What Are Plastic Waste? Essay

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,

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

The plastic around the world is building up to become a huge world problem. Each year eight million tons of plastic

Recycling plastic generally is more energy efficient than creating new plastic. Over 1000 gallons of gasoline is saved by recycling one ton of plastic. The liquefaction of polyolefins actually produces new oil stock that are used in other manufacturing, as well as several marketable byproducts such as diesel fuel, burnable fuel, and HCL.

The pie charts show how much each five types of garbage (including ‘other’) was wasted in America in 1990 and 2005. According to the two graphs, there are some changes in percentage of household wastes in the 15 years.

Plastic is in every part of modern day life. Today’s civilizations use it for everything from cleaning products to storage to safety equipment. Plastic has effectively become part of everyday life. It’s able to be used and discarded quickly, and often after it is tossed into the trash can it is forgotten. After it is thrown away, it may end up in one of two places, the local landfill or the oceans, where approximately fifteen to forty percent of plastics end up.

Plastic, whether it is for a container, a wrapper or the product itself, has become an everyday part of our lives. The plastic itself is not a waste. We use it to contain food, construction workers wear it to protect their heads, and arthritic patients have it for their replaced hips. However, “Only 9 percent of the total plastic waste generated in 2012 was recovered for recycling”(“Plastics, Common Wastes & Materials”). If we just throw it away instead of recycle it, it will become a plastic waste and pollute the environment. When it reaches the ocean, it will turn into floating debris, which is even harder to

Initially when plastic was discovered, it gave people a sense of hope to accomplish things that were once thought of impossible. Additionally, new companies, factories and idea’s emerged as a result of the discovery of plastic and its flexibility in manipulating the chemical structure. For example, Industries in 1960 adapted to supply produce with plastics from plastics bags to plastic bottles because it saved them lots money from collecting raw materials from all over the world and it gave them the advantage to control the production. It was then thought of as a boon to our economy because people were able to divert from purchasing expensive materials to cheaper ones; however; people did not expect the plastics material to cause harmful effects on our environment. Furthermore, since the discovery of plastics by Leo Hendrik Baekeland, other researchers have came up

About 299 million tons of plastic were made in 2013 (Lytle). Plastic waste gained popularity when animals begin to die do to mistaking plastic for food (Lytle). Plastic also causes drains to be clogged and then flooding issues. (Moore) “Global plastic consumption has gone from 5.5 million tons in the 1950s to 110 million tons in 2009,” (Lytle). The overuse of plastic is still important today because plastic is causing many global issues such as draining floodage, animal deaths, and pollution (banthebottle.com). Experts, like Renee Cho, say that plastic is “slowly taking over the country.” (Artwohl). Plastic waste affects the word in many ways. Americans should help decrease this issue by using less plastic

Plastic debris and litter is a serious pollution that is currently affecting oceans, waterways and coastal lines. Plastic is a man made tangible substance made from a range of organic polymers such as polyethylene, PVC, and nylon. This material is high on demand with the human kind but takes an average of 450 years to disintegrate. This product is impacting the marine environment, wildlife, and then eventually circling back to humans. Currently, the world’s biggest plastic patch is located north in the Pacific Ocean, trapped in what’s called a gyre (known as an ocean rip). There are also another two plastic islands located in the Indian and Atlantic oceans. These three plastic patches contain a higher amount of plastic but to today's count, in total there are 5 forward. Sea Education Society scientists studied plastics in the Atlantic and calculated there are 580,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer. Causes of plastic are endless, but trash is the main contributor. Plastic is located in almost every item around, and once it's in the trash, all the garbage gets dumped in land fills and seeps into the ground and soil affecting wildlife. Plastic is cheap and substantially available, so over production of plastic is high. The cause of plastic filling up land and oceans is a couple of reasons. People normally have a one-time use for plastic then throw it away but after that, the plastic is hard to eradicate. Burning plastic leads

Plastics have massive economic effects in a world practically covered by it. Plastics are polymers, chains of molecules polymerized together. There are two different categories, thermoset which solidifies irreversibly when the polymer is heated and thermoplastic which soften when exposed to heat (Halden, 2010). Plastic is a log lived material which can be used for many years yet the highest uses we have for the material are disposable, such as for packaging. Since 1975 Global plastic production has increased by 620% (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2015). This increase is due to benefits such as cost efficiency, increase in shelf life and protection of products. But do these benefits outweigh the residual wastes effect

The petroleum and gas used to create plastic bags is a limited source, it is non-renewable. We already have a problem with petroleum to do in the next 50-100 years so why are we wasting it by compounding it? Extracting petroleum causes enough environmental issues and that is not including the compounding! The even bigger problem is that plastic bags consume

The overuse of plastics in today's society has become major environmental issue for our oceans. Plastic pollution is the dumping, littering, or disposing of any type of man-made plastic that has been produced and has ended up in our ocean and has not been recycled.

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

Where does all the plastic go. Every bit of plastic that has been created is still here. This is because plastic is one-hundred percent non-biodegradable! Even the most degraded plastic down to polymers cannot be digested by bacteria (Laist, 1997). If global issues like starvation and climate change are not enough to stress on, the weight of an issue literally churning in the Pacific Ocean is startling. For decades the majority of the world’s population has not been properly educated on the nature of plastic and the potential harm it can do to our environment and our physical health. Due to factors of man and the natural effects of nature, a major problem has developed that is now harming our food.