Malakai Smith, Mullumbimby
Every year, every single person in Australia uses 130kg of plastic just once! This is an absurd amount of plastic that only has one use. Obviously there are solutions. The first being that we should ban single use plastic.
Think of all the plastic that is thrown out. There are more than 80,000 metric tons of plastic on Garbage Island. Garbage Island is in the Pacific Ocean. It is made entirely of rubbish. That is, 1.6 million square km of waste that has been thrown out.
We use an absurd amount of single use plastic in our everyday lives. The plastic bags that we get from shopping centres, coffee cup lids, they are all single use plastic. We have the power to stop the use of single use plastic.
People all over the world understand that we should start using alternatives. Alternatives like paper bags, keep cups or metal straws. The kids at my school (Upper Coopers Creek Public School) made bees wax wraps to use instead of cling wrap. It is obvious that we need to use alternatives.
It is time that we banned single use plastic. Do you want to be the generation that destroyed the world, or do you want to be the generation that saved it?
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
