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I recently
completed a speech for my Toastmasters club where I had to
research a topic. I chose to look at the problem with
plastic based on a documentary that I had recently seen.
Below is the essence of that speech.
So what exactly is the problem with
plastic? It is versatile, light and cheap to produce.
Just think of the cost of McDonalds Happy Meals if all the
toys were made of wood. Think of all the things you
touched this morning that contained plastic. You may
have watched the morning news on your TV, brushed your teeth
with a plastic toothbrush, drunk out of a plastic water
bottle, driven in your car with plastic components, got a
plastic takeaway coffee mug, written with a plastic pen, and
sat on a plastic chair.
So what is the problem with plastic?
We will look at two areas - the cost of production and the
cost of disposal, and then look at what you can do.
Cost of Production
Fill a plastic water bottle with 1/4
oil. That is how much oil it takes to produce that one
water bottle. It takes approximately 1.5 million
barrels of oil annually to produces plastic water bottles
for America alone. Oil is a limited resource. It
will get more expensive, and it will run out.
Cost of Disposal
Have you been out on the water on the
harbour or visited the beach lately? How much plastic
rubbish did you see. The last time I was out I was
amazed at the amount of rubbish floating. I even saw a
toothbrush.
There is a phenomenon called the North
Pacific Gyre. This runs off the coast of China all the
way to a few hundred miles from the coast of California.
It is 1 1/2 times the size of the United States of America
and covers 5 million square miles. What is so special
about this area? It contains 3.5 million tons of junk,
most of which is plastic.
The problem with plastic is that it
doesn't biodegrade - it just breaks down into smaller and
smaller pieces. There are many issues with this:
-
sea
turtles mistake plastic bags for jelly fish and die
after eating them
-
birds
and fish eat the bits of plastic, resulting in plastic
entering the food chain
-
the
beads of plastic become grains of 'sand' on our beaches
-
shellfish grow on the floating debris, again resulting
in plastic entering the food chain
-
on
land plastic bags can block drains and cause floods
-
tons
of plastic fill up our land fills which can leach
carcinogens into the soil
-
plastic releases toxic gasses if burned
-
it
takes between 20-1000 years to break down simple plastic
bags, and much longer for more durable plastics.
So what is
the scale of this problem? To give you an idea, global
production of plastic is approximately 100 million tonnes
per year. That equates to 200 million tonnes of oil,
or 4% of the worlds annual oil production. China alone
has a 3 billion a day plastic bag habit. So where does
all this plastic go when we have become a throw away
disposable economy?
What
can you do?
We have
several options when it comes to tackling our plastic
dependency.
-
Pre-cycle - if you have a choice, choose products
and packaging that has a 1 or 2 in the recycling
triangle as this is easier to recycle, and choose
products with the least amount of packaging.
-
Re-use and re-purpose - turn shopping bags into bin
liners or carry bags, and take reusable mugs and lunch
boxes instead of using a daily throw away.
-
Recycle - always recycle, both at home and at work.
-
Refuse - turn down plastic bags from the shops if
you don't need one. Better still, take re-usable
shopping bags with you.
-
Never
let unwanted plastic get into the environment - it is
too precious.
Conclusion
The true
cost of production must be considered when looking at the
cost/benefits of using plastic in terms of the amount of oil
used to produce it. The inability to dispose of
plastic places a huge cost on our environment, especially
when disposed of negligently. While we will remain
dependant on plastic for many years to come, there are
things we can do to reduce this dependency and the cost to
environment by pre-cycling, re-using and re-purposing,
recycling and refusing to use plastic.
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