Many people who see trash around them on the sidewalk or outside walk away or shove it aside and leave it to be. Now if you saw a piece of litter on the ground what do you think the chances of you picking it up would be?

There was an empty water bottle in the middle of the CTE hallway. Everybody who saw it had looked at it and then walked away, and a few people kicked it aside. One girl kicked it to the side then told somebody else to not trip on it.

Yet neither of them decided to pick it up — they kept on going. I know many people don’t think about picking up trash if they see it because it’s become so heavily normalized in our society that trash is everywhere and we can’t do anything about it.

A lot of our oceans are littered with thousands of pounds of trash, and just imagine how much cleaner and better the world would be without any trash — how many animals would be swimming free, or surviving without these global emissions and pollution.

Many scientists call certain plants and animals out for inhabiting places they don’t belong and ruining the environment, but if you really think about it, humans are viruses as the whole. We occupy a place, run out the nutrients from the soil, kill the forests, cause global emissions to rise and several other factors that continuously pollute our earth, and continue to ruin our ecosystem.

Think how many animals would have survived extinction if humans hadn’t colonized their homes, or if we respected and shared the land with nature like the ecosystem has learned and evolved to do with other species.

In all reality, when is the last time you have heard somebody talk or even mention Earth Day?

Be the change. If you see trash, pick it up if you can.