Title of Speech: Plastic Pollution in Our Oceans
Introduction:
Attention Grabber: Its no secret that we love convenience. We love being able to grab a water bottle on the go and once it is finished have the capability to just throw it away. We love being able to go to the grocery store and not have to remember to bring our own bags to carry groceries in. This convenience however, has many downsides that is becoming more of a harm to our environment.
Relevance Statement: Earth cannot naturally break down plastic like it can with other materials we have created (National Geographic).
Credibility Statement: Having lived in Hawaii and participated in beach clean-ups where there are millions of pieces of plastic and where the sand is completely full of micro-plastics.
Proposition Statement: Plastic Pollution in our oceans is a problem and can be solves by making better environmental decisions. We have the capability to help by making simple changes in our daily lives.
Transition statement: Here I’ll discuss simple ways we can help minimize the use of plastic in our daily lives.
Body:
I. The first thing we can do to help minimize our plastic use is by eliminating our use of plastic water bottles
a. In the United States alone, we send more than “38 billion water bottles to landfills every year”(Greensheep water).
b. Plastic water bottles take “about 1,000 years to biodegrade” (greensheep water).
c. There are enough plastic water bottles to “travel to the moon and back 10 times” (greensheep water).
d. Purchasing a reusable water bottle is sometimes an investment but it is so beneficial to the environment and us. You can refill whenever there are fountains and you won’t be using disposable plastic.
Transition: Now that we know how harmful plastic water bottles are to the environment we can buy reusable water bottles to eliminate the use of disposable ones. With that being said we can talk about the use of plastic straws and why we should use reusable ones to go with our reusable water bottles.
II. The second thing we can do to help minimize the use of plastic is eliminating our use of straws.
a. In the United States alone there is an estimate that “500 million straws are used every single day” (National Geographic).
b. Another study from earlier this year estimated as many as “8.3 billion plastic straws pollute...