It's all to familiar to see an empty fast food bag crumpled up and tangled in the weeds on the side of the road. Horror stories of turtles eating the plastic floating in the ocean and birds becoming trapped in balloons left to float into the abyss are now a regular occurrence. It's past time to make a change, and change starts with people taking care of the messes they make. If you're somebody who thinks that "just one piece of trash" thrown out the car window isn't going to make a difference, you're wrong and heres why.

You're not doing anybody a favor by killing the environment our children are going to have to grow up in.

In case you didn't know, there is a future generation coming that will inherit this hot mess of a planet. We've already destroyed it enough (and we keep destroying it further every minute of every day), why would we continue to make it worse by leaving our trash to collect in areas it cannot properly be disposed of. I don't care what it is, even if it is biodegradable, most "biodegradable" products still take decades to decompose. If you're under the impression that "one piece of trash won't hurt," you're delusional.

If you're the kind of person that leaves their trash in the middle of the parking lot instead of depositing it in the trash can near the store, you're a trash person.

Either get off your a** and find a garbage can or leave it in your car until you get home. There is absolutely no justification for leaving it to blow across the parking lot for other people to pick up. You made the mess, you clean it up. Do we need to send you back to kindergarten where we learn these types of things?

It's not the planet's fault that you can't be mature enough to responsibly take care of your own mess. The planet is not your maid, you pick up your McDonalds wrappers and you dispose of them properly.

Leaving garbage to rot out in the open hurts the wildlife in the area, the environment in which you and those animals live in and it eventually will end up either in the ocean or buried in the ground to destroy the nutrition in the soil around it. By throwing that candy wrapper out the window, or dropping fast food containers outside your door in a parking lot, you're adding to the amount of toxins that filter into the earth around you. Is it worth it? Throwing out your trash and destroying the planet for future generations just because you can't wait and put it in the garbage can at home?

There is an unending amount of reasons not to litter. There are maybe 5 reasons to litter and all 5 are because you're lazy.

Littering isn't something just caused by people discarding trash in parking lots or out their car window (which is also dangerous to other drivers, duh). Littering is filling trash cans too full, which opens up the possibility of wind blowing precariously piled trash out into the environment around the receptacle. Littering is setting trash out on the curb to be picked up, but not having it in the right kinds of containers and allowing scavenging animals to pick through it. Littering is from trucks with uncovered trailers, which allow debris to scatter into the air and trail on the ground following the truck. Littering is everywhere and there are simple ways to stop poisoning the planet with our trash.

It costs you more money to litter than it does to just do it right the first time.

Yeah, you might be paying for a trash service to come take away your garbage but would you rather do that than pay more taxes to fix all the sh*t that pilling trash can damage? It costs you more money because your city is responsible for picking up your trash and the money they pay their workers has to come from somewhere. You have to pay for the water damage that may happen once enough trash and debris has clogged up storm drains near you and rainwater no longer has anywhere to go but up. You have to pay for the fire damage that is caused by accumulated litter met with a stray cigarette or a small spark. All these costs fall back on you, so why would you willingly do something that's actively costing you more money?

There are so many alternatives that DON'T poison the environment and end up costing you LESS money.

Ever heard of REDUCE, REUSE, and RECYCLE? Believe it or not, reducing what you use, reusing (and repurposing) things you already have and recycling materials that can be used again actually cuts down on the amount you're spending. Use less water? You don't have to pay so much on your water bill (or electricity bill if you have a well instead of city water).

By simply not letting the shower run for 10 extra minutes before you get in (it doesn't take that long to warm up, trust me) or shutting the water off while you're brushing your teeth, you're cutting down on water usage. AND it's less water that has to go through the water filtration process.

By using things like reusable water bottles and metal utensils instead of disposable ones or saying no thanks to a straw (as long as you don't need one for medical reasons), you cut down on plastic waste a ton!

And lastly, by recycling as many things as you can, you can give those materials the opportunity to be repurposed as something else, thus cutting down on energy and materials needed to make more. Plastic water bottles and milk cartons can be melted down to create more plastic goods without having to pull more natural resources from the planet to make more. Paper and cardboard can be recycled so more trees don't have to come down. They even give you money to take back pop cans and bottles so why would you not take advantage of it?

Not properly disposing of things we use daily is doing nothing but hurting the environment, the animals that live there, and all of us.

We learn from a very young age that everything has a spot that it belongs. Toys go into the toy box when you're done playing with them, socks go into the drawer of the dresser, and garbage goes in the garbage can. When did we begin to forget how to clean up our own messes? Regardless of when we started, it's is past time to stop it.

We as a human race take for granted all the Earth has given us during our time here. We've been provided with water, shelter, food, breathable air ect. and yet all we do is pollute and poison it. We're running out of clean water sources, were running out of natural resources, and were running out of time left on a planet that can still sustain us at the rate in which we're moving toward disaster. Without every single person taking responsibility for their waste and doing what they can to keep our trees green and our ozone intact (as much as it can be at this point), we're going to exhaust the planet and run ourselves into extinction.

I don't know about you, but I want my children to have green grass to run in and clean air in their lungs. I want them to be able to go swimming in clean water, and climb big healthy trees. I want to be able to give them the planet in better condition than it was given to me. I can't do that if irresponsible people don't take responsibility for their actions (and their trash.)

This planet isn't yours for keeps, don't destroy it because you don't feel like taking care of it. Like it or not, we all have to share it and some of us would appreciate it if you'd clean up your act (and your garbage).