You and the World: Philly's Dirty Streets
Hi, my name is Colin Pierce and I’m a freshman at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. For English this quarter, we have been assigned to research and write a blog about how to combat a recent problem in our society. I decided to address the large amounts of litter in our streets because it seems to have gone out of control in the past few years. It’s degrading to our city and harmful to our ecosystem.
According to this CBS Philly article, Philadelphia was ranked as the “second dirtiest city in the U.S., according to a recently released survey by Travel and Leisure magazine”, and this isn’t just a baseless claim. If you take a walk in South Philly, you can see trash everywhere like it’s on display! You see it in the gutters, in plants, window boxes, in storm drains, and even on people’s porches! It’s not just that it’s making our city look ugly, either. Litter is also making its way into the Schuylkill River and interfering with marine life, which is shown below.
This photo, showing trash in the Schuylkill River, was This diagram from The Living Ocean shows
taken in 2005. how exactly trash affects marine life.
This trash won’t just disappear. If we keep going on like this without making some sort of effort to fix these mistakes, then we can say goodbye to clean drinking water, goodbye to all of our resources, and hello to the rodents and bugs that are attracted to what we leave out. If we continue on this path, then soon we’ll end up having to wear gas masks to work and having smog days instead of snow days, like in China. It seems so easy to not litter, too! There’s trash and recycle bins at almost every corner, and even weekly trash pickup, so why aren't people taking advantage? Is there anything we could do to encourage people to be cleaner? If you have any ideas, leave a comment or go to the Philadelphia Streets website here for more information.
