Write an essay (absolute minimum 4 ½ pages, preferably 5; minimum 4 body paragraphs) persuading others to consider their personal impact on the environment and to change their consumption behavior. You must narrow your focus for the essay to a specific point (see below for ideas on focusing the essay). You will express your focus and your opinion in a strong, clear thesis statement (maximum two sentences); your thesis will tell how you want your readers to change their behavior.

Choose one Focus Ideas:

• The need to use more public transportation

• The need to reject meat produced by industrial agriculture because of their damage to soil and water (animal waste, chemical fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides, water waste)

• The need to recycle everything that can be recycled

• Changing modern eating habits because of their bad effects on the environment (out-of- season produce, waste, chemicals in farming)

• Giving up plastic bags (because they don’t decompose, get into the oceans and kill animals)

• Giving up plastic bottles

• Stopping use of dangerous household cleaning products

• Stopping use of chemical cosmetics

• Conserving paper in our schoolwork