Plastic pollution is one of the worst problems we are facing today. Perhaps, the most used and littered plastics in the environment are single-use plastics. Single-use plastics such as bottled water, disposable spoon, and fork from fast food chains, plastic straws, styrofoam cups, and packaging of retail goods are some of the common plastics that we encounter every day. Single-use plastics have become a part of our lifestyle. 

The featured "Explore Water: Garbage Swell" by Catherine Zuckerman in the April 2017 issue on the National Geographic Magazine has stated, according to a 2015 report, that "roughly 8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean every year of which China, the Philippines, and Indonesia have been on the top of the lists where the identified bulk of trash originates." This implies that even the Philippines, an archipelago, has also contributed trash on the planet and this is absolutely done by us who always litter trashes everywhere every day. Despite the presence of this R.A. 9003, otherwise known as "The Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000," that regulates the disposal and prohibits the incineration of solid wastes, we seem to disregard it or not paying attention to it because the implementation of the law has never been so serious at all. Plastic wrappers from food crackers, candies, drinks, shampoos, soaps, soy sauce, vinegar, cooking oil, and most of the grocery items are extremely the common littered trashes we find in communities. 

The use of single-use plastics seem to be unstoppable and the disposal of it in the environment is unbearable. The ocean always serves as an outlet to all trashes swept away from sewage systems. This only means that the ocean has become the landfill of our wastes, mostly from household wastes. Once in the ocean, the plastic disintegrates in the ocean water as sunlight interacts to the plastic and turns into a "microplastic," which is even more difficult to recover. Planktons ingest these microplastics, tiny crustaceans eat these planktons, and fishes eat these tiny crustaceans. Try to think how much plastics are being circulated in the marine food chain where we consider that we get most of our diet from the ocean and fishes are our major source of protein.

There is really a need to put a stop on the use of disposable plastics in order to prevent intense environmental degradation. We can do this by educating the community about facts on plastic pollution and its worse effects on the environment. We use disposable plastics every day and we create billions of tons of disposable plastics every year which only ends up on landfills and in the ocean. We need to preserve the natural conditions of nature because we all share the same fate and the future of the next generation depends on it. We should not wait for plastics intoxicate our body. 

We encourage everyone to take a step against this environmental struggle. Help this petition to urge every community to stop on the use of single-use plastics. NO MORE TO SINGLE-USE PLASTICS AND PROTECT THE NEXT GENERATION!