The Plastic Planet |
The Plastic Planet |
How much plastic do you really use?Earth is slowly filling up with plastics. Oceans, landfills, the side of the road, wherever you go there is always a bottle or grocery bag laying around somewhere. We implemented recycling to help contain the amount of plastics entering the environment, reusing to help prolong the life of some items, and reducing by finding more alternatives that were eco-friendly or biodegradable.
We use plastic grocery bags when shopping, plastic utensils with carry-out food, plastic straws at restaurants, and most of all plastic packaging on many foods. Plastic packaging is the biggest use because it helps preserve foods. Think of how much you might use in one day and multiply it by about seven billion. Yeah, that's a lot of plastic waste.
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Sadly, plastic doesn't only harm our land and seas, but also the air we breathe. Throughout the entire production process, tons of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere into the ozone layer. This affects human health along with the climate. Adding excessive amounts of greenhouse gasses to the air causes rising temperatures we see with climate change. Although the earths temperature is only changing slightly every year, it won't be long until this will effect us drastically.
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These four items are the most commonly used plastic products by the everyday person. Each has its own costs and benefits for usage.
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GROCERY BAGSAlthough they are used in masses by grocery stores, they are not recyclable and sit in landfills for hundreds of years.
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FOOD PACKAGINGThis was created to help with the percentage of food waste, but in the end, it just created more problems than it was solving.
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STRAWSStraws are so small that many ties they slip by when being sorted in recycling plants, leading them to end up in the ocean harming marine animals.
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WATER BOTTLESAlthough the bottle is recyclable, the caps are not. Many people recycle them anyway but they just get sent to landfills.
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