It’s no secret that our planet is in a pretty dire condition. Extinction rates have been estimated to be about 1,000 times higher than they should be, and that’s all due to human influence—and interference. With around 20,000 species at risk for extinction and countless others that we haven’t even discovered yet also dying, scientists are rushing to figure out what we can do about it.

Some have suggested the sixth great mass extinction is looming on the horizon, and the problem is a massive one. It’s so big that there are things that you do every day that are helping to bring about the end of the world, and chances are that you might not even know it.

5. Using Birth Control

Know anyone who’s on the pill? They’re also spreading pregnancy prevention to marine wildlife, and that’s a problem.

In 2014, researchers at the University of New Brunswick released the results of a study that had been going on for several decades. They were looking at wastewater treatment and its impact on freshwater ecosystems, and they found that even trace amounts of estrogen in the environment can wipe out entire species.

In 2001, a small amount of estrogen, one of the active ingredients in birth control pills and hormone therapy treatments, was introduced into a freshwater lake research facility in Ontario. The impact was almost immediate. Male fish first began producing egg proteins and then producing eggs. Even tiny trace amounts were enough to feminize the male fish, which led to a complete crash of the ecosystem. The insect populations normally kept in check by the fish suddenly skyrocketed. As the minnow population plummeted, so did the population of the lake trout that fed on them.

Hormones that aren’t absorbed or used end up in the sewer system after they cycle through the human body. In areas where that sewer water is dumped into lakes and rivers, the average fish population is about 85 percent female, a stark contrast to the normal 55 percent.

Fish exposed to the hormones not only lose the ability to reproduce, but their accidental hormone treatment impacts eggs at the development stage as well.

4. Using Straws

Chances are good that if you get a cold drink at any restaurant, you’ll be handed a straw, too. We curse the people working the drive-through when we’re halfway down the block and realize we don’t have one, but straws are having a pretty devastating impact on our planet.

Every day, the United States alone uses about 500 million drinking straws. For a visual, that means we could fill 46,400 school buses with straws every year. In the last 25 years, about six million of those have been picked up on beaches across the country during annual cleanups. Those are just part of the sum that ends up on the beach, and according to the Ocean Conservancy, drinking straws rank in the top 10 types of trash found floating in the ocean.

Straws are light, easily picked up by wind and water currents, and made from a polypropylene plastic that doesn’t disintegrate or dissolve. These millions of straws are around forever, making up a huge part of the estimated 12 to 24 tons of plastic that ends up ingested by fish and other marine wildlife every year. And that includes about one million seabirds that die after eating plastics. One of the most common items found in autopsies? The drinking straws that come attached to juice boxes.

3. Using Antibacterial Soap

There’s been a lot of debate about just how effective antibacterial soaps are and whether or not they should even be marketed, but using them has been proven to have an impact on the environment.

Johns Hopkins University Center for Water and Health has done a study on just what happens to all the antibacterial chemicals in your antibacterial soaps after they swirl down the drain. The most commonly used chemicals are triclocarban and triclosan, and while most of those chemicals are removed from wastewater when they’re run through a treatment plant, they have to go somewhere. That somewhere is sewage sludge, which is then recycled for agricultural use. From there, those chemicals are transferred into the ground and ultimately into surface water.

When triclocarban degrades, it degrades into two chemicals—bothcarcinogens. When triclosan is run through a treatment plant to make drinking water, it doesn’t exactly make safe drinking water. Instead, it makes other chemicals that can include chloroform. And those chemicals travel through the food chain in plants, animals, and ultimately humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found traces of the chemicals originating with antibacterial soap in 75 percent of urine samples tested, all taken from people over five years old.

Triclosan has been shown to interfere with the basic biological systems of a number of animals, including rats and a range of amphibians. It interferes with thyroid function, and when it builds up in the body, it causes early puberty in young animals, infertility, obesity, and cancer. Triclosan collects in the body’s fatty tissues, and since animals—and humans—are higher up on the food chain, that means we’re consuming all the trace amounts found in lower animals and getting a massive dose of the stuff.

2. Eating Soy

Turning to soy products has long been heralded as the healthier, more eco-friendly, and certainly more cow-friendly alternative to dairy products. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that the environmental impact of soybean production is pretty devastating, too.

Soybeans aren’t just used in products like milk substitutes. They’re also being used for non-consumables like soap and candles. And we’re not the only ones eating soy, either; about 80 percent of the world’s soy production goes into livestock feed.

There’s a huge demand for soy. As it grows in popularity, more space is needed to grow the beans. Since 2008, deforestation in Brazil has been on a steady decrease, a direct result of a ban implemented in order to counteract deforestation. The need for the ban comes on the heels of Greenpeace’s numbers, which indicated that about 1.2 million hectares of soy was planted in Brazil’s rain forest in 2005 alone.

In addition to the usual impacts of things like pesticides and water use, there’s a huge human rights issue that’s grown up around the development of soy, too. The Brazilian government keeps a list of farms that have been caught using slave labor, and soy farms throughout the Amazon basin have been found guilty of luring people there with work, then seizing their documents and forcing them into slavery. There’s also the rather shady practice of land-grabbing, leading to countless families being kicked off land that’s deemed more valuable for farming than for living.

1. Not Finishing Your Dinner

Most of us grew up hearing that we’d better clean our plates, but it’s a bigger problem than our parents probably ever realized. Every year, global food waste amounts to about 1.3 billion tons, and that’s such a big number that it’s impossible to imagine. It’s costing us about $750 billion annually, and the environmental waste is just as staggering.

Three times the annual flow of the Volga River is wasted on producing food that gets thrown away, yielding 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases. About 28 percent of our agricultural land is used to produce waste food. Clearing more and more land is putting countless plants and animals at risk.

Meanwhile, about 870 million people are starving.

A lot of the waste comes at the processing levels, but consumer waste is also incredibly high. Fruits and vegetables are often thrown away for being misshapen, not necessarily spoiled. There’s a lot of food that’s thrown away at the best-by date regardless of whether the food has spoiled. Many consumers think that the sell-by date and the best-by dates are the same, but that’s just not the case.

While plans are in place for reducing waste like packaging food in smaller containers and offering lower prices for less-than-perfect foods, there’s still a long, long way to go.

http://giftedgreen.com/2014/blog/2015/07/02/5-everyday-things-you-do-that-is-destroying-the-planet/

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So, we are all destroyers after all

Indiscriminate felling of trees and uncontrolled killing of wildlife is not left out.