Leaving It Better Than You Found It
If you were to go for a walk around your neighborhood, how many pieces of trash do you think you would see? One? Maybe two or three? Today, nearly 50 billion pieces of litter can be found along U.S. roadways and waterways.i Not only is it a mark on the natural features of our world, but it has severe impacts on our environment. Taking action to keep the Earth clean can be made easy by simply leaving a place better than you found it.
For Federico Frias, an iOS engineer at GlobalLogic, ocean pollution is a personal concern. “As a surfer, I've been surrounded by water most of my life. I've been enjoying the ocean since I was a baby, and I hope future generations can continue with this legacy,” Frias says. However, every minute, two garbage trucks worth of plastic enters the oceans – equaling 33 billion pounds annually.ii “The number one problem in the oceans is plastic. [Plastic] not only pollutes but affects all the ecosystem. We can do simple actions to revert this,” Frias says. Frias participates in beach cleanups to help give back to local communities and utilizes less single-use plastic in his day-to-day life. “My home is the beach and the ocean; That’s why I keep it clean,” Frias says.
Brad Nusbaum, a supplier quality engineer at Sullair, LLC embodies the ‘leave it better than you found it’ mentality at home, by recycling as much as possible and picking up littered aluminum cans for recycling when he goes on walks. While picking up just one piece of trash may seem to have no purpose with the high amount of litter that already exists outdoors, it is an immediate action that helps keeps animals’ habitats safer and our planet cleaner. “We need to keep our oceans, waterways, and air clean to ensure the health and safety of future generations,” Nusbaum says.