Should All Plastics be made to be Biodegradable?
Background Information
Plastic plays a huge role in our lives due to its ability to be functional in all aspects of everyday life. Statistics Canada showed Canadians in average produced 13.4 million tonnes of waste and 73% was sent for disposal. Of the 27% that was recycled 17% of that was plastic, while the rest ended up in landfills. The logical solution for the plastics in landfills unable to degrade is biodegradable plastics. However, are biodegradable plastics the answers to the addiction to plastic people have? Arguments have been made on whether the pro’s of biodegradable plastics outweigh the cons and if biodegradable plastics will truly make a difference in our environment.
Survey Results
Chemistry Connections
Thermochemistry is the study of the energy changes that accompany physical or chemical changes in matter. Biodegradable plastics can be further studied through how these plastics can be broken down into the environment. Biodegradable plastics in order to properly degrade and fulfil its purpose needs a specific environment, specific environments that can only be met at specific recycling areas. These plastics require heat, moisture and oxygen to be able to break down in an open system, however; often times these biodegradable plastics are sent to landfills which are not able to provide the requirements the plastics need, being an isolated system. Section 6.2 factors affecting reaction can be applied to biodegradable plastics as certain factors will affect the reaction between the microorganisms that help break down the plastics.
Opinions
I do not think all plastics should be made biodegradable, because of the cons which outweigh the pros. Although biodegrad...
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... with many bacteria that can be washed away into the soil, and could be hazardous to the environment, people and wildlife.
Another positive aspect in biodegradable plastics is the economy benefits. Regular plastics use oil for production process and due to the increase in the need for oil bio degradable plastics is a better solution to regular plastics. As the costs of oil increases as the planets natural resources are quickly dwindling down the cost of making regular plastics will increase and by creating plastics with less oil, fewer expenses will have to be used for the production. Furthermore, with biodegradable being recycled in proper facilities will decrease the amount of plastic going in landfills, which can be expensive for maintaining proper care. Therefore, biodegradable plastics will not only be better or our environment but for our economy as well.
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
In recent years, it has become blatantly obvious that the Earth’s environmental deterioration is showing signs towards a cause of global concern. Drastic increases in water pollution, global warming, and deforestation, among other environmental issues have caused a sudden desire to raise awareness of and to resolve human-initiated problems. One of the more controversial topics involving human impact on environment is the excessive use of plastic, specifically in the form of plastic bags. Used for their convenience, durability, and inexpensive nature, plastic bag production and consumption has exploded, allowing them to become a seemingly necessary part of everyday life. Unfortunately, however, this abuse of plastic bags has brought a slew of environmental health
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
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
Biomass Packaging Co., et al. Plastic in the ocean does not biodegrade, it only breaks down into smaller, and smaller pieces, some pieces are so small they cannot be seen by the naked eye.... ... middle of paper ... ... 11 April 2014.
Many plastic products such as plastic water bottles and plastic grocery bags are poorly disposed and end up in our water system. Plastic affects our water by releasing harmful chemicals into the soil, which can later on seep into our groundwater and other water sources. Most plastic is not easily biodegradable. The plastic in our oceans annually take the lives of one million seabirds and 50 thousand marine mammals. If we keep on disposing our plastics carelessly, by 2050, there will be more plastic in our water than there will be fish. Since water is key to life, we do not want it to be badly affected. Every year, the plastic that gets thrown away is enough to circle around the world four times! To improve our watershed we can encourage people to recycle more and ban certain harmful waste
The exorbitant amount of waste humans all around the world are producing each and every day is astonishing. In major developed cities, trash is easily forgotten about due to the lack of an impact it plays on peoples' lives after it is disposed of (Lohuizen 2017). Furthermore, the problem is expected to grow; as nations begin to develop, trash will shortly follow. Packaging for items uniquely becomes more intricate as a nation develops, and as a result plays a critical role in how much total garbage actually ends up in a landfill. A culprit to the landfill problem is plastics, due to the extraordinary amount of time it takes for them to degrade.
* To Save Resources by either reducing the production of standard Polypropylene plastics by replacing it with a less resource-intensive plastic.
... 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).
Plastic makes our lives easier, but they will make more difficult through the damage, they cause to our air quality, soil, and water. We need to change our habit of using the plastic and be part of the solution to make this world better place.
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. This 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).
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.
Most importantly, it saves lives. We should all learn the importance of recycling. For example, some sea lions won?t get stuck in plastics if we recycle. We would also breathe better air. We can recycle and aluminum can and put it back on the shelf for something useful. If we just leave it in the landfill, it?ll decompose and it?ll be of no use. It?ll also reduce pollution or else it?ll make a new one.
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
are required and less energy is needed to make recycled plastic products than to make