Deliberately looking for environmental problems was more difficult than I expected it to be. I found myself struggling to find an actual problem, rather than one that would loosely fit the prompt. Though there are many problems facing the environment, I wanted to find an issue that the general public has become blind to. I started thinking about different household items and how their disposal may affect the environment. The item that I chose was the toothbrush. It is an item that is used every day and is supposed to be replaced every three months. This means that the average person goes through four toothbrushes a year. I started thinking about how four toothbrushes a year does not seem dramatic, but those four toothbrushes multiplied by the population of the United States is equal to over 1.3 billion toothbrushes a year. This made me think about how toothbrushes are disposed because I usually just throw my toothbrush away in the garbage; however, I learned that toothbrushes can be recycled through special programs, but not through the regular recycling. Due to a lack of awareness of these programs most toothbrushes end up in landfills rather than recycling facilities. Toothbrushes are an item that we do not usually think too much about when it comes to environmental issues, but we must be more conscious about how we dispose of them.
Environmental Concerns 