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negative effects about plastic pollution
note on plastics and our enviornment
note on plastics and our enviornment
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In 1862, Alexander Parkes unveiled an invention, a compound known as celluloid that would change modern history. This is the first known plastic compound to demonstrate the ability to mold when heated and maintain its shape once cooled. While the chemical compounds have evolved over the years, so have its uses and our dependency on them. If we look around our room today, we can see that nearly every product in our house either consists or was built by some form of plastic. This dependence raises some alarming questions. What are the ramifications of our dependency on this highly versatile resource? Is our consumption truly sustainable as demand continues to grow? To better understand the problems we are faced with, we should educate ourselves on the negative effects plastic has on the environment, the sustainability of plastic, and the alternatives that could be used to better recycle, reuse, or assist in decomposition of plastics.
Every trip to the grocery store more and more items are packaged in plastic, which are then placed in a plastic shopping cart, possibly paid for with a plastic credit card and carried out in plastic bags. In short almost everything we use consists of or was built by a plastic based product. So what’s the issue? Plastics represent one of the biggest pollutants in the world because they take an immense amount of time to break down. Today most plastic is made from polyurethane.
The main negative effect that plastic has on our environment is how hazardous it is. Polyurethane plastic does not biodegrade, it photo-degrades with solar radiation and oxidation from sunlight. It breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, but they never really disappear. A example of this would be a plastic cigarette lighter ...
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Plastics are a product that was intended to stay on land; although they have been entering oceans at a startling rate, affecting the environment dramatically. Pol...
The most common form of polyethylene is petroleum based or olefins based; as before mentioned polyethylene compounds have a wide commercial applicability and are made from non-renewable resources (Harding, Dennis, von Blottnitz, Harrison, & S.T.L., 2007). Its manufacturing processes are regarded as energy intensive and release significant amount of CO2 and heat into the atmosphere (Broderick, 2008). Next a little more detailed description of polyethylene’s production processes will be presented, with a focus on the way the material inputs are extracted and synthesized.
Large mammals such as whales, consume over 24,000 tons of plastic per year. The survival of many species, including the Hawaiian Monk Seal and the Loggerhead Turtle are being jeopardized and are nearly extinct. “The economical effects of plastic pollution cause an estimated $1.27 billion dollars in vessel damages per year and the cost of removing this debris cost $1,500 to $25,000 per ton” (Sounds Like Garbage). That’s over 13 billion dollars the government is using each year to try and remove some percentage of the plastic debris that has accumulated over the years. Plastic pollution also releases toxic chemicals that are being absorbed by the plastic, increasing the concentration a million times more. Which results in toxic chemicals entering our food chain that leads towards cancer, malformation, breast cancer, and even death. If plastic pollution continues to go unsolved, the ecological, economical and eco-toxicological effects it has had will basically begin, no it has already began, to destroy Earth and we are the ones who did this to
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
Water is the most abused and wasted natural resource. Even with all our technological advancements, there are still approximately 1 billion people on this planet that do not have access to clean drinking water. Earth is comprised of 75% water with 96% of that being ocean water. Throughout the years, the ocean has become a dump for societies to use, throwing trash and waste away into the waters. Marine debris can destroy marine habitats, endanger marine and coastal wildlife, and serve as threats to human health and safety. For decades there has been a steady increase in the production of plastic materials for human use and various consumptive purposes. Due to bad disposal techniques, our population’s overuse, and the non-biodegradable nature of plastic; plastic is accountable for 80% of marine debris. This issue of plastic has and is
“Plastic has infiltrated the ocean’s ecosystem, from plankton to whales.” (fortune.com, 2015) “Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive.” (plastic-pollution.org, 2016) Plastic materials hold the food we eat, the water we drink, the groceries we bring home from the store, the straws we sip drinks through, the beads in the fancy soaps we wash our faces with just to name a few. (biologicaldiversity.org, 2015) “Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature.” (plastic-pollution.org, 2016) Plastic is a convenience, but the use of plastics is coming at a very high price. “Today billions of pounds of plastic can be found in swirling convergences making up about 40 percent of the world’s ocean surfaces.”
The comparison between how people and companies turn plastic wastes into treasure implies the infinite possibilities of reusing plastic and protect the environment. Then, through the interviews with the recycle companies and scientists in Japan and America, the documentary further supports its argument by proving that only two types of plastic can be truly recycled, most of the others will stay for hundreds of years in the dumping fields and the plasticizer goes through chemical reactions in the ocean which make the plastic particles poisonous and possibly cause diseases to all living organisms. The documentary criticizes the disposable lifestyle and introduces the possibility of future progress by substituting plasticizer with other bio-additive so that they can be fully recycled or reproduced in many different ways. The documentary effectively conveys the message that plastic can be extremely harmful, and appeals audiences to pay more attention on reducing daily usage of plastics, such as plastic water bottle, and producing and recycling with the new
In addition, the plastics have shown to generate more damage to the environment in the long-term than any other sources of energy. So, it becomes our responsibility to preserve the environment creating mass awareness. The practice of bio-plastics are an environment friendly method, which doesn’t use the landfills while recycling and deposition, but it is also not that convenient method because the cost of manufacturing bio-plastics are much higher than ordinary method. This directly indicates that the cost of minimizing the waste, the cost of human health and environmental pollution is much higher than the production of
In today’s world, there is enough plastic thrown away each year to circle the world around four times. This is a major global problem that all countries have. Plastic is something we use for a few minutes and throw away. What most people don’t know is these simple plastics actually take centuries to degrade. Take for example a simple plastic bottle, this innocent looking plastic bottle that everyone uses take about 450 years to degrade. As said by Jeb Berrier in the movie BagIT, "Think about it. Why would you make something that you're going to use for a few minutes out of a material that's basically going to last forever, and you're just going to throw it away. What's up with that?".
Since the 1960s when plastic bottles were widely distributed, there have been several negative externalities resulting from their consumption and disposal. Flooding landfills and leaking into water supplies, debris fortified with chemicals that are often ingested by marine life, harmful emissions caused by its incineration, and the difficulty of recycling are just a few of the negative externalities that costs millions in. About 4 percent of the world’s oil production is used as raw materials to fuel the machines that make plastics, and people all over the world are exposed to chemicals from plastic several times each day through the air, dust, water, food and use of consumer
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.
The methodology adopted in this paper was the following. First, the composition and the life cycle of plastics were briefly discussed. Second, the benefits from plastics were elucidated and their inevitability in India established. Third, the ecological harms and health hazards caused by plastics were elaborated. Fourth, the viability of command-and-control measures for addressing these harms and hazards was 21 investigated. Finally, the competence of market-based solutions in this regard was
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
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.