Alicia+P’s+OpEd+Article



//By Alicia P.// I strongly dislike it when people waste paper, especially when they use one line and decide to crumple it up and start over. I find it ridiculous how people save their personal time by skipping homework assignments or taking a shortcut in life, but don ’ t take the time to save a simple piece of paper. This just proves how selfish people can be. Now I ’ m not trying to be a cynical person, but it ’ s true and we as a whole have to suffer the consequences of the actions of individuals. Just because wasting one paper doesn ’ t “ seem ”  to affect people ’ s lives at a certain time or moment, does not mean they have the privilege to waste our trees. One ton of papers can save 17 trees and yet, people still waste paper. They don ’ t even try to save used paper by reusing it for math problems or as scratch paper for anything else. It frustrates me to see and hear about people being too lazy to help our environment or not even care. How could people not care about our natural resources?!?! So people are too lazy to reuse their papers, but not too lazy to improve their personal appearances, status, and wealth?? Don ’ t people realize that wasting paper will affect us all as a whole eventually? This reminds me of a youth conference that I attended over the summer. We would have group meetings and our counselor was usually a couple of minutes late. During those minutes of waiting, the other students, who were my age, would crumple up paper cups and “ shoot ”  them into the trash can. They simply took several unused paper cups and threw them away …  That summer seemed like a waste because I felt that my family paid 2500 bucks for me to babysit a bunch of obnoxiously unthankful teenagers. Am I being too pessimistic about teenagers (and adults) not saving paper and reducing the loss of trees? Of course trees will grow back, but that takes years! And with our population sky-rocketing, the need of paper shoots up as well, but the problem is that trees take time to grow. Our society has been cutting down trees faster than they are growing! So, what can we do? Well, to start off, we can reuse our papers and then recycle them; by just recycling papers that are half used will hurt our society in a different matter: global warming, due to the massive energy used in recycling paper. So why not reuse paper on your own? Why not use the back of the paper of your essay from two years ago as scratch paper for math problems? It is not that hard to put in an effort to help our world. I don ’ t think I ’ m asking too much from our fellow peers to help in this global effort to reduce waste. media type="file" key="aliciap-muckraker-0910.mp3"
 * __Alicia complains about wasting paper__**