Imagine strolling down the beach with the sun beating on your face. It’s a gorgeous, beautiful day, and you’re enjoying a nice bottle of water while your kids play nearby. When you’re finished with that bottle of water, you put the cap back on, and toss it into the ocean, continuing about your day. Seems absurd, right? It might when you think about it like that. The fact of the matter is that “Americans use approximately 10.5 million tons of plastic every year, and they only recycle 1-2% of it” (Institute for Sustainable Communication, 2012). “An estimated 14 billion pounds of trash, much of it plastic, is dumped in the world’s oceans every year” (Institute for Sustainable Communication, 2012). Those numbers are astounding. They’ve reached a level that makes one wonder how we are not doing something more about this. How have we not seen the harm that we’re causing for future generations …show more content…
As we begin the year 2016, the reality is that most of those coffee makers are now Keurigs, individually pod-brewing machines. These machines use a plastic pod for every cup of coffee that they make. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but it’s estimated that in 2011, about 5 billion K-Cups were sold (A., 2012). Some have even said that enough K-Cups were sold in 2014, that if they were stacked end on end, they would circle the Earth 10.5 times! These pods are made of a plastic that is not biodegradable, and they are not reusable either. Astonishing numbers of pods like this have to end up somewhere, and unfortunately, that’s the landfills where they aren’t being broken down properly. Joining these pods in the landfills is the humongous number of paper coffee cups used by coffee shops like Starbucks. “Starbucks beverages account for approximately 4 billion cups globally each year” (Starbucks, n.d.). While they are taking initiatives to make sure that these cups are 100% recyclable, Americans aren’t always recycling
Which means their obviously bad for the aquatic marine life environment & are cause many different forms of damage for them & us as one. On p.g. 23 of The New York Times upfront magazine “Birds,fish, sea turtles, & others are getting tangled in plastic bags or mistake them for food & choke”. Someone else might argue that they could the plastic bags in landfills instead of oceans. But that counter- argument is flawed because you’re just polluting by burning plastic which is bad on our part we’re not doing our part to support & taking care of the earth. Plastic in the ocean isn't just bad for plants & animals but for humans too because of the food chain some of us eat animals as a meat source such as aqua marine life like fish. If the fishermen catch fish that have been eating plastic then it's in our food supply if we eat that fish it's gonna be bad for us so many will end up getting sick from the plastic inside of the fish then what will we do our aqua marine food supply will go down the drain we couldn’t eat the fish since it's basically contaminated with plastic that we’re dumping there instead of trying to fix it & getting rid of plastic bags for good for the good of the earth. We’re causing damage towards the earth by dumping all that plastic into the ocean which damages our water supply it’ll poison us although we clean the water it depends on how big the plastic particles are, it’ll make us sick & sense it’s been lying in the oceans could bring in new pathogens &
What may be important to one company might not be important to another company. The coffee pods for the single cup serving machines are not biodegradable. A few companies are now starting to make their cups biodegradable as they are starting to fill up landfills at an alarming rate. Some companies feel that this is a sustainable course of business and started to make biodegradable cups that will help the environment. There was no need to go this route other than to be a socially responsible
And what's more, pods only cost about $7 apiece so it's still better than most coffee shops -- AND there's no line. The pods fit into Keurig brewers, which is convenient, and they're 100 percent compostable. It's like, enough with the bells and whistles, right? Where can we get these pods?
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
Every year, an estimated 8 million tons of plastic waste enters our environment, severely polluting oceans, beaches, forests, and even the towns and cities we live in. In the ocean alone, it is believed that 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic pollutes the waters (“Plastic Statistics”, Ocean Crusaders).The majority of plastic pollution can be traced back to single-use items, such as grocery bags, bottles, and plastic packaging. According to United Nations Environment, “At the rate we are dumping items such as plastic bottles, bags and cups after a single use, by 2050 oceans will carry more plastic than fish…” (“UN Declares War on Ocean Plastic”, UN Environment). This pollution is a major problem and endangers not only the environment, but human
Ironically, plastic, which is a material designed to last forever, is generally used for things we tend to throw away. Every year, about one hundred to two hundred billion pounds of plastic are manufactured. Only 31% of that plastic is actually recycled. Biomass packaging estimates 10% of that plastic ends up in the ocean annually. About 20% of it coming from ships and other platforms, and the other 80% coming from land derived sources, such as international garbage dumping, winds or tides, either way it finds its way to the ocean.
Plastic is continuously polluting our oceans and endangering the life in these waters. The problem is that our ocean is being polluted with plastic. Items from plastic bags to water bottles are being thrown out into our waters and affecting the environment. There is, if not more, billions of pounds of plastic in the ocean. 40% of Earth’s
In addition, it also has the incentive that these coffee makers are very clean and hygienic, which is a very important fact, since after preparing our coffee we simply have to remove the capsule from the compartment and throw it away, very easy and simple. Single-dose coffee makers are a very interesting option, but we must not rule out others, because we must take into account that the capsules of these coffee machines have a higher price than any other type of coffee ground or grain. Therefore, in our analysis we will consider both this type of cheap coffee machines and others that offer excellent results, such as typical Italian or drip coffee
In the United States, coffee is the second largest import (Roosevelt, 2004). Furthermore, the United States, consumes one-fifth of all the worlds¡¦ coffee (Global Exchange, 2004). The present industry is expanding. It is estimated that North America¡¦s sector will reach saturation levels within 5 year (Datamonitor. n.d.). According to National Coffee Association (NCA), 8 out of 10 Americans consume coffee. In addition, it is estimated that half of the American population drinks coffee daily. The international market remains highly competitive. It is estimated that 3,300 cups of coffee are consumed every second of the day worldwide (Ecomall, n.d.). The latest trends included dual drinkers, an increase in senior citizens...
The world population is living, working, and vacationing along the coasts. They are contributing to an unprecedented tide of plastic waste. Pollution is defined as the process that alters a substance or molecule on planet earth, the pollution is caused by the physical contact of an organic decaying particle with a clean particle in the same spot, at the time the two particles join together is when occurs pollution in which the environment is greatly altered. Too many, plastic is a modern day miracle, versatile, inexpensive and durable (Rochman 2014). To others, it is a scourge, a non-degradable pollutant that threatens to choke the global environment. Plastic pollution has led to the deaths of many animals, natural resources, and people (Rochman 2014). It is time to change America’s thinking and to learn from past mistakes.
If you are one of those individuals who just cannot make it through their day without their favorite blend of coffee or tea then you may have probably already heard about K-cups. Although relatively new in the market, k-cups have seen an exponential burst in demand and with good reason too. They simply make life much easier for coffee and tea fanatics. If you still haven't heard about coffee K-cups then it is still not too late as it is a furiously emerging trend. Coffee K-cups are plastic cups produced with a coffee filter embedded within them.
It is sad to say but humans have played their part in deteriorating the earth. We have polluted and killed the very thing that takes care of us. If you ride by any lake or river you find trash and debris around it. In the “The Call of the Wild” the author says that we have committed war against the earth by the dumping of poisons and explosives upon it (337). Unfortunately, plastics are the things that are doing the most harm to our environment. Plastics are convenient and we use them everyday and these are the things that we find in the oceans, rivers and lakes. They are harmful to the earth as well as human health by directly intoxicating us with lead, cadmium and mercury. Plastic debris laced with harmful chemicals are often found inside of our marine life and can poison them. Plastic can survive for thousands of years and many invasive species are found in them which can disrupt our habitats. We need to limit our consumption of plastics and make sure that they are disposed of in their proper places.
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
Water is one of the most essential non-renewable natural resources on the Earth. Technically, an un-hydrated human being can live no more than three days. In the United States, people consume water mainly from tap water and bottle water. However, the consumption between these two sources is not even but lean to one side heavily. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, people consume from 240 to over 10000 times more per gallon for bottled water than they usually do for tap water. (NRDC) In addition, according to a survey from US National Library of Medicines, only 17% of the participants prefer to drink tap water exclusively.(US National Library) Compared to the bottled water which is shining like a superstar, tap water is like a diligent worker in the shade, unpopular but useful. The extremely unbalance of bottled water consumption implies that a commonly hold conception exists: bottle water is superior to tap water. In fact, scientific evidence proves that tap water is nothing different than bottle water. More importantly, the excessive consumption of bottled water is an irrational use of resources and creates severe environmental issues.
While walking through the park last Sunday, I observed a shocking scene. There are 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.