Negative effects of plastic essay

It’s everywhere, just look around you. It is even man-made and we use it to build almost everything, our computers, vehicles, furniture, cell phones and every electronic ever made. Plastic use has increased a lot the past century and still continues to increase each year. People use and depend on plastic everyday and never question it’s harmfulness towards our world.

Plastic is a growing problem and effects the environment around us and wildlife. Recycling and waste management solutions must be made to help reduce waste of plastic. Plastic has become very popular over the last and current century. The amount of plastic manufactured in the first ten years of this century will approach the toal produced in the entire last century.

A very scary amount of plastic will be produced in a couple decades if we keep up this pace. That amount of plastic cannot just be easily unmade, it takes years to breakdown plastic. This could bring many negative effects to the environment in the future.

More than one-third of all plastic is disposable packaging like bottles and bags, many of which end up littering the environment. This is why everybody should give atleast a little effort to recycle, bnecause it’s that little effort everybody gives that makes a big difference. Plastic is so resilient that even burying it deep within the earth doesn’t keep it from impacdting the environment. Currently it accounts for approximately 10 percent of generated waste, most of which is landfilled.

This percentage of plastic waste can be reduced if we recycle and reuse our plastic and can help reduce the litter and waste in our environment. As a matter of fact, our litter and plastic waste not only effects the environment but also effects our wildlife. The process of producing plastic involves harmfull chemicals that can even effect humans. Plastic debris, laced with chemicals and often ingested by marine animals, can injure or poison wildlife. Tens of thousand of whales, birds, seals, and turtles are killed every year from plastic bag litter in the marine environment as they often mistake plastic bags for food such as jellyfish. Once animals ingest any type of plastic it can’t be digested. So it stays inside of the animals gut and can cause manyproblems including a slow death. More than 180 species of animals have been documented to ingest plastic debris.

The numbers of animals that are killed by this increase and waste and litter go up. Although producing plastic is innevitable because of how much we use it and it’s effectiveness. We can still reduce waste with easy yet effective ways. The recycling message is simple; both industry and society need to regard end-of-life items, including plastics, as raw materials rather than waste. By simply recycling we can slowlydecrease the amount of litter and waste in our environment and wildlife. Plastic production can aslo be altered so that it brakes down easier. This is called biodegradable plastic.

Increasing the availability of biodegradable plastic, which can be made from renewable materials from plasnts such as corn and soy, is another option. Our litter is so bad that in the North Pacific Ocean there is an island of plastic waste the size of Texas. This shows that we need to dosomething to prevent it from getting worse. Consider the amount of plastic we litter and wast each day. This slowly builds up more and more every year. Recycle and waste solutions must be made to help our environment and wildlife, we as humans also liveon this earth and were the ones who manufacture and make all this plastic.

Which is why we need a safer and less harmful way to create and dispose of plastic.