Nowadays, What's app is successfully crawling the message of 'plastic ban' over an environmental awareness and I am sensibly happy for it because I have already implemented it, a year back. Though I am trying hard enough, it's really difficult to get out of this 'plastic world' completely.
Plastics are synthetic polymers of organic origin and have enormous 'easy to use' properties like light weight, water proof , transparent as well as available with all colour shades, non-corrosive, easy to mold in various shapes and sizes, resistance to shock, low electrical and thermal conductivity, good durability, low cost, easy to manufacture and many more. Thus how we are addicted to the convenience of plastics and made them part of our everyday life: at home, work places, automobiles, construction areas, medical fields and other sectors.
Eventually our convinient plastics are presenting many problems. As plastics are made from petroleum, a crude oil product by heating and catalysing the monomers like ethylene and propylene into polymers like polyethylene and polypropylene; which are not found in nature and thus there are no organisms capable of decomposing or degrading it over thousands of years, letting them polluting the environment at staggering rate. Beside this, plastics are flammable and can not be safely burnt releasing toxic chemicals in to environment which can be responsible for health hazards like cancer, birth defects, impaired immunity and many other ailments. Plastics are killing animals and birds as they eat plastics products by mistake.Plastics are also when seeps into water bodies like river and oceans, they adversely affect aquatic life as well litter up our beautiful shorelines.
Coming to the solutions, landfill sites provided a good option where all the waste is gets desposed off and mostly of it is plastics. We produce millions of plastics every year and more than half of it goes to landfills as waste from all over the world, thinking as our planet is large one but it is not that large as we think it is. We are sharing it with billions of people, altogether contribute to plastic waste at an alarming rate and we can not escape from the consequences of throwing away that much of plastics which take hundreds of years to break down. Obiviously, it would end in making our planet as 'plastic planet'.
So what are other options ?
For the sake of a good environmental profile, we also have 3Rs :- Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, well known waste management programmes.
Reduce is about cutting down the amount of waste that we are making. Example: Use washable dishes instead of paper plates and cups.
Reuse means opting out different ways to use waste and avoid throwing it all put. Example: plastic cup and containers can be reused to store things or can become a part of art and craft projects.
Recycle is a method of using the trash for remaking new products from it and using them again. Example: Having work places with recycling partner to collect and Recycle plastic products and we just need to encourage them.
As we produce hundred millions tons of plastic every year, most of which can not be recycled or need effective recycling unit so it's obvious that we need to use less plastic, move towards sustainable products and services and come up with technology that recycles plastic more efficiently.
Being more specific about plastics awareness, I like to turn your heads towards 'single use plastics' for now.
Single-use plastics, also known as disposable plastics, are intended to be used only once before they are thrown away or recycled. These includes plastic bags, disposable cutlery, bottles, straws, containers, coffee stirrers, soft drink and water bottles and most food packaging. Single-use plastic is everywhere. In a matter of mere decades, it has seeped into every corner of our lives.
We think it’s normal to use a single-use plastic water bottles, take-away coffee cup, fruits, vegetables or other food products wrapped in disposable plastic packaging, and most popular 'a plastic bag' – but now we need to say big ' No' to them.
You know, Fossil fuels (petroleum products) take millions of years to form, then they are mined and manufactured into single-use plastic items, and transported to us, simply to be used for a couple of minutes before being discarded into environment for nothing to do over next thousands of years.
So here is point, protest the single use plastics to protect our environment for the future as we all have 'the power of revolution' and better knowledge of our actions, and their consequences.