Plastic and Its Harmful Effects: A Major Environmental Concern

Normally, we use shopper bags for packing something we buy, like foodstuff or cloths etc. It is a cheap way and readily available everywhere. And once we get home, we throw them in the litter outside, again without any irritation. But, this cheap way of using plastic bags comes down with such a high price in the form of plastic and Its harmful effects that we have to think twice before using it.

Plastic and Its Harmful effects: An Environmental Terrorist

Plastic waste that start out as fossil fuels end up into deadly waste in landfills and oceans, posing a serious danger to humans and animals. Reportedly about 100,000 animals are annually killed by plastic and its harmful effects, when they ingest them mistakenly for food, and cannot be digested properly and ultimately accumulate in their stomachs to lead to their deaths. Even worse, the ingested plastics remain intact after the dead animal decomposition, and another animal may ingest it such as:

• Birds often mistake shredded plastic bags for food. The hungry sea turtles mistakenly take it for jellyfish. Fish eat thousands of tons of plastic a year, transferring it up the food chain to bigger fish and marine mammals. 

• The harmful effects of plastic pollution don’t spare any animal or plant in the food chain, ranging from large terrestrial animals to microscopic plankton. The effect may be direct when they ingest plastic toxins or get tangled and drown in it or indirect when they lack food to eat. 

• People consume microplastics through food and in the air. Studies show that the meals eaten or heated in plastic bags result in the development of ulcers, asthma, obesity, and certain cancers. This is attributed to the fact that the chemicals, including Bisphenol-A (BPA), in the plastic bags will mix with the meal when heated. BPA helps to make plastic more flexible and durable. 

• The high doses of BPA have the potential to undermine reproductive development and functions. people who have excessive amounts of BPA in their system are more prone to various serious health issues, such as diabetes, liver toxicity, and heart disease. This chemical can also have detrimental effects on brain. 

• Simons (2005) suggests that, owing to the unregulated accumulation of carcinogenic compounds, the use of plastic bags may allow inroads into cancerous diseases. Moreover, it disrupts the natural food chain, and result in the pollution of groundwater to lead to waterborne diseases.

Major Environmental Concern of plastic and Its harmful effects: Non-biodegradable

Plastic bags can reportedly take up to 2000 years to completely decompose. It means, we will never live to see its decomposition and our acts will contribute to the plastic and its harmful effects even after our deaths. Still we dump it indiscriminately into landfills everywhere, especially in the litter system of urban areas, where solid wastes have become a daily itemized. 

Landscape Disfigurement:

Reportedly, the world uses 5 trillion plastic bags a year. According to EPA, nearly 93 billion plastic bags are not recycled each year. The omnipresence of plastic and Its harmful effects are a major source of land-based litter and marine debris. They occupy tons of hectares of land and emit dangerous methane and carbon dioxide gases as well as highly toxic leachates from the landfills during their decomposition, and badly affect the environment, resulting in animal choking, pollution, blockage of channels, rivers and streams, and landscape disfigurement.

Dilapidation of Atmosphere and Agricultural Land by plastic and Its harmful effects:

This growing global plastic pollution epidemic is an increasing source of contaminant, either introduced during processing or absorbed from atmosphere. Compounds leaching from plastic bags has been found to be responsible for increasing levels of reported toxicity.  

They pose a threat not only to marine life, but are accountable for dilapidation of the atmosphere and agricultural land. The toxic substances are released into the soil when they perish under the sunlight, and into the air, if they are burnt. The substances cause ambient air pollution. 

Plastic ashes and crops:

Farmers often burn plastic bags in wastes in their fields or in dumping sites and then mix it with soil. Although plastics have become an integral component in agricultural production, their widespread use leads to accumulation of large quantities in soils. Soil contamination is dependent on the combustion of material and total amount.  Rational use and reduction, collection, reuse, and innovative recycling are key measures to curb plastic pollution from agriculture. Otherwise, plastic bags disadvantages can be seen in the excessive use of plastic ashes, which can damage the crops.

Blockage Drainage Systems:

Massive accumulations of plastic bags cause drainage system clogging, particularly in the developing countries. A good example of the negative environmental effects of plastic shopping bags can be witnessed through the floods in the developing countries. There are extensive blockage of drainage systems, especially during monsoon rains every year, which can partly be attributed to plastic shopping bags.

Economic Impact of plastic and Its harmful effects:

Studies have found that by 2050, the oceans will have more waste plastics than fish. A 2016 Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s report points out that over 8 m tonnes of plastics find its way into the ocean. This is equivalent to throwing the content of one garbage truck into the sea every minute. They are the main cause of the great pacific garbage patch. Plastic and its harmful effects poses challenges to marine and land environments, hindering economic development: 

• The trapped plastic bags along coastlines produce detrimental effects on tourism, linked to lower tourism earnings. The trapped shoreline plastic negatively affect shipping infrastructure, energy production, fishing, and aquaculture (Sivan, 2011). 

• Besides, the production of plastic takes 60-100 million barrels of oil from the world’s petroleum reserves. So, plastic and Its harmful effects contributes significantly to the depletion of this valuable resource, making the prices of petroleum products to rise every passing day. Similarly, a lot of water is used in the manufacture of plastic bags. Reportedly, it will need about 22 gallons of water to produce one pound of plastic.

How to stave off the crisis of plastic and Its harmful effects:

In order to reduce toxicity, harmful plastic additives must be replaced with safer alternatives. If full substitution of plastics is not possible without increasing the overall environmental footprint and jeopardizing food security, alternatives should be provided with smaller environmental impacts and endorsed within a socio-economic framework. Better monitoring and reporting, technical innovation, education and training, social and economic incentives are imperative to promote more sustainable use of plastics.

Eco-Friendly Materials:

We should try to modify the everyday habits of people by suggesting the eco-friendly materials as an alternative. The Government should also adopt legislation to make plastic bags less attractive and restrict its manufacture. 

Volunteer Programs:

Volunteer programs should be launched, such as neighborhood clean-up efforts, voluntarily recycling household waste, avoiding littering and illegal dumping of plastic shopping bags by its properly disposal. Education is a critical tool for behavioral improvement about environmental and health expense of using plastic bags.