When I received earth number 4, I noticed the extreme detail in the globe. Every component is so precise, meticulous, exact, and accurate. The white clouds circle the globe in a graceful and beautiful way. Each continent has pin-point colors and bold and detailed forms. Having a model of our planet in my hands, made me realize the true beauty of the Earth, how lucky we are to have it, and how amazing it is! However, I also recognized some saddening reality. Americans throw away 230 million TONS of trash every year, this means that an average person disposes of 4.6 pounds of trash every DAY! Another surprising fact is that an ordinary person uses about 16 plastic straws every day, This is killing thousands of marine life around the world. Everyone uses plastic daily, and I started to think about all the things plastic is used for, it shows up everywhere, even in places where you might not expect it. Some astonishing items that contain plastic are, some clothing, cardboard juice boxes, aluminum cans, disposable coffee cups, glitter, stickers, tea bags, non-woven fabric, ribbon, soap, and many other products. Plastic seems to be used for almost everything, and I decided to stop throwing away plastic for 3 weeks! This was going to be my project for Carry the Earth and I was very excited about it! My first step was to get a group of my friends and family to do this endeavor with me. I got 25 people that decided to boycott plastic for this planned period of time! This was awesome and encouraged me to move onto the next step. We made sure that no one broke the rules of the challenge, by reminding each other what not to buy or use, this was a very difficult task, many products that I use daily are packaged in plastic, but I remembered that this was for the planet! Although the three weeks of boycotting plastic are over, I haven’t thrown away a single piece of plastic during the whole week that has passed since the planned period of time ended. If you want to reduce your plastic waste, you can try refilling and reusing plastic water bottles, limiting the amount of plastic you buy, reusing plastic containers, recycling everything you can, and using products that replace plastic items. Even though this was hard, I encourage you to try this challenge and help out the planet in whatever way possible.