Speaker; Carter: Today we, Niko, Carter, and Ray are going to show you how litter affects the SF Bay Area ecosystems.

Website for help:
http://www.statisticbrain.com/littering-statistics/
Speaker; Carter: This chart shows the percentage of each type of litter. 3 percent of litter is glass, another 3 percent of litter and 33 percent of litter is paper. Also as you can see, 63 percent of litter is plastic which is sad, because plastic chokes animals and it doesn’t break down as quickly as other litter. 10 percent of the litter is other.

The government spends 11.5 billion dollars on cleaning litter each year, while they could spend the money on other helpful things. The study has found that, while litter has decreased 60 percent the last 40 years, 51.2 billion pieces of clutter our roadways today. Trash disposal costs ten times less than cleaning up litter. The estimated cost of litter pickup is 30 cents per piece. 90 million dollars worth of cans,bottles and newspapers would be valued at 300 million dollars if they were recycled.

Speaker; Niko borden: Some types of litter including plastic bottles and packaging material are consumed by individual animals because they think it is food, but once they ingest it they will get seriously injured or they will die. 3.9 million pieces of plastic pour into the bay every day from eight large sewage treatment plants. a relentless torrent of litter that ranges from tiny “microbeads” found in cosmetics toothpaste… (microbeads Can affect animals and kill them)

Speaker; Ray Adams: Cigarette butts are toxic, non-biodegradable, waste that creates environmental health risks. Animals such as birds, fish, and other aquatic animals mistake cigarette butts for food, leading to death from choking or blocked digestion. More than three billion cigarette butts are littered in the SF Bay Area each year and an estimated 45-65 percent of cigarette butts are littered worldwide. Chemicals in a single cigarette butt are toxic enough to have the ability to kill a fish. Cigarette butts contain a variety of hazardous chemicals and heavy metals, including lead, chromium, and arsenic, which leach into the water when they are littered. Cigarette butts are falling into gutters everyday in cigarettes there is tobacco tobacco is toxic according to the text: Tobacco smoking is harmful to health. Tobacco smoke contains more than 7000 chemical compounds. Many of these agents are toxic, and more than 69 - including polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and tobacco-specific nitrosamines-cause cancer. And if it's bad for us it's definitely bad for animals. When a cigarette butt is thrown on the ground, the paper, glue and tobacco eventually dissolve, but the plastic filter stays in the environment. Nearly all cigarette plastic filters are made out of spongy material called cellulose acetate, with tightly packed plastic filters that do not biodegrade. According to Mercury News, “Many incorrectly believe that filters provide health benefits by keeping toxins from entering the smoker's’ lungs, even though the Surgeon General has repeatedly are ineffective in protecting smokers’ health. The plastic filters starve animals too, when they eat it it fills their stomach.

Speaker; Niko: We are going to make a website and put up posters and we will see if it is working than we will see if trash is being picked up because there is a lot of trash out in the field and track.