Plastic is a material that is used very often everywhere, but exactly how good is it for us? Although it is vital for certain things such as construction and infrastructure, there is still too much wasteful plastic in the world. 10.5 million tons of plastic waste is produced by Americans each year, but less than 5% of it is recycled. Much of the world’s plastic waste is thrown into dumps and oceans, contributing to the world’s pollution. About 50% of the plastic waste falls into one category – single use plastics. Since single use plastics are have health and ecological dangers, the use of single use plastics must be regulated.

Two of the most common types of single use plastics are plastic bags and plastic water bottles. After plastics bags are used once or twice, they are mainly forgotten and usually end up in the streets. These plastic bags eng up in sewers or drainage systems, increasing the risk of clogging such systems. This, in turn, increases the risks of floods – floods that have the ability to submerge countries! Plastics are also very harmful to marine wildlife. Plastics bags that end up in the ocean kill animals through choking and suffocation. Other types of plastics, such as from the netting or lines of fishing gear, also contribute to the 100,000 plastic entanglements of marine life in the North Pacific every year. Plastics are also very harmful towards humans because chemicals from plastics can end up in the human’s body through consumption of seafood, or even through water as someone drinks from a plastic water bottle. Some chemicals in plastics are carcinogenic, which can cause birth defects, skin diseases, vision failure, etc. Single use plastics is currently in a cycle that begins with human production, but ends with harmful effects towards wildlife and humans.

The use of single use plastics must be reduced. Even if the plastics are properly disposed of, its low density allows it to travel downstream into oceans. Plastics are also really expensive to make because they are made of organic carbon based compounds and must be derived from fossil fuels, which are nonrenewable gases. The cleanup cost of disposing plastics is estimated to cost $75 billion, according to the United Nations Environmental Programme. In the long run, single use plastics are harmful to the ecosystem and are very costly to properly maintain the use of it. To minimize the amount of plastic waste, all recyclable plastics must be properly disposed of. Proper legislation should also be taken to reduce the amount of single use plastics in the world to create a better environment to live it.

Sources:

http://ecologycenter.org/plastics/ptf/report1/

http://www.unep.org/gpa/Documents/Publications/ValuingPlasticExecutiveSummaryEn.pdf

http://www.cleanwateraction.org/sites/default/files/CA_Fact%20Sheet_final_0.pdf

http://www.sustainablecommunication.org/eco360/what-is-eco360s-causes/plastic-garbage