What you can do to protect our marine environment

What you can do to protect our marine environment

Ava Flores, Staff writer

As the 2021 summer approaches, it is important to keep our environment and oceans as clean as possible. Water pollution has become a major worldwide issue in the past few decades and has really captivated the world’s attention. Although water flows from our faucets throughout the day, we often take the amount of freshwater available on Earth for granted. As the world’s population increases, water consumption increases. Preventing water pollution and conserving water is important to assure a continuing abundance of water that is safe to use for ourselves and future generations. Water pollution is any human-caused contamination of water that reduces its usefulness to humans and other organisms in nature. Pollutants such as herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, and hazardous chemicals can make their way into our water supply. When our water supply is contaminated, it is a threat to human, animal, and plant health unless it goes through a costly purification procedure. Some simple tasks you can do to help this global cause are picking up litter and throwing it away in a garbage can, blowing or sweeping fertilizer back onto the grass if it gets onto paved areas, not putting fertilizer on the grass right before it rains (the chemicals will wash into storm drains and waterways), mulching or composting grass or yard waste, not blowing leaves into the street (this clogs and damages storm drains), washing your car where it can flow to a graveled or grassed area instead of a street, and not pouring your motor oil down the storm drain. With your help, we can make a difference!