Sustainable Earth || Single use Plastic

Plastic is versatile and is very efficient to protect the product from external contaminants and elements. It is difficult to imagine a world without plastic, but the plastic waste is creating ecological nightmare. It can take about thousands of years to breakdown in our landfills. In today’s society, we produce nearly 300 million tons of plastic waste each year, and much of this waste continues to persist in the location they are left. Reducing wastage will reduce greenhouse gas emission, slowing down climate change.  Every year, hundreds of volunteers spend hours cleaning beaches, parks and other public places. Countries are trying to come up with sustainable plastic waste management.

Single use plastic and packaging are a big source of waste. Nowadays foods travel from distances up to thousands of miles to stock grocery stores shelves, in this process nutrients are lost and a lot of packaging is involved to preserve them. We as a community should buy locally sourced products that has none or biodegradable qualities for packaging. In the short-term, paper, glass, and metal can  be used as alternatives for plastic where feasible.

Plastic in our life is not limited to this. It is present in clothing, utensils, cellphone, PVC, safety gears, you name it and it will be part of it. Plastic pellets from many different products we use, enters in large quantities into natural environment. Governments need to fund research for successfully producing biodegradable plastic to use in all essential items. Experiments involving photodegradation should be conducted to get closer to our goal of reducing wastage of plastic into the ecosystem.We must check as to how we can reduce the use of plastic where feasible and sent less waste to landfill.

In 2022 International Plastic Bag Free Day is on July 3rd. It is Plastic Free July. Let us take pledge to reduce plastic waste.

My References

http://www.chemicalsafetyfacts.org/plastics/#:~:text=Plastics%20are%20used%20to%20make,homes%20and%20buildings%20energy%20efficient
https://www.plasticgarbageproject.org/en/plastic-life
https://www.prysmiangroup.com/en/insight/sustainability/how-to-reduce-plastic-use-in-daily-life