Editor’s note: This piece is part of a series of guest opinions from Crest View Elementary School 5th graders. Each piece was submitted with permission from the author’s parents.

Imagine a world with no trash lying anywhere and a clean environment where animals and humans can thrive in a beautiful way. People should never litter anywhere, because most people who do that, don’t realize that they’re hurting the animals and surroundings around them.

This can lead to an unhealthy environment and lead to the death of animals, so we need to stop this.

I believe that littering will hurt animals’ environments in a very impactful way. For example, if there are plastic bags floating around in the ocean where many creatures live they might accidentally mistake the bags for food! Not only does this happen a lot in the water but also on land. We never want this to happen ever, so ways that we can stop this is not littering!

According to the book, “Too Much Trash” from Epic, when animals eat garbage they can start to feel full and stop seeking out their natural diet. According to the report, “Scientists Study Huge Patch of Trash in the Ocean” from Newsela, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas! The GPGP (for short) is about 79,000 metric tons of plastic! That is a lot of plastic that can harm so many animals.

There are many ways that we can put littering to an end, but it all starts with you.

Whether you see someone litter on purpose or on accident you can be a great citizen and tell them to pick it up. If you do, it’s your lucky day, you just saved an animal’s life! Just doing a small act can help the environment grow and help people learn and live successfully.

Not only does trash harm animals, but it can also lead us to a gross, stinky environment for humans, and nobody wants that! Did you know that you can donate money to many organizations where people clean up trash? Always remember that you can make a difference in your community through trash clean-ups!

Much of the trash waste and litter all over the world that can hurt animals comes from people not recycling plastics. I believe that if we recycle plastics it will change the impact that we see in our environment. Plastics with small holes in them can easily get caught around animals’ faces and they can suffocate or choke. According to, “What can you recycle?” In the year of 2017, only about 3 million tons of plastic was recycled. That could mean that in 2017 a lot of plastic was littered by people. I feel that recycling is a big component in this environmental situation.

Just contributing to a situation like trash being very harmful to animals, you could change other people’s thoughts about it too. I hope that this issue will cross through people’s minds and someday make them think twice before littering a plastic bottle, or whatever it might be that will hurt our lovely environment. I believe that someday anyone and everyone can make a change to improve our world.

Gabriella Rimicci is a 5th grader at Crest View who enjoys playing soccer and creating pieces of art inspired by nature.