Pollution Essay: The Plastic Epidemic

The Plastic Epidemic

We are killing our planet. Humans have only been on this planet for about two hundred thousand years, and from the beginning we have been selfish beings, going through with actions that jeopardize our environment, destroying our only home, Earth. Since the dawn of mass production in the 1940's and 1950's, plastic products have become ubiquitous and an integral part of everyday life. Plastics of every kind have made our lives easier, and on the surface, better; plastic causes the price of goods to decrease, satisfying the consumer. However, plastic is not a sustainable material to build our goods from. The production of plastic should be decreased because the process of producing plastic and plastic pollution create several

environmental issues that danger wildlife and human beings.
The production of plastic should be stopped because the process of creating plastic is a method which creates environmentally hazardous byproducts.

Jessica Knoblauch, an author for the Environmental Health News, writes about the toll plastic has on the environment, "the process of creating plastic can produce biological effects in a range of wildlife species, crippling the local ecosystem." All forms of plastic are created using oil. Oils are refined, mixed with poisonous chemicals, and cooked at high temperatures in order to produce items. This process produces toxic byproducts and greenhouse gases, reducing our air quality and can disrupt the

environment.
Worldwide consumerism has reached an all-time high with an ever-increasing list of goods, usually created using plastic, and the enormous use of plastic should be reduced because it causes plastic pollution.

Renee Cho, a journalist for the State if the Planet, studied what occurs to all the plastic after consumers throw their plastic products out, "It's estimated that there are also hundreds of millions of plastic debris floating around in the oceans threatening the health and safety of marine life." Landfills are increasingly gaining size because of the amount of plastic we use to create out products as it is not biodegradable. Plastic can take more than one thousand years to degrade and can only be recycled through a lengthy expensive process. There also are large islands of plastic waste currently in our oceans, collected together by ocean gyres. Marine wildlife mistake these plastic products as food and ingest them, either killing or injuring themselves. The plastic pollution causes harm and endangers our

wildlife.
Plastic manufactures say making the switch from plastic to biodegradable materials would be too difficult, taking up valuable company funds to research such alternatives. However, there is no need for companies to fund research into environmentally sound alternatives for plastic as there many already available to use. If companies that manufacture plastic products do not make the switch to plastic alternatives, we should urge the government to should take charge at mandate the use of the alternatives. The responsibility of ensuring minimal harm to the environment is the job of the people.

Though plastic products seem to make our lives easier, they will ultimately make our lives more difficult through the environmental damage they cause, by the process they were created by as well as plastic pollution. If we continue to rely on such dangerous methods to create goods, we will only add to the damage that has already been done to our planet. We must take action and find environmentally sound alternatives to plastic, such as biodegradable materials and, if the need arises, boycott plastic goods. By assisting in this change, we are all contributing to a better world.