Earth Camp Commitment

Hey, I’m Naomi. I have made two commitments to this camp to keep my life as sustainable as possible. I had a difficult time picking these commitments. Partly because there were so many to choose from, but also because I didn’t want to make a far-fetched one that I can’t keep. I decided to settle on not using or buying any plastic water bottles and no aerosol Febreeze air fresheners from this moment on.

This photo is of all of my fellow campers!

Once in a while I go with my mom and brother after school and she would let us choose something to drink. I would choose a bottled water most of the time and I didn’t think anything of it until this camp.  I knew it wasn’t good, but I figured as long as it ended up in my recycling bin at home it would be okay.

It is NOT okay. I found out that although I’m putting it into the recycling, not everyone is.  When people buy a bottled water, will they actually recycle it, or will it just go into the trash can?

See, the problem with throwing plastic bottles, besides the obvious (being able to recycle them), there is also the issue with the ocean. “Why the ocean?” seems like a frequently asked question. Well, when you throw away plastic bottles, a lot of it finds its way out of the landfills. Either that or just not throwing it away at all and instead someone might just throw it on the ground. Either way, they somehow make it to the ocean. In the ocean there is this place called the Gyre. The Gyre is this HUGE area, bigger than the size of Texas, made of trash and covered with plastic bottles. People also tend to ask “Well why don’t we just clean it all out?” It’s not that we don’t want to; it’s just that we can’t. Imagine going around the whole ocean for years at a time trying to gather up every single plastic bottle only a few at a time. It’s impossible.  I will NOT be one to contribute to the Gyre. That is what inspired me to make this one of my commitments. 

My second commitment is not using/buying any more aerosol air fresheners. Every day I usually have to give my room a nice two or three sprays of Febreeze to keep my room smelling super fresh. I have a gerbil that is literally a pooping machine, so I constantly have to make an effort to not let the smell take over my room. To me, this was a pain. But to Planet Earth, it’s painful.

I learned this the day that a man named Professor Michael Crimmins, a climatologist, explained that spraying out of aerosol cans produces a lot of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases basically kill the ozone. The ozone is an invisible layer covering the Earth that keeps miscellaneous objects from bumping into our planet.