Do you think that we all are dealing with plastics right now?
Do you know that some of your life is bonded with usage of plastics?
Plastic is everywhere, and it plays a vital role. It has also become a responsible facet of our life, and also of our economy. The mass usage of plastic was started in 1950s and it’s steadily growing. Today, more than 300 million tonnes of plastics getting produced annually. The popularity of plastics is not only due to its less production cost but also of its practical characteristics – lightweight, durable and flexibility, with the new add on solutions of many problems and comfort.
Tremendous consumption of plastics with improper waste management presents with numerous problems. A larger part of plastic wastes quickly ends up in garbage. Plastic is not biodegradable and improper disposing of plastics in the landfills results in climatic changes.
Most of the plastics are ethylene and propylene that are made from fossil fuels. Transportation and extraction of fossil fuels and manufacturing of the plastics creates billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases. These gases have far – ranging environmental and health effects. They also make drastic climatic changes by increasing the heat in the atmosphere that finally leads in global warming.
As it does, sunlight and heat cause the plastic to release more powerful greenhouse gases. Changes in the climatic behaviour make planet hotter, which leads plastics to break down into smaller particles (micro plastics) with finally increasing the rate of climate change.
Growing up in the community, we didn’t realize the effects of improper management of plastics in our daily lives. Plastics have become one of the essential components of products and packaging, so, along with the importance, one should be also aware of the above points.
Hence, plastics that doesn’t get recycled should be maintained properly. Low value plastics are tended to be mixed plastics, and which are nearly impossible to recycle. Plastics that don’t get recycled, ends in landfills results in hazardous to the environment with climate change.
The more plastics we manufacture, the more consumption of fossil fuels and the more climatic changes.
Recycling creates a circular economy for the waste generated. Recycling is not only the solution to get rid of plastic pollution or climatic changes, there are more other progressive methods involved in this. Plastic pollution is a way of dealing with all varieties of plastic wastes. That can all be solved in different ways, and hence collectively called as plastic waste management. To be precise, by recycling just 1 ton of MLP plastic waste types and diverting them from their end-of-life fate, we prevent approximately 1.46 tonnes of CO2-eq emissions from entering the atmosphere- which is equal to about 16 tree seedlings grown for 10 years.
The only way to deal with all these aspects is to combine