Age Of Plastic Research Paper

Plastic isn’t known to be a substance made for consumption, but you may be eating it every day. In “Our Oceans Are Turning into Plastic…Are You?” the author Susan Casey is informing us how bad plastic is polluting our oceans. Susan Casey is the author of a New York Times best seller, “The Devils Teeth”, helped publish Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm, and is the editor and chief of Oprah Winfrey’s Magazine “O”. She argues that these pollutants are doing damage in multiple facets, such as affecting food chains, disrupts organism reproduction, and directly cause the things we consume to be harmful to us. The author found many creative ways to appeal to all three persuasive appeals which are Logos, Pathos, and Ethos. Although the article was great at the end she added things that weren’t needed and seemed to just be there as filler.

Plastic – an American-made synthetic material, renowned and praised for its almost indestructible quality and versatility, yet on the contrary has had detrimental consequences on our environment and ourselves. It is quite amazing to observe how plastic has completely changed our way of life. In Susan Freinkel’s book “Plastic: a Toxic Love Story” she writes about the effects of plastic on our world. The author points out, a commonly overlooked fact, that plastic is literally everywhere. Plastic is in the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the cups we drink from, and sometimes even the ground we walk on. Two chemical bonds made in a laboratory have forever changed the way we live, through small commodities like

I mean for crying out loud my computer is made WITH plastic! Also after reading it I have started to feel a little bit of guilt. Not that it has me overly messed up it’s just got me asking questions. Such as, “How in the world can this issue be reversed?” Or “Am I compounding the issue with my own consumer notions?” Of course I personally find it disturbing that I would even be remotely linked to this issue. But I am. Most all of America is linked to it with the rest of the world following in suit. But I tend to try and put a positive spin on it myself so that maybe just maybe there is a solution. A clean up method that could work, or a better way of using our current materials so as to try and make our economy bounce back and stop or slow this whole water pollution issue. This chapter is now also making me consider whether or not the shrimp I ate at a restaurant awhile ago may have been affected as well. If it did then what effect has it had on me physically? Also, another thought that comes to mind is if it has had any major affects on the U.S. population as a whole? Or if it has anything to do with why our politicians don’t seem to do anything remotely right or close to what they say they are going to do. Then there is the fact that FOUR MILLION tons of plastic just up and poof, disappear, every year. That in itself could be a major factor in the U.S. economic crisis as well as a number of other ecological issues as

for companies to stop producing plastic, we must first get rid of the demand for it. We

“When was the last time you spent an entire day without using a piece of disposable plastic?” This quote is used by Kitt Doucette in her article, An Ocean of Plastic (412). It shows that using plastic water bottles are becoming a part of people’s lifestyle, regardless people don’t think about the consequences of using them. Water is a necessary part to human life and without water we cannot survive. Humans need at least eight glasses of water to make up for the fact that we lose an average of ten glasses per day throughout normal functions such as sweating and breathing. We must drink the right amount of water in order to stay healthy. There are millions of people worldwide who use plastic water bottles, and there have been massive sustainability

I found this chapter to be the most interesting so far, it fueled my concerns regarding the excessive use of plastic. Some of the statistics Feinkel shares are frightening, such as chemist Raymond Giguere’s, comparison of a year’s production of polyethylene equaling the mass of all the men, women and children in the United States. (62) This is alarming as we cannot continue to produce these materials on such a mass scale without considering the implications it has on our planet. Some forms of polyethylene take hundreds of years to degrade, this means the mess we make now will be left for generations to come to clean up. I have actually made a stand in my house, as the Mum of two young boys I no longer buy them those cheap, plastic toys that

I recently viewed a video on “The economic injustice of plastic” by Van Jones. The film started off by talking about the fact that the petrochemical corporations use oil and concentrate it into plastic; which in turn kills individuals. Van Jones discusses the demise of people who are underprivileged because they can only manage to pay for the products that are hazardous to them. Additionally, poverty-stricken people also assume the burden to dispose of plastic bottles and containers.

According to a CNN report, halting the amount of plastic flowing into oceans would, “require and incredible change in the daily behavior of 7 billion people” (Walsh et al.). The need for this extreme measure did not happen overnight. This problem has grown over the course of many years, and only continues to worsen as the Hedonistic Treadmill speeds up. This problem is so large, that it constitutes as a market failure. Due to the impact of excessive plastic in the oceans, animals are dying, and individuals are consuming large amounts of plastic each year. Thus, the speed of the Hedonistic Treadmill is causing the market to fail due to its negative externalities on wildlife, the environment and humans. However, the degree of the problem indicates that this failure, and its solutions, have not been thoroughly

Every year millions of tons of plastic are dumped around the world. Every year hundreds of thousands of people lose their homes due to fires or natural disasters. 1.6 billion people in the world are homeless and have nowhere to call home but by using my idea of using/melting plastic (high-density polyethylene) and comparing it to standard building materials that make houses , it will enable hundreds of thousands of people to have a place that they call home and it will create jobs as well.

Plastic can be made in to just about anything we use everyday. Just look around you, just about almost anything you use is made out of plastic. Despite its effortless attainability, plastic has transformed the world and the way, we as consumers, use it on a daily basis. There is questions arising to whether or not we should be using plastics the way we are. What will be the long-term effect of plastic usage and its disposal? Many experts and researchers have tried to come to a solid conclusion to the topic. However, its complexity and the way its use is evolving, leaves many holes open to discussion. Eventually, will we have to completely stop using plastic?

With the ceaseless consumption of plastics, problems arise affecting the current state of the planet along with the existing life that depends on it, negatively impacting the future to come. As Leighton Kille and Rachael Stephens state in their Journalist’s Resource article “Plastics, Human Health and Environmental Impacts: The Road Ahead,” the readily usable products made of plastic create a hazard to people and the environment. Plastics, found in many products and made simple to dispose of, contain harmful chemicals that can endanger the human body as well as any animals that may encounter it. From Kille and Stephens’s research, the impacts of plastics are understood to be an expanding threat to the world. Acknowledging the influence of plastic in the modern world and plastic’s menace on society, I believe in the change of cities’ recycling processes, encouragement of the refusal of purchasing single-use plastic products, and the education on the dangers of plastics on human health and the environment. The world that we live in has run on plastic consumption, which continues to increase as we support the companies that manufacture these items by buying their products. Millennials of the UTA community, the people that can make a difference in the world, will be the ones greatly impacted by the growing production of manufactured plastic goods. Simple, yet greatly influential, differences in an individual’s life can better the world of tomorrow by finding alternatives to

Just in the United States alone, more than thirty million tons of plastic is discarded a year and only approximately eight percent of it is recycled (Plastic Pollution Coalition). This may seem inaccurate until you stop and think about everyday items we use that are made of plastic. From the stops at your favorite coffee shops, to dropping by the vending machine to grab a drink, and even sitting at your desk during work or school – you are constantly surrounded by plastic. The smallest things like straws at your favorite restaurant, your children’s or pet’s favorite toys, and the bags you bring home after you weekly grocery trip are most commonly made of some variety of plastic. Each and every one of these things eventually ends up being thrown away and if they are not

Captain Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, said, “Only we humans make waste that nature can’t digest” (2009). The problem with plastic is that the majority of plastics manufactured today will stay in the environment for decades, and probably for centuries. Even if a plastic item is able to be broken down by weathering, it first degrades into smaller pieces, but the polymer itself does not fully degrade easily (Hopewell et al., 2009, 2116). Plastic can be found everywhere and it has been part of our lives. About 50% of the plastics are for single-use disposable applications such as packaging, agricultural films and disposable consumer items (Hopewell et al., 2009, 21115). Today, there are a lot of packaged products that people can buy and almost everyone uses plastic especially plastic shopping bags. It seems unavoidable to use plastic since it is found everywhere such as in household materials, grocery items, in bottles, cellphones, and many others. Due to plastic’s usefulness, more plastic is used and disposed of which increases the accumulation of debris in the environment. It is unlikely to completely ban the use of plastics around the world, therefore, we should use biodegradable plastics as a better alternative.

Plastic is a material that we use for a lot of things in our everyday lives, that pollutes our environment. Plastic is all around us. Think about how many pieces you touch in a day: plastic bags, food container, drinking cups, straws, utensils- the list could go on and on. Plastic is becoming too common and it is harming the world more and more every day. There should be restrictions on how much plastic can be used because it is harming, humans, animals, and our environment. According to the movie, “A Plastic Ocean,” Tanya Streeter states that, “in the last ten years we have made more plastic than in the century before that.” We are using more and more plastic every day.

The news on some once-promising plastic alternatives is not so encouraging. A review published last month in Environmental Science and Technology by a group of scientists — one at the polymer science division of the Indian Institute of Technology — finds that “degradable The news on once-promising plastic alternatives is not so