Earth Day year round

Every year, there is a week dedicated to the Earth to raise awareness of the importance of preserving our planet. This year, Earth Day is on April 22. This week, various organizations, both at Stevens and outside of the Stevens bubble, held various events to talk about how we help the Earth. As important as Earth Day is, I think many people are too focused on celebrating on this one, specific day.

Earth Day is meant to inspire people to want to make a change year-round, even the little things such as turning off the light in empty rooms or turning off the water when you’re brushing your teeth. Of course, no one is going to think about how bad the Earth has gotten every day, and nor should you. I just mean that we should think about the big picture whenever we can. Is your town proposing a change that will harm the environment? Speak up! Are you aware of a bill that Congress is trying to pass to improve how waste is treated? Tell your representative to support it!

This year’s Earth Day theme is: “End Plastic Pollution.” Plastic has become a common material in today’s day and age, and it probably won’t be going away any time soon. This is exactly why we need to do something to reduce the amount of plastic waste that we create. How bad could it really be? There are plenty of jaw-dropping facts on plastic (and if you are interested you should totally look them up), but here are three just to show you:

1. 8.3 BILLION Metric Tons (9.1 BILLION U.S. tons) of plastic have been produced since plastic was introduced in the 1950s. The amount of plastic produced in a year is roughly the same as the entire weight of humanity.
2. Virtually every piece of plastic that was ever made still exists in some shape or form (with the exception of the small amount that has been incinerated).
3. 91% of plastic waste isn’t recycled. And since most plastics don’t biodegrade in any meaningful sense, all that plastic waste could exist for hundreds or even thousands of years.

That is pretty serious. But, as a society, we have not yet realized the harm of plastic waste and haven’t really looked at what we can do to reduce the waste. PlasticRoad is one company that has. In a brief description, PlasticRoad has a vision to build roads using used plastic bottles as much as possible. PlasticRoad imagines a world where road construction would take days, instead of months, and the roads would last three times as long.  On their website, they explain, “The PlasticRoad concept consists of a prefabricated, modular and hollow road structure made from (recycled) plastic. The prefabricated production, the lightweight and the modular design of the PlasticRoad make construction and maintenance faster, simpler and more efficient compared to traditional road structures.” This is an interesting idea, and it seems like such a simple and obvious solution. Yet, time will only tell if it works in practice and if companies will actually try to use this new material instead of the traditional and trusted material.

I guess after all of this, all I’m trying to say is that we need change, the planet needs it, and we should be open to change and new things. If something is untested and different, it is important that we try it out. It’s time we start thinking of our impact every day and how we can make a difference outside of just one day a year.