Secrets of Ordinary Plastic

In Your Ordinary Plastic, we have introduced the magnificent existence of plastic and the importance of it in our daily life. However, in all greatness there are sensitive blind spots behind the curtain. These are the 7 factors of world destruction from plastic.

Natural Resource Scarcity

Plastic is based on fossil fuel natural gas and crude oil, which is responsible for 4% of world’s extraction. 80% of world energy is sourced from fossil fuels. Unfortunately, fossil fuels are non-renewable resource and in this pace of extraction we will end up using up all the reserves by 2052.

Air and Water Pollution

When burning fossil fuels to make our everyday water bottles and plastics bags, enormous amount of greenhouse gas emission is poured out the atmosphere and end up invading the ozone layer. Once sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides react in the atmosphere, structured form of acidic rain, snow, fog, and dust are created, gradually damaging away the structure of plants and wildlife.

Uncontrollable Waste

As mentioned in Your Ordinary Plastic, the life span of plastic is between 20 to 500 years. Imagine how many people will responsibly dispose their garbage in a correct manner. Unfortunately, irresponsible littering encouraged plastic waste going to rivers, lakes, and the ocean. In the cities, plastic waste would clog water ways and result in manmade flooding. Furthermore, even if all plastic were responsibly sorted, 80% of all plastic is unable to be recycled and end up in the land field, multiplying and remaining faster than any form of waste.

Extinction on Species

Plastic is found everywhere covering 40% of our world’s ocean surface. At this rate of plastic usage, it will outweigh all the fish in the ocean by 2050. The biggest endangered sea animals are seals and sea turtles. However, over 700 species eat and/or get caught in plastic waste. It is estimated that 15 to 51 trillion pieces of plastic are wonder around the world floating on oceans and seas.

Health

99% of all plastic is coming from fossil fuels. When extracting oil and gas, over 170 fracking chemicals effect human health including cancer, neurological, reproductive, and developmental toxicity, impairment of the immune system. The toxic chemicals give direct impact on skin, eyes, other sensory organs, the respiratory, nervous, and gastrointestinal systems, liver, and brain.

Global Warming

As fossil fuels source plastic production, 12.5 – 1.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases are emitted during extraction. Forest lands have been removed. 1. 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide have been releasing to the atmosphere for oil extraction and pipeline construction. Disposal of plastic use have encouraged over 15 % of methane emission in landfills.

Linear System

The steps of extracting fossil fuel, producing plastic, transporting plastic, consuming/using plastic, and disposing is the traditional way of everyday single-use plastic linear system. Plastic just does not disappear and must go somewhere. If average plastic life span is 450 years and plastic became mainstream in the last century, where did it all go?

Imagine if such greatness lives among us for 500 years and new ones are produced 380 million tons each year. This is a serious gap we must close or else we will end up swimming over plastic we created. This is a very big issue and there must be an alternative solution for such disaster. To find out the opportunities we have continue reading our Circular System Ecofriendly Solutions.