We had a trip to La Guajira, a place in Colombia that is in the northern part, shares borders with Venezuela, and  has access to the Caribbean sea. We saw many things that are damaging the environment. On the trip, we saw tons of plastic. Wherever we were going we saw places with plastic bags, and with a lot of waste. We felt how different it was from where we live in Medellin and the places that I have been.  There was plastic everywhere and the problem with that is that all of this waste is destroying the environment. It’s production and failure to recycle causes global warming.

Plastic takes a long time to biodegrade and that means that it will be damaging the environment, and many animals, that might eat the plastic for a lot of time. In these places people could recycle, or instead of throwing away plastic, use for another time. I mean that in La Guajira the waste wasn’t treated properly, creating the waste that was there thrown in the land. The waste was thrown in a garbage can probably, but because there the waste isn’t treated correctly in terms of landfills and recycling it means that it ended up in the desert where it will stay for many years. I think that in places like this there should be a more developed way for disposing of trash, so that not a lot of plastic ends up in the deserts, or in other parts of the world. Also it will make so that the streets and the places look cleaner and not terrible.

The problem with this is that many of these places don’t have a lot of money or don’t have this as a priority.  Since global warming is a big problem affecting all of us, we should all contribute to making this better. So we should all contribute a little bit of money to make places like this to start recycling more so that all this plastic isn’t left there in the desert.

Another idea and a problem that we can take out is about the corrupt politicians that are running La Guajira and Colombia. The politicians are keeping most of the money that the resources of La Guajira are giving to them. What we can do run a campaign to take those politicians out of their position and choose  better people that can run our country and regions fairly and better than is now.

Another problem with this is that it can be very unrealistic, but we can do something to get money to help this planet. We can create a website, that it will give money to this project and it can be by selling things.The money earned can be used for this, help the planet, and make it better, by recycling and reusing the plastic. Another idea is creating a campaign that collects money to make better garbage disposal system.

We have to do something with this problem because if we don’t then it will kill us all. We all have to be more aware of this problem. When you see it in person and when you see the plastic that is in the desert in front of you, it makes you think of this problem as real and dangerous for the planet.