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plastic recycling research essay
short essay on recycling of plastic
short essay on recycling of plastic
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Introduction
Plastic has found its way into every house and office, it’s found in many home appliances and office equipment. The reason for increased use of Plastic is that it has replaced Glass, wood and metals and it’s relatively cheap. Plastic is thrown away after its use and that creates a huge problem regarding the disposal of the plastic. This has resulted in the need for recycling plastic in order to avoid its disposal and to re-use it. The first time used plastic is known as virgin grade material. After first use when the plastic is recycled then it can’t be used for the same product but it can be brought to a different use. (Goodship, 2007)
The process of plastic recycling is complicated and it requires a lot of steps. First of all the recyclable products are collected from recycle bins and brought to a central recycling facility. After that it’s the stage of sorting in which different items such as metal and woods are separated from plastics, so that only glass is carried forward for next stages. After that, plastic will be sorted out into different types those who can be recycled and those who can’t be recycled. The latter are either disposed or transferred to a different facility. Those types which can be recycled are collected in batches and cleaned to remove any impurities from them. Next, the cleaned plastic is melted and it’s formed into pellets which are called nurdles. These nurdles are then used in different sort of products such as fibers, floor mats or tiles. That’s how plastic is recycled and re-used in the production of a different product. However, the recycled plastic can’t replace the need for virgin plastic as it is required for the new products. (How Is Plastic Recycled?)
Types of Plastic:
There are ...
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... of using the products are the reasons that plastic issued. After the products have been used then there is the question, whether to dispose them or recycle them? It’s wise to go for recycling as it has benefits from all sides. Recycling not only saves all the costs which would have been incurred if the plastic product was disposed but it can be used for commercial production. The use in commercial production means that it works as an extremely cheap input and it lowers the cost of production and consequently lowers the prices paid by consumers for those products. The main thing is that recycling plastic based products promotes a culture of environmental friendliness which is the need of the hour. The environment of the world is facing multiple threats and raising awareness about them through recycling can play a vital role in encouraging people to be eco-friendly.
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.
Not only people should recycle waste to protect the environment; they have to use the recycled products too, otherwise the recycling will not be worth the effort (Biswas et al., 2000). The myth that people belive in is that as long as the product is recycled, then it has lower quality than before it is recycled. However, it depends on the product itself if it is typical, so the product keeps its quality even after rcycling (Biswas et al., 2000).
Plastic is a synthetic (human-made) material and takes much longer to decompose than natural materials. Plastic items take many lifetimes to decompose in landfills.
Recycling can have a large impact on the way we produce our everyday products. Recycling helps the environment by conserving the natural resources we use everyday. Since the
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?".
With new technology and different resources that make human life easier, there are increased problems for the environment and wildlife. Plastic was a huge discovery and it has changed everyday life since then. Plastic has a low cost and has replaced many traditional products such as wood and glass. Because of their wide variety of uses, plastics are used throughout the entire world. This poses problems with how to safely dispose of plastics and the damage they cause when they are not disposed of properly.
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
... 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).
Many people believe that we should not recycle anymore, but this is not the case. We, the people of the world, need to continue to recycle because we do not want our children to grow up in a world where there are no certain species of animals due to recycling failures. We also do not want our children to grow up thinking that it is okay that they throw their garbage on the ground, and not have to pick it up. We need to teach our children that they need to take care of the earth that they are living on, because they only get one. Recycling is one of the most beneficial environmental issues that we have here on this earth. Recycling saves energy, limits pollution and supports several environmental factors of the economy. “In 2003, the savings from recycling 54 billion aluminum cans exceeded the energy equivalent of 15 million barrels of crude oil- or the amount of gas the U.S. uses in one day,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA estimates that 200 million gallons of used oil are not disposed of properly, and if we were to dispose the oil properly then we could keep the oil from polluting the ground and the fresh water source. According to E. Takatori, “… While on-going societal regulation treats material recycling as the dominant cycle, the properties of recycled plastic remain the most port
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.
Environmental health has been a very important issue to talk about internationally these days. We, human beings are leading the earth toward its edge unconsciously. We are using natural resource more than we give to the Mother Nature. Day by Day, people are aware of what damage they do the environment, but they do not care of fixing this damage. In a very simple step, the road of a better healthy environment will begin; recycling is the best idea that illustrate the previous point. To Andrew Roper, recycling is the conversion of waste products into new materials, such as waste paper that can be converts into new paper goods (n.d). There are many types of recycling, for example, there are glass, paper, metal, plastics, textiles and electronics recycling (Evans , 2011). This research will focus on recycling papers in the United Arab Emirates, the benefits or recycling and its effect on the environment, the difficulties of recycling, the process of recycling paper, and the finals products of recycling.
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