Biohazardous Waste and The Environment
Review of The Literature
Gerdy H. Carballo-Perez
Miami Dade College
September 19, 2017
Author Note
This paper was prepared for SPC1017, Ref #10028, & taught by Professor Santelises
Biohazardous Waste and The Environment
Review of the Literature Have you ever stopped to think about the monumental amount of waste we as a species produce annually? All the plastic bags, water bottles and wrappers we utilize and then throw away seems to add up surprisingly fast, and even more so when we look at more and more groups of people. I personally do my best to avoid creating waste, but I can’t help but to balk at the alarming amount of garbage, namely plastic, that I dispose of daily without ever giving it
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Although it is widely available and has countless uses, its resistance to degradation and natural weathering means it takes hundreds of years to decompose in landfills. Hospitals regularly use various types of plastic, in all forms, shapes, and sizes. While relatively inexpensive and rather useful, the large amount of plastic waste that a hospital produces can truly add up. Other than recycling, the best way to deal with this problem is to implement environmentally friendly plastics into our facilities. One such type of plastic goes by the name “Bioplastics,” which is synthesized using sugars derived from plants (Washam, 2010). As published by Cynthia Washam in the journal article, “Plastics Go Green,” “Bioplastics are made by converting the sugar present in plants into plastic. In the United States, that sugar comes from corn. Other countries use sugar cane, sugar beets, wheat, or potatoes. This makes bioplastics renewable and better for the environment than conventional plastics” (2010). Replacing This both renewable and eco-friendly material can be a godsend when battling plastic pollution, as it can even be used as compost when it is disposed of. This means that instead of tossing out lunch trays and bottles, we could donate them to a community garden for composting, which will reduce our waste disposal costs, as well as help improve our
originally been discarded on land” ( Weisman.) Moore estimated that the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” alone has roughly three million tons of plastic waste in it, and has grown by 100 percent over the past 40 years. It’s crazy to think we are polluting the only home humans have; filling the oceans of the world carelessly with waste.
Since 1950, Americans alone have used more resources than everyone who ever lived before them. Each American individual uses over twenty tons of basic raw materials annually and over two million plastic bottles an hour. Just by Americans alone, the total yearly waste could fill up multiple garbage trucks and wrap around Earth six times and reach half way to the moon. In the book Affluenza by John De Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor they state, “In 1996, we used nearly a third of its resources and produced almost half of its hazardous waste” (--). Which has resulted in millions of tons of plastic that has entered the oceans. The survival of many species are being jeopardized by the plastic
How much plastic do you think our world uses each year? In “Trim Your Waste”, the author, Sharon Kelly, provides more than sufficient details, amazing language skills, and just the right structure to put it all together to convey the ever so clear central idea. Kelly shows us in her text that she believes that through just a few minor changes in our daily life, we can save our planet, one step at a time.She uses the three significant devices, structure, language, and details to convey to the reader exactly what she means by all of this madness.
Plastic has an extreme impact on the environment. Trash, consisting of paper or organic waste, decomposes after a while, unlike plastic in which one plastic bottle takes from 450 up to 1000 years to decompose. Considering that the United States produces over 300 million tons of plastic a year, most of which is only used once and then thrown away, it is clear that pollution will become worse each year. It becomes even more shocking when this number is put in other terms; 300 million tons of plastic is comparable to the weight of all the adults living on the planet. By not
There is also debate on how much better biodegradable plastics are in the first place. This is because as biodegradable plastics break down, they break up into smaller and smaller pieces, but never quite disappear. This leaves the potential that the plastic would continue entering the food chain. But although biodegradable plastics aren’t perfect, they are still much safer than standard plastic and present a much lower risk. In addition, by making the shift to ban single use plastics, research towards better plastic alternatives will speed up and better solutions will become available. Over time, these new alternatives to plastics may spread to other items that aren’t single use, making an even greater impact on the health of humans and the
Most of the necessities humans need are provided in supermarkets, in fact supermarkets have become a necessity for our everyday life. They are now the main source of water, food, clothes and everyday tools. Therefore, the plastic bags demanded and supplied in this industry increase every day. In the past decade, we produced as much plastic as we did in the whole twentieth century (Freinkel, 2011). This exponential increase of a non-biodegradable material has negatively impacted our environment immensely. Plastic production requires our dwindling fossil fuel resources, robs away animal lives, litters our beautiful landscapes and even affects our very own well-being. Hence, if plastic production doesn’t diminish immediately, we will suffer great
She suggests that Americans should reduce their overconsumption of such commodities since they are overburdening the non-biodegradable waste load in the garbage collection facilities. It is surprising to note that every Americans disposes more than four pounds of trash on a daily basis (Royte, 2005).
Around the world, about 245 million tons of plastic is produced yearly. This figure represents a whopping 70 pounds of plastic thrown annually for each of the 7.1 billion people on the planet. The sad news is that of these 245 million tons of plastic per year, around 4.7 million tons of plastic garbage gathers in vast floating oval-shaped ocean garbage patches.
... converting plastic waste into useful products are being affected by pollution; this contamination is found within containers where plastics are collected. But the same risk of pollution carries downside consequences in which workers and people responsible for cleaning and disinfecting the plastic materials are not doing the best to eliminate plastic waste, and to disinfect the infected bacteria and microorganisms from the atmosphere and environment. Organizations from China and India are the largest in the world, they collect and purchase used plastic from United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America (Minguez 2013). These companies do not bother to sanitize the products before the recycling process; for this reason the planet earth is getting a worse environmental condition, and it is destroying lives of living beings, and natural resources as well (Uddin 2014).
Many people believe that we should not recycle anymore, but this is not the case. We, the people of the world, need to continue to recycle because we do not want our children to grow up in a world where there are no certain species of animals due to recycling failures. We also do not want our children to grow up thinking that it is okay that they throw their garbage on the ground, and not have to pick it up. We need to teach our children that they need to take care of the earth that they are living on, because they only get one. Recycling is one of the most beneficial environmental issues that we have here on this earth. Recycling saves energy, limits pollution and supports several environmental factors of the economy. “In 2003, the savings from recycling 54 billion aluminum cans exceeded the energy equivalent of 15 million barrels of crude oil- or the amount of gas the U.S. uses in one day,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA estimates that 200 million gallons of used oil are not disposed of properly, and if we were to dispose the oil properly then we could keep the oil from polluting the ground and the fresh water source. According to E. Takatori, “… While on-going societal regulation treats material recycling as the dominant cycle, the properties of recycled plastic remain the most port
Do you want to live on an Earth even more polluted and trashed than it is now? The planet is covered in waste and landfills. This, in part, is due to a lack of recycling by many of the households that are in a place to do so. Out of the total 29 million bottles of water that Americans buy every year, a mere 13 percent of those bottles are recycled. By recycling plastics like water bottles, cardboard, and paper, we can reduce the waste and pollution that currently plagues this ailing planet. Recycling, by its simplest definition, is turning trash or garbage into usable materials. You should start recycling and add to the group of people trying to help the planet. By doing this, you are contributing to a
Our world is getting to the point to where we will be surrounded by trash. There are hazards happening because of the excess trash, which could have been recycled. Although the government is not doing their best to make these hazards stop, surprisingly it is the non-governed organizations that are trying to make the difference. Proven studies and facts have been made about these issues, so people should take this into consideration and start recycling more. Recycling is a beneficial process that is not required globally like it should be because citizens are uneducated on the process and what it can do. People who are not recycling do not know the hazards they are causing everywhere.
Millions of plastic bags are given out to consumers by supermarkets and stores to carry their goods in. They are also cheap, light, durable, easy to carry and in many cases, free. The most commonly used shopping bag is made of High Density Polyethylene (HDPE). This type is used in the majority of supermarkets and stores. After these bags are used, they often end up in landfills or as litter, roughly only three percent of plastic bags is actually recycled per year (Planet Ark, 2011). The materials used in making plastic bags make them non-biodegradable. According to the science dictionary, 2011 refers to “these materials cannot be decomposed into environmentally safe waste materials by the action of soil bacteria.” These harmful substances are toxic and take approximately four hundred years to break down, or in this case photo-degrade; which is how plastics made from (HDPE) break down. Since they are not biodegradable, they remain in the environment and are absorbed in soil or water (Indian Centre for Plastics in the Environment, 2010). This essay will discuss the various harmful effects of plastic bags, and demonstrate the risks that these bags impose on humans, animals and the environment. It will also discuss a series of suggested solutions that could help reduce plastic bag usage.
In the 1870’s, plastic was discovered in the United States when John Wesley Hyatt was trying to create a different material to make billiard balls (Manrich, 3). Little did he know it would majorly evolve into material we use everyday. However, plastics are now taking over our landfills. The average American throws away one-hundred and eighty-five pounds of plastic a year (Popescu, 121). The answer to decrease this statistic is easy: recycling. I believe that recycling will help eliminate littering and the growth of landfills, while also creating jobs for the unemployed. Not only does recycling plastic help eliminate littering, but also reuses the plastic so there is not a production of additional unneeded plastics. The
While walking through the park last Sunday, I observed a shocking scene. There were two cans: one for recycling and one for trash. The recycling receptacle had only an empty Dr. Pepper can and a few used Ozarka water bottles. On the other hand, the trash can had a plethora of half eaten meals, wrappers, banana peels and disgustingly even bottles, cans, newspapers and plastics that could have been recycled. Because people do not understand or do not care to understand about conserving our resources, many reusable items are being put in landfills when recycling these items could help save the environment. People should know the negative impact of throwing away a water bottle or newspaper, purchasing meat from the grocery store or consuming gasoline has on the environment, and many do not. By informing society about how their decisions affect the environment, we can help save our planet and change our attitude toward the land we live on, the water we drink and the air we breathe” and truly show respect for the stuff that we depend on.