No Plastics Please!

By Anne Tong

Plastic is perhaps one of the worst chemical materials that humans have invented in recent decades. Plastic is generally non-biodegradable. Thus, it causes serious environmental problems and posts huge biological hazard to living organisms. A huge amount of plastic wastes is being created every day. The resulting pollution is destroying our ecosystem, with the ocean being one of the largest victims.

Plastic is prevalent nowadays due to its nature: cheap, easy-making and long lasting. However, people dump it quickly because it is cheap. Materials like carry bags and disposable bottles are thrown away regularly.

As plastic is non-biodegradable, it will be left in the ground for many centuries being it is fully decomposed. Meanwhile, it will result in huge pollution. Because of urbanization, this problem is most seriously observed in cities.

Apart from plastics, as synthetic polymers can be easily shaped, which can be made into thin films as bits and pieces. They are used to produce durable and disposable carry bags and packaging. Similar to plastics, these materials are non-biodegradable, and will remain in the same form when thrown out after using it.

According to the latest statistics, the world's annual output of plastics comes to approximately 105 million tonnes and is continued to be rising. In particular, a person from the western and European countries uses 70 kg of plastics per year on average. In contrast, India appears to be a greener country with its annual output being 2.5 million tonnes and annual per-capita use being 4 kg only.

As the world's annual output of plastics continues to rise, the amount of plastic wastes found in the ocean is rising rapidly as well. For instance, traces of polymers can be found in almost 85% of the objects on beaches. Rubbish like packaging materials is commonly found on beaches as well.

This greatly ruins the life and habitat of marine life. Turtles and seabirds are the ones which bear the most. As you can see, plastic pollution is one of the most serious problems in the world, even greater than the problem of the ozone hole and global warming.

Thus, to protect ourselves from the vital hazards that plastics might bring to us, we should minimize our use of plastics. For examples, we should use reusable canvas bags instead of plastics bags when we go shopping and companies should use other materials like papers for packaging. When everyone contributes a little, the world would be able to benefit a lot. - 29941

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