Essay On Plastic Recycling

Recycling has been the environmental crusade to reducing the human footprint, with it’s spotlight shining down on in recent years. It was the noblest of causes, recycling being a great idea for the environment and society; but it is being handled poorly. Its modern descendant has turned into a corporate scheme with recycling becoming a business, instead of being about the environment because marketers are using environmentalism as a excuse for overconsumption, recycling products are only being recycled for profit, and cities & big business use inflated numbers to attain media attention. Let’s now take a look at the bread and butter of

Overall, recycling plastic benefits the environment, the economy and the future of America. Although there are flaws to recycling plastic such as the sorting step overlooking additives and the washing step leaving some impurities, technological advances and more labor will be needed to fix those drawbacks in order to conserve the environment. Therefore, the U. S government should mandate recycling so that the recycling rate increase. Through this action, America will gain the benefits of recycling plastic. In addition, Americans should recycle specific types of plastic such as PET and HDPE as those two are the most commonly accepted by recycling programs. This will be strenuous upon Americans because they will have to do more work however,

Recycling is a very essential and crucial process in our world today. The term recycling means that waste can be converted into new products instead of being discarded. As the population continues to grow, humans are using more and more products. In order to reduce the amount of waste on planet Earth, and to preserve its resources, recycling is significant. Not only does recycling allow the environment to thrive, but it also allows living people to thrive as well. There are many materials that can be recycled. Plastics, electronics, aluminum, food and glass are only but a few products that can be recycled. Recycling can benefit our environment in numerous amount of ways. However, without recycling, negative impacts on our environment can occur. Some of these effects include pollution whether it is air, land or sea, depletion of natural resources and even an increase threat to global warming. Therefore, recycling is extremely important to sustain our environment.

Plastic's end of life cycle involves being discarded, either recycled for reuse or dumped into a landfill or the ocean. Recycling's popularity has significantly grown since the 1970's, as well as the overall number of plastic products being produced. In addition, the amount of plastic products being created as significantly increased over the past 60 years. Due to the endurance of polymers, plastic is filling up landfills faster than it should and invading our natural habitats. Recycling is one of the most critical things we can do for our environment. It can cut down on the amount of plastic in landfills as well. Recycling plastic reduces the need to create more plastic, which also cuts down on oil use and pollutants being released into the air. In the time that recycling has become more popular, technology has advanced to create more job

Plastic bags begin as crude oil, natural gases, or other petrochemical derivatives. By some estimates almost 12 million barrels of petroleum oil are used to make 100 billion plastic bags. One solution is to stop using plastic bags. Plastic bag bans are spreading across the country with over 100 community bag bans across 16 states. Hawaii right now is the only state in the nation to adopt a full statewide ban. Internationally,19 countries from Bangladesh to Ireland have passed bans. Reducing plastic bag usage and shoppers to use reusable bags will help decrease our demand for a new fossil fuel and reduce our environmental impact. As a nation we need to begin to move away from the concepts of single use and waste. Plastic is made from oil.

In order to recycle these products is by three steps: items are collected, cleaned and formed into something new, and the new item is ready to buy by the consumers. The way PETE bottles are recycled is by grounding up the bottle till it is in flakes. Second, the flakes are washed and dried. Then finally, the flakes are melted, the plastic can be molded into a new product. Again, these industries can be more sustainable and be more considered to the planet is by adopting a new system, “cradle to cradle”.

Another misconception that many people hold lies in what happens to bottles of water once they are “recycled”. People believe that once they send a plastic bottle on its way to be recycled, it will be converted into a new, usable, recyclable container. Generally speaking, this is not the case. The majority of recycled plastic gets a new life as something non-recyclable, such as plastic lumber or parking lot bumpers. This does not amount to as high a rate of waste reduction as one would hope for.

People would say that plastic in landfills would just stay there and if we keep on using plastic the waste problem would just worsen. I think that the problem here is why do people put plastics in landfills mixed with biodegradable materials. There are ways to properly recycle plastic. This comes to my third argument for why plastic beats paper. It is better because we could change its physical shape to things we really need. Richard Stein, from the University of Massachusetts, stated that plastics could be melted and formed into different structures such as propellers for wind turbines, food containers and many more [3]. Imagine being able to reuse plastic as long as the quality of it can still be recyclable, but if it isn’t anymore, Richard Stein also suggested that plastic could be converted to energy by burning it since it is made of petroleum [3].

The average American creates about one hundred-thirty pounds of trash a month, and an article in the journal Nature estimates that global solid-waste generation will triple, to eleven million tons a day, by the year 2100 (Semuels). Plastic does not break down; it’s not biodegradable nor does it

One extreme issue with plastic being so easily accessible is that consumers throw it away without hesitation, as is especially true with plastic bags. Plastic bags are made of one of the most flexible and flimsy types of plastic, which means that they can be broken down much easier, especially once they reach the ocean, which is where an alarming amount of our trash ends up. “Plastic doesn't biodegrade in any meaningful timeframe, but it photodegrades” which means that “ultraviolet rays from the sun break the polymer chains of hydrocarbon molecules into smaller pieces and what you end up with is small fragments...” (Wilson) of plastic floating all over our oceans, and those tiny fragments will truly

They do not, in fact, mean that an item can be recycled, but specifically denote which kind of plastic makes up an object. There are six codes for specific plastics, with code number seven being something of a “catch-all” for the remaining plastics and composites. Only four of these seven codes denote a plastic that can be recycled at all, and it is relatively rare for an area to recycle all four of them. Despite the efforts to simplify the process of recycling, we still waste massive amounts of recyclable material. We have improved tremendously compared to previous decades. Nationally the USA went from recycling 6.4% of solid waste in 1960 to recycling 34.1% of waste in 2010 - but we still have a very long way to go (“Stats”). These statistics beg the question “what impact have the Resin ID codes truly had on recycling?” In an effort to discern if there has in fact been a significant impact on our recycling rates, I set out to research the overall changes in recycling since these the implementation of these

Plastic bags that we throw in trash stays in landfills for many years. Furthermore, According to research conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, “somewhere between five hundred billion and one trillion disposable bags are used each year around the world. Plastic bags, while only used for an average of about twelve minutes, remain in landfills, oceans, and other places for thousands of years.” In addition, ever since the new law took place, the amount of plastic being thrown in landfills has been reduced because less bags are made now. An article states, “the use of natural resources and waste from plastic bag production, plastic bags can increase the risk of flooding. Because they never break down completely, plastic bags can clog storm drains and other areas which can eventually cause severe flooding. Plastic products are also causing serious issues in the world's oceans, where pieces of plastic actually outnumber the amount of plankton in the water.” As a result,

Picture this; over one trillion plastic bags are used every year worldwide. Plastic is not biodegradable so for each bag it takes one thousand years to degrade or totally break down. Since plastic was first produced in 1907, humans have generated 8.3 billion metric tons plastic products, that is equivalent to 25,000 empire state buildings or 80 billion blue whales. Plastics have outlasted most man-made materials and have been under environmental scrutiny for quite some time. Although plastic was once regarded as convenient and versatile, it has become one of the biggest environmental problems of our time; different types of plastic can take anywhere from one to one thousand years to decompose, it is time for this generation to put the work in on biodegradable alternatives to plastic.

We know that nowadays plastic is the one materials that widely used by human in all of the country. Most of our goods become from plastic. The bad news is, plastics wastes that come from our unusable goods end up in the oceans. There are 60% to 80% plastic wastes on the sea are coming from the land and it will cause a big problem to 267 sea species in this world (Moore, Lattin, & Zellers). That one example is more than enough to start recycling our plastic waste. We can start from reduce and reuse first. For reduce example: when we buy something, we should prepare our own bag to put the goods we buy, dispose the waste according to the bin that specially provided for plastic, use a refill bottle for our drink bottle, and prefer a paper bag than plastic bag. How about reuse plastic bag? Some of countries have creative company that selling fine art and use plastic waste as the basic materials. One of the countries that have company like that is Indonesia. Indonesia has a lot of home industry that use plastic waste as their main materials. They make new thing from plastic bottle, such as plastic flower art, windmill toys for children, table lamp, and house accessories. Some schools in Indonesia teach the students how to reuse the plastic waste and make a fine art from it. Reduce and reuse the plastic waste already counted as recycling the plastic waste. Never think

ON the other hand if it is properly recycled we are able to reuse the same plastic over and over again for long periods of time while at the same time keeping a low production cost This is why plastic is cheap even though it contains oil a very high priced item, for as long as people do their best to not waste plastic and recycle it there really is not a need to waste our precious oil and manufacture more of it.