Imagine a world where the number of animals in the world is half of what it is today. That is the world we will live in if we don’t do anything about all the harmful materials on our planet, especially Styrofoam. Every year Styrofoam kills thousands of animals, everything from fish to birds. From Antarctica to the Amazon Rainforest there is nowhere the harmful effects of Styrofoam doesn’t reach.

          Styrofoam has horrible consequences for the environment, including but not limited to, releasing a slew of toxic chemicals when burned, harming and even killing many types of animals, and even being made with a chemical that is widely known to be a carcinogen. You may think that the effects of styrofoam may be limited to the areas they are most typically found; however, you would be mistaken. In 2016, researchers on King George Island which is off the coast of Antarctica found a large piece of Styrofoam washed up on the island, which goes to show just how far the harmful effects of Styrofoam can reach because, if something else, say penguins got to it first, they may have eaten the Styrofoam thinking it was food and they could die as a result.

          I myself have been to many bodies of water all over the country, rivers in the west, the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the great lakes. On all of these trips nothing springs to mind when I try to think of not seeing any Styrofoam, which really goes to show just how widespread this issue is. If Styrofoam can make its way all the way to Antarctica then it wouldn’t be too hard to believe that Styrofoam can make its way to anywhere in the world.

          Some may argue in favor of Styrofoam by saying that it’s cheap and effective, and while that is true, we are digging our own grave. If we don’t act fast then it’s possible that Styrofoam will lead to the extinction of some birds and fish. We can undo some of the harm done by Styrofoam, we won’t be able to undo the extinction of an entire species. Depending on the species that go extinct it could cause major issues in the food chain leading to the extinction of even more species that depends on that food source. Which would eventually lead to major problems for us humans as the ecosystem that has been developing on this planet over the past 3.7 billion years would get set back thousands if not millions of years. So, is it really worth saving that little bit of money if it costs us everything? I don’t know about you, but I would say no, it’s not worth it.

          You may be wondering if there’s anything we can do to help stop this problem from expanding, and the simple answer is, yes there is. Some things almost that anyone can do and cost absolutely nothing is simply pick up Styrofoam trash when you see it on the ground and recycle it if that is available to you even just getting it off the streets is better than just leaving it there for an animal to eat. Another easy thing you can do is stop buying Styrofoam products when shopping; it may be difficult to avoid buying it, but I promise it’s worth it to save our wildlife. Probably the easiest thing you can do is write an email, you can write to your state government and try to convince them that Styrofoam is something that should be more restricted or even banned entirely. You can also write to companies you often buy from, such as Amazon, Walmart, or any other business you can think of and try to get them to switch to an environmentally friendly alternative.

I believe a more ecofriendly alternative to be Mushroom Packaging. It’s a competitively priced packaging material that is 100% biodegradable and has most of the same positives of Styrofoam with none of the negatives. It’s grown in a mold in only 7 days, takes only 45 days to fully decompose, and doesn’t leach any harmful chemicals into the earth in the process. So, one last thing some people could do is, if you are a business owner that send packages fairly regularly, switch to Mushroom Packaging.

          You may also be wondering, what do we do about all the Styrofoam already out in the world since it takes 500 years to decompose and harms the earth in the process of decomposing? I have a solution for that, too mealworms. Mealworms have been observed to be able to safely eat and breakdown Styrofoam though it would take many mealworms. And likely many years to complete. I took the liberty of doing the math and assuming all the mealworms live an average lifespan of 1-2 years, it would take from 329 million-658 million mealworms to breakdown all the Styrofoam in America’s landfill. In other terms, it would take 1-2 mealworms per person living in America to clean up all the Styrofoam in landfills today. That doesn’t sound so bad now, does it? Because getting it taken care of safely is better then harming the earth even more.

So you see, Styrofoam has many negatives, and is an issue that should not be taken lightly by any means. If we don’t do anything about it, then we could cause huge problems for ourselves. However, if we act fast, then we can still undo some. If not all, of the bad caused by Styrofoam, and more importantly, stop it before it becomes a problem we can no longer control and has devastating effects on the environment and us as humans. All we have to do is act before it’s too late.

Works Cited

Jordan, Rob. “Plastic-Eating Worms May Offer Solution to Mounting Waste, Stanford Researchers Discover | Stanford News Release.” News.stanford.edu, 29 Sept. 2015, news.stanford.edu/pr/2015/pr-worms-digest-plastics-092915.html.

Little, Mark. “Facts about Landfill & Styrofoam.” Sciencing, 2010, sciencing.com/facts-about-landfill-styrofoam-5176735.html.

Vijayalaxmi Kinhal. “How Styrofoam Is Bad for the Environment.” LoveToKnow, LoveToKnow Corp, 2016, greenliving.lovetoknow.com/How_Styrofoam_is_Bad_for_the_Environment.