Here at Bellingham High School, we have noticed lunch trays, random chip bags, and more of garbage inside and outside of our school. We only have one Earth, and we should protect it.

There are many things you can do to become more eco-friendly, big and small. One of the smaller things you could do is go out and start picking up garbage you see around our community. You could also stop buying things that use a lot of plastic, or even just plant a tree in your yard. If you want to do more things with a bigger impact you can always switch to buying all eco-friendly products, volunteer for clean-up parties, or help in any other ways you can.

The reason why these things are so important is because our climate-change-contributing greenhouse gases have increased by 70% from 1970 to 2004, according to National Geographic. Just changing one thing in your life could decrease greenhouse gases and help protect our environment. If we don’t start dealing with global climate change, by 2050 we could see it becoming irreversible.

Not only will this affect us, but it will also affect wildlife in our community like raccoons, birds, or any other type of urban wildlife. One piece of garbage outside could be equal to one wild animal dying. Increase of greenhouse gases will be equal to wildlife losing their homes.

We can’t change the world, but we can start by changing our community and cleaning it. Even if it means cleaning up other people’s messes. Students at Bellingham High School care about our community and if we can do anything to improve our community then we should.