For my environmental science class that I am taking this summer, I had to choose a project that would have an impact on the environment. So, I have quit using straws and instead, have purchased a reusable straw.

I never thought about how many straws I use and throw back into the environment until I was in Morocco and we rarely even saw straws. According to GetGreenNow, Americans use enough straws every day to circle around Earth 2.5 times. Now multiply that number by 365 days and then by how many years straws have been used, and then add a few billion to account for the rest of the world. Yeah, straws are a bigger deal than you think.

I have been counting how many straws I am saving from being thrown into the environment and comparing that to my one reusable straw. As I start paying more and more attention to how many straws I waste, I start noticing how much plastic I waste. On campus, I recycle but at home, we do not.

The United States is not covered in plastic like some countries are, so we do not think that it is a problem. Instead of stopping while we are ahead, we continue to produce, consume and dispose of more and more plastic each day.

We also wrap our plastic in plastic. Then we throw it in plastic before we put it back in our environment to sit there for a couple thousand years. Oh yeah, by the way, if you didn't know, plastic doesn't just disappear when the trash man takes it away. Even the deepest parts of the ocean are covered in plastic.

We can't go anywhere today and not see plastic.

Our problem with plastic stems from our amazing ability to be able to think of more and more ways to be lazy. We put all of our groceries in plastic bags because we are too lazy to bring our own recyclable bags to the store. We would rather order something online that is wrapped in 12 layers of plastic than go into the store. Plastic is a part of every meal we eat, every outfit we wear and pretty much everything we do.

Why don't we acknowledge it? Even if we acknowledged it would we do anything about it? Why don't restaurants use paper straws or no straws at all? Why do we care more about convenience than the future of our planet?

I challenge you to stop using straws. I challenge you to hand them back when you go through a drive-thru. Start a chain reaction. Start paying attention to how much plastic you throw back into our environment and know that it will be on this earth much longer than you will be.

There is an entire world outside of our phones and it is suffering. Why is it so hard for us to change our daily lives for the better? Why do we stress about so many things that we can't control rather than changing what we can? But most importantly, what are you going to do about it?