One Small Thing: Burger in the Dump

Food is one of things we take for granted. When I was in the cafeteria of my school one day, I caught a boy throwing away half a burger. I trailed the burger with my eyes and stopped at the garbage can. It was utterly disgusting. There were apples that were barely eaten, greasy fries, granola bars and much more. Then I scanned the room and notices that people were throwing away their garbage everywhere. There were squished tomatoes under the tables, bits of rice and juice.

Children in this generation have been very wasteful. Canada is able to feed the entire world yet thousands go hungry. We buy more than we need and throw most of it away. The food we throw away can be harmful to the environment. Plastic wraps and utensils and Styrofoam cups take thousands of years to decompose and release harmful toxins in the soil. Soft drink cans take even longer to decompose and birds may mistake the tab as food and choke on it.

My grandpa always told me that someone had to work for every grain of rice that I ate. Now the people think that it is very easy to get food and they do not grow the food so they buy too much. It used to be very different. It was so hard to get food that many wars were started by food shortage.

When we throw food away, the consequences are tiny when compared to other things like batteries and electronics. But throwing away batteries and electronics started off by us throwing away food. We start off small and think it is okay to throw away food so we throw away bigger things until it becomes a bad habit. Eventually, the entire Earth will become a garbage dump if we all had a bad habit of wasting things.

So instead of throwing away your old electronics or clothing, think about a charity.