Plastic is an amazing invention around the world, it is light, cheap, and convenient. Nowadays, it can be used in most areas in our daily life. However, sometimes it is not good for us. How many plastic products we use every year, how much we produce, how much we waste and how dangerous these will be in our daily life? For this essay, it will answer these questions and introduce another chemical to replace the kind of plastic we use nowadays.
What is Plastic
Plastic is a kind of polymer, which is a long chemical chain made by carbon atoms primarily. Leo Baekeland, who is the first inventor for plastic in 1907 in New York made plastic by Backlite (Wikipedia). After that, because plastic is cheap, strong, lightweight and impermeability, it has become an important part for our daily life. We use PET to made bottles, forks and other one-time using stuff, Bakelite for mechanical parts, PVC for plumbing electric gears and cases and Acrylic for making glass stronger. It seems like our world is full of plastic (Life Noggin, 2017).
How Many Plastic Products We Use
According “10 Facts About Plastic Pollution You Absolutely Need to Know”, written by Seneo Mwamba in 2018, the plastic we produced since the 1950s is about 8.3 billion tons around the world. Only in 2016, there was 335 million plastic be produced. Every minute, there is about a million plastic bottles will be sold and about 2 million plastic will be used. Furthermore, the average time of how long time is one plastic will be used, is only 12 minutes (Seneo Mwamba, 2018). And only for American, 500 million drinking straws will be used every day.
How Much We Waste and Where They Go
Because of the low cost for plastic, most plastic products are one-time using. It researched that about one third is used in packaging, even 42% of plastic was used in packaging in India (Wikipedia). Based on my research, there is about 15 plastic bags worth for every meter of coastline on earth, and for the rubbish on the beach, 73% of them are made by plastic ((Seneo Mwamba, 2018)). For this research, it shows clearly that most of plastic we waste. As the Global Environmental Organization’s survey, only 9% plastic will be recycled and return to our daily life, 12% of plastic will be burnt. However, this data just take 21% in total, most of them (79%) will just be thrown away (Life Noggin, 2017). For those plastic we waste, where they go? In “When the Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide” by Claire Le Guem, it illustrates that about 8 million tons plastic waste will flow into our ocean and it forecasts that in 2050, the data will be doubled (Claire Le Guem, 2018). And for others, some of them will be collected together and buried under the ground, some just “strolls” around the world.
