bottles to school.  I will take the lead by bringing one of the many reusable water bottles that I have at home to use at school.  In addition, I will urge my friends to do the same and spread the message.  I am convinced that these small steps will ultimately benefit our school and be the first of many steps in improving the environment.