Earth Day is coming up on April 22 and in all of the ways the Earth is being damaged, there are many different ways to help the environment.

People, for the most part, think about picking up litter when contributing to Earth Day, and it is important.

If a student were to cross the bridge over salt creek, litter pollutes not only the water but everywhere along the grass and near it. As students walk to and from school and from lunch, they drop milk cartons, straws, papers, etc. everywhere. They can’t wait just a couple of minutes to get to the school where there are many trash and recycling bins. There are ways to throw out trash near a park, a store or at home, yet people still choose to drop garbage.

If members of an orchestra were to play a scale together and play one note of their choice wrong within it, the whole thing would sound off because, in order for it to sound the best, everyone has to be going for the right note. The same goes for littering: if everyone were to litter every single day, we would be swimming in trash because no one would be trying to keep the earth looking clean.

Cleaning one’s room is a pain to do but when it’s done, it feels a lot better than living in filth. Not littering could be a pain at one moment because someone is too lazy to walk to a trash can to throw out only the gum wrapper, but it’s worth it in the end if everyone puts in the effort.

Because of our lifestyles, people are contaminating  the environment is so many different ways.

One fact about pollution that most people may not know about is the harm coming off from agriculture and farming.

“Besides the whole cows farting and releasing methane, which is 20 times worse than carbon dioxide, farming is harmful because of the methods. For example, chemicals like pesticides may run off from fields and contaminate water sources or fields may be overused and become infertile,” junior AP Environmental Science student Eddie Almaraz said.

Water is a major issue around the world right now and there’s talk about shortages and contamination.

“One major thing we don’t know or ignore is the current fresh water shortage issue,” Almaraz said. “Like the fact that only 2.78 percent of all the water in the world is fresh and, of that 2.78 percent, really only .47 percent is easily accessible to us and we have already contaminated or depleted much of the easily accessible water.”

Everyone always hears about turning off the lights when leaving the room to save energy, but it also prevents harm to the environment.

“The day you’re born, you’re used to [having] the lights on. We take for granted that we have so many motor vehicles that can transport us. The problem is, it takes energy to power all these lights, to power these vehicles. The majority of this power produced in this country is through coal, and when you burn coal, it releases mercury. It gets captured in the rain and makes its way down into the soil,” AP Environmental Science teacher Alexander Stavropoulos said. “Then, as it works its way into some of the waterways, we see smaller organisms consume it. We see it starting to build up through our food chains. biomagnification. As we eat larger fish, we are getting larger amount of mercury or other chemical components and we don’t even realize it.”

Air pollution is also a problem not only because it is growing, but because of how people don’t know its extremes. People think that because they don’t see changes in the air, it is not being affected.

“I think air pollution is one of the biggest ones that people don’t think about. The air is composed of a number of different chemicals and compounds. One thing that people don’t really realize is that indoor air pollution is actually much more harmful in terms of human health than outdoor pollution,” Stavropoulos said. “There are so many various chemicals that we use to treat our furniture or use in our carpet that we don’t see as they are slowly released into the air that we’re continuously breathing in.”

As we breathe in the toxins, our lungs and organs are affected because we run on oxygen. The more polluted some countries are, the more frequently people are to become ill or die because of it or a related disease.

The big thing about helping the environment is spreading awareness about it. Some do not know how much one person can make a difference. Some people do not even know that they are destroying Earth over periods of time.

“A lot of people get stuck saying, ‘Well, what can I do, I’m just one person.’” That turns into a major issue, because people are reluctant to try anything,” Stavropoulos said, “If everyone acts globally and does their part, I think we wouldn’t eliminate these issues that we are currently dealing with, but it would at least push us in the right direction.”

Stavropoulos recalled his teacher while he was in college about helping the environment: “think globally, but act locally.”

Earth Day is a way for people to remember the harm they cause in the environment and how they can help, but everyone has to remember that every day is Earth Day. There isn’t a limit to how much one can help the environment, and every little thing helps.

“If we are aware, then we can take steps to reduce our harmful effects like recycling more, shorter showers, biking, refilling water bottles instead of buying more,” Almaraz said.