All sorts of items become litter but two of the most common and most dangerous are cigarette butts and plastic bags. Litter is a big problem for our environment but it is a problem that individuals can easily do something about. Not littering at all or cleaning up litter, such as cigarette butts and plastic bags, greatly improves the quality of our environment.

Although cigarette butts are small, they are bad for the environment. Over 1,600 billion cigarettes are smoked each year in China and large quantities of the butts are thrown away. Worldwide, about 4.5 trillion butts are littered every year. Apart from the fact that butts spoil the beauty of the environment, they contain some very toxic chemicals. These find their way into the water supply where they decrease the quality of the water and endanger plants and animals that live there. Because there are so many butts and because they can take up to 5 years to break down, the toxic chemicals add up to a large amount. So, if people have to smoke, they should not throw away the butts but put them in the rubbish bin instead.

Plastic bags are another common form of litter that is a danger to the environment. There are several reasons for this. They are made from oil and gas, which are non-renewable resources. If they are not recycled, these resources are lost to us. In China, 2 billion plastic bags are used every day. An enormous number of these become litter. This is a huge problem because they last from 20 to 1,000 years in the environment. They float easily in air and water and travel long distances. They find their way to rivers, parks, beaches and oceans. Plastic bags kill up to one million seabirds, 100,000 sea mammals and countless fish each year worldwide. When the animal dies and breaks down, the plastic bag can become free again to kill another animal. It is up to people not to let plastic bags become litter. It would be better if they used fewer and recycled them.

Cleaning up your cigarette butts and plastic bags would improve the environment. The earth would be a better place because it would be less polluted. And we would know that we were doing something to look after our planet. However, I believe the best solution would be not to smoke or use plastic bags at all.

Scientists are preparing to launch the world's first machine to clean up the planet's largest mass of ocean plastic.

The experts believe the machine should be able to collect half of the detritus in the patch – about 40,000 metric tons – within five years. In the past few weeks they have been busy welding together giant tubes that will sit on the surface of the sea and form the skeleton of the machine, creating the largest floating barrier ever made。

The system, originally dreamed up by Mr. Slat, will be shipped out this summer to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, between Hawaii and California, and which contains an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic. It will be the first ever attempt to tackle the patch since it was discovered in 1997.

Mr. Slat was 16 and still at school when he was diving in Greece and first saw for himself the amount of plastic polluting the sea. “There were more bags than fish down there,” he recalls. Two years later he came up with a solution, quit university after six months and set up The Ocean Cleanup as a company. Mr. Slat, 23, says the first plastic to arrive on shore will be a major milestone. “We as a humanity created this problem, so I think it's our responsibility also to help solve it,” he said.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) spans 617,763 sq miles - more than twice the size of France, and contains at least 79,000 tons of plastic, research found last month. Most of it is made up of “ghost gear” – parts of abandoned and lost fishing gear, such as nets and ropes – often from illegal fishing vessels.

Ghost gear kills more than 100,000 whales, dolphins and seals each year, according to scientific surveys. Seabirds and other marine life are increasingly being found dead with stomachs full of small pieces of plastic. Creatures eat plastic discarded in the sea thinking it’s food but then starve to death because they are not feeding properly. Others are trapped and die of starvation or are strangled or suffocated by ghost gear.

She can’t vole, but she has the volte of confidence of young climate activists across the globe. Meet Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old architect of “School Strike for the Climate” .

At age 12, the Swede gave up meat and flying to reduce her carbon footprint. But the real trigger came when Sweden was hit by heat waves in 2018. Thunberg started skipping classes on Fridays to strike outside the Swedish parliament. Thanks to social media, her actions have spread and influenced millions of young people all over the world to organize and protest.

And look! Thunberg became the poster child of climate action. She addressed the 2018 UN climate conference and this year’s World Economic Forum. Encouraged by Thunberg, 1. 4 million students across 125 countries took to the streets in the first Global Climate Strike for Future on March 15. Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in March 2019, and a few months later she became the youngest individual ever to be honored as Time’s Person of the Year.

Then she entered the spotlight again. Invited to speak at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City, which took place in September 2019, Thunberg traveled across the Atlantic on a zero-carbon sailing boat, accompanied by her father and a supporting crew.

She said at the UN Climate Action Summit:“For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight …You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you. ”

Nevertheless, Thunberg has her share of critics too. The objectors attack her for what she has done, calling her a “weirdo” and regard the Greta Thunberg effect as a useless fantasy.