Plastic is a very helpful invention, but know that it isn’t the best as far as reusing and disposing of. The atomic structure and combination of elements allows plastics to last anywhere between 500-1000 years until it deteriorates. The ‘immortal’ plastic waste damages the environment crucially. The damage is not done in only one ecosystem, but all of them: land, sea, and air. Burning and letting the fumes free would not be the best solution to this. When plastic is burned, it releases poisonous gases that pollute the air and eventually the sea.
The gases in the air are absorbed by water, which destroys its quality. Because it is easy to make and its highly diverse methods use, the mass production will not slow down. Instead of continuing the course of destroying the plant, we should be educating our children, the Tomorrow people, about proper waste disposal. We should be teaching them that the world we live in is worth saving would be a large step to stopping the continuation of the damages already done and even possibly create jobs for them to have one day.
Plastic is a man made resource that people use often, many of which use it in a careless way. Plastic is usually made up of some or all ten of these elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, chlorine, fluorine, phosphorous, and silicon(PFT: ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS, Ecology Center). The varying combinations of these elements can be extremely dangerous. Those combinations, or chemical reactions, can sometimes create immensely strong acids, gases, and/or explosions. For reasons like these, there are people who learn and specialize in how to properly maintain, use these elements.
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If these things are exceedingly dangerous, then why aren’t there any proper or enforced laws to do dispose of them or better yet, why are we making everyday items out of them? The main sources of plastic ingredients are found in resources like oil, coal, and natural gases. To gain what is needed from these resources, burning is usually the best method. Burning and using these materials is not safe for our air quality, water quality, or soil. There is a long list of substances and emissions from the production plastic that destroy the environment. The process just making plastic also creates a transcendently number of pollutants. Items as small and simple as 16 oz water bottles can produce an exponentially greater amount of toxic emissions, than a glass bottle of the same size.
The production of these insidious plastics can also harm the workers that make them. The typical accidents that occur while making plastic are explosions, chemical fires, chemical spills, and the chemical vapors from being buried or exposed liquid (PFT: ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS, Ecology Center). These accidents more than often result in evacuation, the damage of both land and factories, injury, and even the deaths of the worker in those factories. Out of the 10,000 separate industrial accidents and spills in between the years of 1980-1987, 1,600 of them were making plastics (PFT: ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS, Ecology Center).
One way that the reduction of plastic would benefit people would be that it could create jobs. Because of its make up, plastics can be reverted back to their original usable resource form. Many people have figured out how to do this, and it can be so simple and cheap that someone could do it in their backyard. It has been proven, like almost any other substance, that when plastic is burned it takes a gas form. To revert the plastic back into oil, one must keep the gas contained and let it condensate into its liquid form: oil.
This oil can be used as fuel and power things like motorcycles, cars, and boats. This alone could become a company that collects recycled plastic. The company would collect the recycled plastic and turn it into oil and sell it. The company could buy the plastic for a cheap price and then sell the fuel at a cheap price as well, which makes both sides happy. The jobs would be generated by the new gas stations that would sell the fuel, and the factories that would make the fuel. The only bad that could possibly from this would be that the emissions are still being emitted.
Although raising awareness of this would courage people to be on board with stopping the emissions, many people don’t want change or think that is too costly. With this mentality people won’t be willing to change, so the next best thing to do would be to stop the and or decrease the end results. One company in Canada is already working on this. Their goal is to reduce the CO2 emissions in the air. The company’s carbon engineers work to take most of the carbon dioxide,CO2, out of the atmosphere and recycle it. Although carbon is recycled naturally, via carbon cycle and plants, it is still not enough and humans need to put their best foot in front and control this situation (Brueck, Forbes).
Students at MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have also found a way to do this also to reduce the emissions coming from factories. There are many uses for CO2 like for power, when reduced to pure carbon, it can be used for fire extinguishers, and keeping meat lockers cold. With CO2 out of the way, air quality would increase and reduce over all global temperature. This means that global warming will be halted and or slowed. With that out of the way, life on Earth could have a better and brighter future ahead of it (Stauffer, MIT).
The statistics alone should be enough to show people that plastic is a problem, but many still don’t care because they don’t feel like it effects them or it costs too much money. Simply the presents of plastic in the wild can be alarmingly deadly. Animals like sea turtles often eat plastic bags because they mistake it for jelly fish, a major food source for many sea turtles. Nearly 300 different animal species eat plastic or get caught in it (Ocean Plastics Pollution, Center of biological diversity). The ratio of plastic to only marine animals is six to one (D’Alessandro). The abundance plastic trash is disgustingly high. Scientists have estimated that there is not one square mile of ocean that is without plastic trash (D’Alessandro).
A fair amount of this trash comes from the US. The United States throws away around 3 billion plastic water bottles a year. Much of all plastic is only used once (Ocean Plastics Pollution, Center of biological diversity). Although it takes many centuries for plastics to decompose, it still sits and some of its chemicals escape. The chemicals that escape usually damage or are absorbed by he things around them, soil, air, water. If soil absorbs those chemicals, then its quality is compromised and is no longer useful.
Without good soil, plants will not grow, both man and beast alike will cease to continue (health guidance). While plastic is in the ocean, the currents pick it up and spread it out throughout the ocean. Occasionally the plastic is broken up into smaller pieces and go to even more places (Watts, BBC News). With the plastics and garbage being broken up, they have more potential to be dangerous and be eaten by animals that can’t digest the plastic and become so full of it and die. Like germs that can’t be seen are still swept for; plastic is the same, but isn’t treated as such.
Yes, the reduction of plastic would not eliminate all other pollutants because they’re already there and have done their damage. But the already existing plastic can be cleaned up, which is where the problem lies in our “dog eat dog world.” To clean up and reduce plastic, would be considerably costly. Like many other people, you’re probably wondering where this money would come from. The simple answer is “We the people,” our tax dollars, our donations, the money in our pockets. In the year of 2012, researchers have estimated that the damage expenses of plastic is around 13 billion dollars a year. This means that the willingness of people to pay for this restoration is almost little to none. This goes back to people buying leaded gasoline over unleaded before it was illegal to so.
Why did our parents and grandparents chose leaded fuel over unleaded? Simple, it was cheaper and they wanted to save money. To petition the government of our great country, The United States of America, to ban plastic would be too ludicrous. The best way to inexpensively clean up this disgusting plastic mess, would be to find volunteers to clean. Finding enough volunteers to do the work is easier said than done. More often than not, using volunteers isn’t an option because of the professional work needed to safely and properly do the work needed. Without people to do the work, then the work can’t be done (Kirby, Ocean Plastic Pollution Costs $13 Billion a Year).
However, people like our parents and grandparents didn’t have any true idea about what buying leaded gasoline was doing to the environment. In our day and age, our beautiful country has become significantly more accepting and helpful than it has been in its past. There are many more organizations and people writing works like this than there has ever been. Being American, we are taught to dream, to be hardworking, to accomplish and protect those dreams. Protecting our environment and the home of our great Bald Eagle is in our blood. Doing something and simple as going the extra step to go volunteer or pay the additional due is what it means to be American.
Plastic is a useful invention, but anything not used correctly or out of moderation can be extremely harmful. The he best way to combat any problem would be to stop it before given the chance to do damage. If we are willing to make changes our daily routines and lifestyles, our world be preserved and possibly even become even more beautiful than it was before. To begin our road to this awesome change, we would need to significantly reduce our use of disposable plastics.
That would include items like plastic grocery bags, plastic wrap, straws, drink lids, forks, knifes, and spoons. It would be better to use stronger, and longer lasting items to replace those disposables. Another way would be to cut out the use plastic bottle beverages in order to reduce plastic bottle pollution. To help with the thought of not having clean water, home filters could ease ones germaphobic ideology. Way to help while you are cleaning yourself would be to stop using products with microbeads because they can’t be filtered and are designed to go down the drain (Englar, NRDC).
Products with microbeads include: certain face washes, hand sanitizers, and toothpastes, which usually can be seen with the naked eye. In order to make sure that their there is a world worth living in for our children in the future, it is crucial that we educate ourselves and our peers about the little things that do great damage so we can keep this world clean.
