Got Plastic?

Maddie Sturm
Imagine yourself strolling through the average supermarket, and you will find literally hundreds (if not
thousands) of items to make your life easier. Individually wrapped snack cakes, plastic baggies to store
sandwiches for lunch, styrofoam cups, soda bottles varied in every size imaginable, disposable razors,
diapers, and shampoo bottles. Unless specifically requested, even the bags we use to carry home our
goods are often plastic. We live in a world of plastic.
Since the average American produces over 4lbs of trash a day, citizens should be required to recycle.
Recycling is the best option to take care of used, unwanted plastic.
There are five main types of plastic, Although Polyethylene is what normally makes up plastic bags,
bottles, and most other plastic packaging. Polyethylene is a man-made product which is photodegradable
like all plastics. This means it will break down into smaller microscopic pieces over time, but wont
completely break down into something that isn't toxic. It will just be smaller pieces of the same plastic.
Americans represent 5% of the worlds population, but generate 30% of the worlds garbage. Less than
2% of the total waste stream in the United States is recycled. Of the garbage Americans throw out, half
could be recycled.
According to National Geographic While many different types of trash enter the ocean, plastics make up
the majority of marine debris for two reasons. First, plastics durability, low cost, and malleability mean
that its being used in more and more consumer and industrial products. Second, plastic goods do not
biodegrade but instead break down into smaller pieces. Agreeing with National Geographic, it does
make sense why most counties are dumping trash in the ocean, so it will break down quicker rather than
in a landfill.
Dumping plastic in the sea affects the quality of the water and the marine life immensely. Not only do the
toxins in plastic effect the ocean, but the plastic acts like a sponge, soaking up other toxins from other
sources before entering the ocean. As these chemicals are ingested by animals in the ocean, it isn't good
for humans. Although it's hard to find the amount of animals affected by trash but some scientists had
estimated up to 100,000.
Over consumption is the main reason for too much waste, Our country has started purchasing food items
from other counties. The packaging needed for these shipments of products is a demand in the 21st
century. Now the amount of small local farms is minuscule compared to the immensely sized farms that
use GMOs scattered across the world. If the United States has a demand for products across the world,
that would mean there would need to be some kind of packing to transport these items. So that does lead
to more single use trash ending up in landfills, oceans, and beaches.
The United States discards about 33.6 million tons of plastic a year, but only 6.5% of that plastic is
recycled and 7.7% of the plastic is combusted for waste-to-energy facilities. Unfortunately the rest of the
plastic is dumped ends up in a landfill or the ocean. Over hundreds of years the plastic waste will release
pollutants into the soil and ground, which will potentially affect any living organism who uses the water
or land for a resource.

Plastics are used to manufacture an incredible number of products we use every day. The only way to
keep up with this production of plastic is to recycle. Recycling is the best thing to do with plastic.
The benefits of recycling: it Reduces the amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators, it conserves
natural resources such as timber, water, and minerals, it prevents pollution by reducing the need to collect
new raw materials, it saves energy, recycling reduces greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global
climate change.

Citations

Cho, Renee. "What Happens to All That Plastic?" State of Planet. Columbia University, 21 Jan. 2012.
Web. 10 Mar. 2016.
Winter, Lisa. "For Ocean Animals, 'Death By Plastic' Could Be Occurring More Frequently." IFLScience.
08 Nov. 2013. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.
"Recycling Facts." Recycle Across America. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
"Great Pacific Garbage Patch." National Geographic Education. National Geographic, 19 Sept. 2014.
Web. 12 Feb. 2016.
OR&R's Marine Debris Program." OR&R's Marine Debris Program. Web. 17 Feb. 2016.
Burford, Melanie, and Greg Moyer. "Living City. Where Does Our Trash Go?"The New York Times. The
New York Times, 2014. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.
"Why Recycle?" High-Tech Trash. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.