It's 2019 and more people than ever are aware that our wasteful and polluted behaviors can be detrimental to the health of the environment.

There have been plenty of ridiculous internet challenges that make us question the intelligence of humanity. Recently a new challenge has gone viral where people all over the world have started to take pictures of themselves standing next to a pile of trash, then taking another picture of them standing in the place of where the trash once was but is now cleaned up.

Whether it's along a highway, in the ocean, or just on the side of a street, letting the trash just sit there instead of it disposing of it properly is ruining our planet more than what is believed. I know it's easier to pretend like we don't know what's going on with our environment than to except that we are fully responsible for not picking up our ridiculous amount of waste.

Yes, society is more aware of what a massive problem we have here, but we still more of the population to actually take action. What most of the population doesn't understand is that we don't need to make an entire day trip out of cleaning up the highway, ocean, or city streets although that would be great. There are simpler things we can start to do to help out with the sad and detrimental situation we are in though.

Like, Planting a tree in your backyard. Of course, you would need land and that would take more than 5 minutes to do but it's a simple way to contribute to the earth. If you want something that can benefit you more than just mentally, start using less power and start turning the light off every time you leave a room. It saves you money and the planet.

Also, I don't know who needs to hear this, but your dog doesn't need to watch the TV when you're gone.

The smallest, yet the biggest, thing you can do to help the environment is just picking up the trash you discard wrongfully. I know you're a busy person, but life as we know it won't matter anymore if you don't stop and pick up the trash you dropped and decided to ignore.

"If the entire world lived like the average American, we'd need five planets to provide enough resources." -The Chicago Tribune