We use plastic in some form every single day, There is hardly a day go by without using the plastic. Plastic is strong, cheap and most are designed to be used just once. But do we know how is it going to pollute our planet and affect lives ?
How much Plastic do we use ?
300 million ton of plastic is produces every year all around the worlds, and about 8 million ton ends up in ocean.
More than 500 billion plastic bags are used every year around the world more than a million every minute. The average life span of a plastic bag is about 15 minutes.
In U.S.A alone 500 million drinking straws are used every single day. Which means 20,833,333 every hour 347,222 every minute and 5,787 single second.
The great pacific garbage patch
The great pacific garbage patch is the biggest garbage dump on the planet. It is located at North pacific gyre. It is combination of two smaller gyre west pacific gyre located between Japan and Hawaii and east pacific gyre located between Hawaii and California. And Great pacific garbage patch is not alone there are 5 or 6 more ocean garbage patch.
Why Plastic waste is a big deal and why should we care about it ?
Plastic does not degrade very easily. Study shows plastic takes about 500 yeas to degrade and it does not bio-degrade instead it photo-degrade, which means these plastic waste in ocean when come in exposer to the sun they break down to smaller and smaller version of it original self. These smaller versions are called Nurdles or Mermaid Tears.
Nurdles not only contains the original chemical to make plastic but they also have capability to attract other pollutants in the ocean like oil slicks turning Nurdles in to toxic. Nurdles are eaten by the sea lives and ends up in our plates when move up in the food chain.
What can we do about it ?
The plastic waste we are generating now will still be there even numbers of generations down the line, I am sure that is not what we want to leave behind for our descendant.
Reduce the use of plastic where ever possible, why not use the paper bag instead of plastic bag.
Rethink before using a plastic product is there a alternative of that.
Refuse Say no to plastic.
Small changes can bring big difference.
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Cheers !!
It's unbelievable, the ignorance of humanity. This is a huge issue you discussing in your post and thank you for raising awareness!
Here in the UK, a few years ago, a new law was introduced, up until that point the plastic bags were given away for free, now it's a 5p charge. While 5p is nothing, thank god people are cheap and rather not buy bags....instead of buying bags, they complain, why should this cost money? Nothing angers me more than this, it's not about the freakin' 5p, it's about not killing mother nature!! Good news is, this new law greatly reduced the use of plastic bags and the cost of all bags purchased going into the environmental fund.
In Germany (and also noticed in some other Western European countries) the water is very cheap, the plastic bottle is more expensive than the water which comes with it. In every supermarket there is a recycle machine which instantly shrinks the bottles and gives back the cost of the bottle, it's a shame this is not utilised in every country. (for ex. in the UK, people just throw away the bottles...)
People, especially leaders of the world (and I don't want to point with fingers) should finally wake up!!
Thanks for sharing :)
I am glad that you like it, I believe awareness is the way we can solve this problem. We don't pay much attention towards this but this problem is really huge and until we start bringing little changes to our lives and spreading the awareness this problem can not be solved. So start saying no to plastic wherever possible :)