The issue at hand is environmental protection or the lack thereof. Many states and businesses claim frighteningly high amounts of pollution. My stance is the obvious one, looking to lessen this trend of hurting the environment and the habitats of many species in the great state of Maine’s ecosystem. A big contributor to the pollution is food production and in that mainly the processing and packaging steps of production. New types of packaging have proven to be much more sustainable and eco friendly, called active and intelligent packaging that react with the surrounding environment to try to cut excess costs and pollution.

The opposition to all this is that it would be expensive, and trying to regulate factories would in turn hurt the economy. But for me how we leave our planet to future generations is more important. In the words of Stewart Udall, “Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.”

Duncan O’Rourke
Yarmouth
Hyde School Class of 2016