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Plastic Waste a major environmental issue essay 250
three negative impacts of plastic in the environment
Plastic Waste a major environmental issue essay 250
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3. Current Waste Management System
Tons of plastics are produced each year and the use of plastics have grown gradually as plastics are relatively inexpensive, light in weight and durable. With increasing global plastic waste generation at a rapid rate over the years, plastic waste management is becoming serious concern.
There are few common ways in plastic waste management, which are:
1. Reduce the use of plastics.
2. Reuse plastic materials.
3. Recycle by reprocessing plastic wastes into a new product.
4. Incineration to recover energy.
5. Disposal for landfill. Figure 1 shows plastic waste management options.
Disposal for landfill and incineration created severe issue on the impacts of environmental pollution whereas 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse
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After collecting, washing and cleaning, the plastics are sorted to remove PVC which release harmful gases when melted and caused corrosion in the furnace. Plastics that containing PVC will undergo dehydrochlorination to remove hydrogen chloride. The cleaned and treated plastics are subsequently granulated and subjected into blast furnace and the fuel gas produced can be used to generate electricity.
3.3.2.3 Coke Oven Chemical Recycling Figure 4 shows coke oven chemical recycling process. Coke oven chemical recycling is a method to process plastic wastes into coke. Coke is usually made of combusting of coal. Chloride is removed prior to thermal decomposition to avoid dioxin emission and furnace damage. Treated plastics are granulated and fed into coke oven with coal and thermally decomposed at high temperature of 200°C to 450°C into coke, coke oven gas and hydrocarbon oil which are used as reducing agent in blast furnace, power generation and chemical feedstock in plastics production respectively.
3.3.2.4 Gasification Figure 5 shows gasification
The recycling process of plastic begins at the recycling department wherever it may be located. The plastics are categorized according to plastic type. Plastic is then separated by color, the plastic is sterilized then crushed and chopped into plastic flakes. The plastic flakes are then melted and stirred. As a result of the stirring and melting a thick liquid is produced. This thick liquid is processed and spun into fiber strands that could be used for making fleec...
National Center for Manufacturing Sciences. (2004, August 11). Environmental Roadmapping Initiative. Retrieved October 14, 2011, from Plastics Impacts, Risks and Regulations: http://ecm.ncms.org/ERI/new/IRRPlastics.htm
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
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.
For the past twenty years, society has surpassed the “Waste equals sustenance” analysis (Frederick, 2007). Individuals have begun to overload our municipal landfills with waste products that could be reused or recycled. By abusing landfills with these waste products, society has begun causing harm to the environment. There are many anti-recycling activists like John Tierney who oppose recycling because he believes it to be a waste of taxpayer’s dollars, and the public’s time and energy (Hershkowitz, 1998). In today’s society recycling ha...
Recycling helps protect the environment. Recycling creates sustainable environment. All of the wastes and all of the industrial processes creates air and water pollution. Process of recycling helps to minimize the risks of air and water pollution. It helps to solve the problem of global warming. The waste we produce come in the form of bottles, boxes, cans, refuse, furniture, clothing, paper products, packaging waste, glass, aluminum, plastic, metals and paperboard. It take so many years if we just throw them away to spoil on its own and to destroy. During the disposal process, this waste releases poisonous gases and chemicals into the environment. When the non-biodegradable products in our waste are burned, they often emit gases that deplete the ozone layer in the atmosphere, which in turn allows more ultraviolet radiation to reach our living atmosphere, giving rise to global warming and rising sea levels. Now in this present world global warming is the major issue. Like in the North Pole and South Pole the ice caps are melting. This is just because of the failure of the ozone layer to block the ultraviolet rays coming from the sun. This means we are heading to the age of global warming. We can stop
We should recycle because by leaving trash in landfill sites leads to greenhouse gasses and harmful chemicals hurting both people and then environment. According to Anopchenko, T. Y., Murzin, A. D., Kandrashina, E. A., Kosyakova, I. V., and Surnina, (2016) living in an environment that is greatly polluted incredibly increases health risks. The article “Environmental Risk to Health of the Population. International Journal Of Environmental And Science Education” (2016) by them says “the polluted environment is one of the important factors defining changes of a state of health of the population” (para, 2.). This is a problem because the more waste in landfills or raw materials made into containers release toxic chemicals into the air that are severely affecting how people live. Being able to go inside from the pollution is one thing but animals are not in easy access to get out of polluted areas. Recycling can reduce
... 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).
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.
Burning waste is not good at all for human health. It’s disturbing smell cause by burning plastic, rubber and some other artificial object can cause lot of trouble...
Recycling is good for environment in terms of reducing illegal dumping, however, it has not much effects as for reducing the CO2 emission. Nowadays, huge amount of industrial wastes are dumped illegally. It causes pollution for environment, because those illegal dumping are thrown away into forests. Those wastes are often chemicals that is difficult to be disposed, and have bad influences to environment such as discharging poison gases by reacting with water. Companies that use such chemicals dump them because there are a few way to dispose these chemicals and it costs very much. Hence, illegal dumping would decrease if way of recycling and the costs become lower owing to entering the market of many other companies. Also recycling are considered that it can be effective to reduce CO2 emission recently, because great deal of CO2 is emitted when wastes are incinerated, but it is not much discharged in case of recycling than incineration. However recycling is not critical way to reduce CO2 emission. For example, incineration of wastes discharge CO2 at 4 stages...
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
Coking coal is a process that is used to help drive away impurities and leave almost pure carbon based material. The properties of coking coal cause the coal to soften, liquefy and then resolidify into a hard and porous lumps when heated in the absence of air. Coking must also have very low sulphur and phosphorous content this is due to the fact that almost all metallurgical coal is used in coke ovens. At this point the coking process undertakes being heated to around 1000 - 1100⁰C this has to be in the absents of oxygen to drive off any volatile compounds (Pyrolysis).
Policy is needed to regulate which course of action should be taken and how it should be implemented. Because of this, many plans and policies revolving around the management of solid waste have been put in place. Sometimes however, a particular policy can have its shortfalls, potentially resulting in its negative aspects outweighing the positive ones. According to the Conference Board of Canada Report, “Canadians dispose of more municipal solid waste per capita than any other country” (2013). Solid waste management in particular, involves many aspects, ranging from packaging waste, food waste, etc. (White & Franke 1999), hence, the following analysis revolves around household and commercial waste – referred to as Municipal Solid Waste (White & Franke. 1999) – in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Municipal waste is a major health and environmental concern as it contributes to numerous problems like habitat destruction, surface groundwater pollution, and other forms of air, soil, and water contamination. Waste disposal methods like incineration create toxic substances, and landfills emit methane, which contributes to global warming. According to the Zero Waste Objective Report, “The impact of climate change and the increasing awareness of the role of “waste” and “wasting” in the production of greenhouse gas emissions is a constant environmental pressure… (2009). This leads to an increasing limitation of government to prevent and control the volume and toxicity of products in the waste stream and a growing need to shift responsibility to the product manufacturer.
Traditional methods of waste disposal have proven to be ineffective and have caused harmful effects on the environment. The most popular and inexpensive way to get rid of garbage is burial, but burying your problems does not necessarily mean getting rid of them. Landfill sites pose as severe ecological threats as these mass garbage dump yards overflow with trash and frequently contaminate our air, soil and water with hazardous wastes. About 400 million tons of hazardous wastes are generated each year1. A large-scale release of these materials can cause thousands of deaths and may poison the environment for many years. For example many industrial companies around the world cannot afford to enforce the strict pollution regulations set by many developed countries. This usually forces these types of companies to move to developing countries where pollution regulations are very lenient. These developing countries knowingly accept environmentally hazardous companies usually because they are in desperate need of employment. The harmful effects of these companies were clearly illustrated in the 1960s and 1970s when residents living near Minamata Bay, Japan, developed nervous disorders, tremors, and paralysis in a mysterious epidemic. The root was later found to be a local industry that had released mercury, a highly toxic element, into Minamata Bay. The disaster had claimed the lives of 400 people1. Since 1970 you can bet that a lot more than 400 people have died as a result of waste disposal. If the type of waste disposal were cheaper and effective we wouldn’t have to deal with waste problems, which still plague mankind today.