Team 69 Plastic Revolutions

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.

With over 5000 types of plastics, Heather explains that the problem is very complex. As plastic ends up in marine ecosystems it begins to pollute and has massive monetary effects. Marine litter costs Europeans billions annually though cleanup projects, damage to vessels, and fish catches. Heather also mentioned the harmful amounts of microbeads, which Megan Leslie banned in Canada, in the oceans that are harming small ocean ecosystems. She explained that the effects of marine litter on the economy and ecosystems are extensive, however she noted that there is one place that we haven't check for the harmful effects of plastic. People! Plastics are made with harmful toxic chemicals and it only makes sense that people would be as negatively affected by plastic as our ecosystems and economies are. When asked if parents should be worried about the plastic toys parents buy their children Heather explained how when children put plastic toys in their mouths they are potentially being exposed to toxic flame retardants. Heather explained that our economy is linear, which means it destructively uses finite resources and creates waste. Heather believes that we must create circular economies that feed into each other which would allow us to reuse our resources and recycle our waste (Leslie, H. 2017, February, 2). The idea of a circular economy relates back to the “Green Economics” where

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 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.

Do you know that it will take 1000 years for a plastic bag to decompose? Our world is the most friendly planet for human beings and every other living thing. We should never take our planet for granted because there is no other like this one and in order for us to keep our planet safe and sound, we should get rid of plastic bags. The other most effective way to keep our planet safe is to recycle every plastic bottle that we used. Every plastic product should not be thrown to the garbage because plastic bottles will take several decades to decompose in soil.

You can’t walk across a college campus, past an office building, or through a park without seeing one, two, or ten empty bottles. Many are plastic water bottles. Trash bins overflow them. Those water bottles are a problem. Why? Because only one out of five bottles actually makes it to a recycling bin. Plastic bottles take centuries to decompose and if they are incinerated, toxic byproducts, such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals, are releasing into the atmosphere. The rest are littered on our streets or over filing our landfills. They degrade our landscape and damage our environment. In addition the plastic water bottles are not biodegradable that is, they don’t decay. They remain as trash a hundreds of years.

150,000 tons of plastic are littered into our ocean each year, yet we do nothing to stop it. Plastic is capable of being deformed continuously and permanently in any direction without rupture, making it almost impossible for the plastic to disintegrate. Our population uses plastic for almost everything, once these objects are used they are left in the street, beaches, and other places, natural sources then carry the objects into the oceans. There, the plastic becomes stuck in currents, where it takes years to disintegrate. The only people benefiting from this are companies who produced the plastic. The problem is this plastic is harming marine life. Some simple solutions to this include using reusable water bottles instead of plastic water

It has become a habit for people to be throwing away containers and or plastic bottles , many people like Sarah don’t seem to notice that throwing away different kinds of plastic when you think it’s just trash or just throwing it away in the wrong trash can. Americans today tend to believe that throwing away plastic idem’s can affect many people and or even animals without no shelter .

Found on “34 Facts about Pollution”, the text says 14 billion pounds of garbage are dumped into the ocean every year and most of it is plastic. It makes you wonder why people do it? To act cool or to act like a complete idiot? As a result for oblivious behavior, we won’t be able to drink anywhere without some kind of trash in our water. And we won’t even be able to shower ourselves with out some plastic coming out from the faucet.

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.

This also explains why only 23% of plastic bottles are recycled each year, and that out of the 50 billion plastic bottles made 38 billion water bottles are either dissipated or thrown on the ground for others to pick up and throw away

Let's say you woke up this morning and had your breakfast of yogurt, in a plastic cup, and a breakfast bar, in a plastic wrapper. Then you throw the items away in the trashcan. After that, you decide to maybe tidy up your room and throw away some junk mail and other papers you longer need since you like for your room to be neat and tidy. This may have taken a max time of half an hour but this is enough time for over 850,000 trees to be cut in the world and 1500 tons of plastic to be thrown away in a landfill in the U.S. Unfortunately it will take over 50 years for a new tree to grow and up to 700 years for a single plastic bottle to decompose in a landfill. What is the solution, you may ask. Well, it is simple:

Each year there is an increase in demands for plastic bags, and therefore more are shipped, creating further environmental pollution concerns. This increase in demand has lead to the phenomenal upsurge in the use and misuse of plastic bags globally, both in developed and developing countries. Statistics show that 4 to 5 trillion plastic bags are produced per annum, whereby North America and Western Europe account for nearly 80% (Geographical, 2005; Reusable Bags, 2005). Cheeseman (2007) states that approximately “380 billion plastic shopping bags are used in the United States annually”; in turn, only 0.6% of this is recycled.

Plastic bag waste has become one of the serious problems that have threatened the health of natural resources, ecosystem, biodiversity, animals, human life and environment. We can see tens and thousands of people are throwing and using plastic bags every day. According to Oxford Dictionaries (2014) they define plastic bags as “A synthetic material made from a wide range of organic polymers such as polyethylene, PVC, nylon, etc., that can be molded into shape while soft, and then set into a rigid or slightly elastic form”. According to Facts and Myths report of 2014 notes that every year over one trillion plastic bags are consume and used worldwide. China consumes almost 3 billion plastic bags yearly and in every minute around 0ne million of plastic bags are consumed. The number of plastic user is increasing every year due to its extraordinary strength and it’s versatile for the consumers. Plastic bags can be classified into two categories that are biodegradable and degradable. Biodegradable are those plastic bag that are made from plant-based material such as corn, wheat and etc… and they will biodegrade within six month if they are composted where as degradable plastic bag are made

Human’s dependence on plastic bags have grown greatly in just the past couple of years. In 2013, 8.5 million tons of plastic bags were used and not properly recycled resulting in well over 8 million tons of plastic bag waste. This amount of plastic bags used was expected to grow 10% within the 5 years following 2013 which would result in 9.35 million tons of plastic bag usage and waste (Usage of Plastic Bags and Health Hazards 1). The lack of recycling centers and people willing to recycle them causes only 8% of all the plastic bags being discarded to be successfully recycled. In fact, 4.4 pounds of plastic bags are not recycled each day, meaning they either make it into a land