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Environmental Pollution

Decent Essays

Another key way that humans are destroying (polluting) the environment is through their uncontrolled disposal of water bottles. When a bottle of water is purchased, the cost is primarily for the plastic. However, people tend to overlook the environmental cost. The production process of water bottle from manufacturing to disposing is costly. Most plastic bottles are manufactured from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, fashioned from crude oil (Schriever, 2013). Oil extraction discharges harm habitats and greenhouse gases, in addition to casting toxins into the atmosphere.
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics photodegrade (do not biodegrade), which infers that they over time disintegrate to smaller fragments. The fragments absorb contaminants that pollute the waterways, soil, and sicken animals (that we ultimately consume). Also, plastic trash absorbs organic pollutants such as PCBs and BPA. They take too long to decompose whereas sitting in landfills (Schriever, 2013), resulting in infinite billions of small environmentally toxic time bombs.
There are various processes involved from production until the point where it reaches the final consumer (as indicated in the template) (Schriever, 2013). In all these processes, some amount of energy, mostly in the form of fossil fuel, is consumed and its byproducts discharged to the environment, causing pollution.
Functioning of the four biogeochemical cycles
The Carbon Cycle
The carbon cycle comprises a number of inter-related cycles. Generally, the effect is constant recycling of carbon in the continuous dynamic processes in the atmosphere, in the earth’s crust, and at the surface. Wood combustion, for instance, deposits carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is absorbed by plants and turned to nutrients for sustenance and growth (Soundry, 2008). Animals consume the plants for food and nutrients, and exhale Carbon dioxide to the atmosphere when breathing.
The atmospheric CO2 dissolves in the huge water bodies (ocean) where eventually, it falls in sediments as carbonate. The sediments are sub-ducted by the tectonic plates’ activities, liquefied, and later brought to surface through volcanicity. Carbon dioxide is, during volcanic eruptions, deposited in the

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