Letters: Stop littering and save our planet!

Editor’s note: The following letters by two local students were submitted jointly.

Littering has corrupted our planet for many, many years. We have been killing animals and their habitats. One hundred million animals have died yearly by littering (theaseanpost.com/article/death-plastic-waste).

We are throwing trash out our windows; the trash is going in streams, which goes in a river and then the ocean. It kills turtles, dolphins, fish, seals and seabirds. When I see pictures of animals, and inside of them they have trash in their stomachs, it makes me think: Why are we not thinking about all the animals that are dying? They are thinking that the trash that we throw out our windows is food for them to eat, and this just makes me mad.

We need to help our planet with less littering, and that might make a little bit of an impact on our society.

— Lucille W.
Fifth grade
Franklin School of Innovation
Asheville

If you litter, stop now and listen. You’re not only affecting everybody else, you’re affecting yourself. The earth’s diversity is dying because if you litter, when it rains, it washes in the sewers, and all the sewers lead to the oceans.

Animals eat the litter thinking it’s food and die. When I was trying to tell you all the sea animals that are corrupted by this, me and my research partner were sad and disappointed about what we saw. She has already told you about the trash in the animals’ stomachs. We should be very embarrassed of what we caused.

Did you know that global warming is also impacted by litter? Fourteen billion pounds of trash get dumped in the ocean a year (seastewards.org)!! If you stop littering, the world will be a better place.

— Phoebe W.
Fifth grade
Franklin School of Innovation
Asheville