Plastic, for its convenience and cheap, we can find any type of plastics at almost everywhere. Many industries and businesses choose plastic for packaging and any other benefit. The production of plastic still increasing until today. This is ironic given the damages that it can cause to our environment. I will talk more about that later. 

A Brief History of Plastic

The first production of plastic started in 1907. The research of plastic since then was still ongoing.  Until around world war II (in the 1940s and 1950s) the mass production started and the figure increased by 300%. People began to aware of plastic pollution not from 10 or 20 years ago, in fact, the first observation was conducted in the 1960an. Although it is been 113 years since the first production of plastic, we may still find those plastics, or at least it’s tiny particles, at somewhere because of plastic needs 400-500 years to decompose. 

There are a lot of problems that can cause by plastic, but I just want to talk about some of then on this blog. 

1. Killing Animals

All plastic we dump end up in three places: landfill, ocean, or recycled. Around 28,6 million tons of plastic received by landfills in 2017 and expected around 150 million metric tons circulated through our ocean. Some of the plastics break down quickly into tiny particles, and those tiny particles can sometimes easily mistaken by animals for prey. 1 million seabirds already died because of this issue. If we look at the beginning, in 1960, fewer than 5% of seabirds ingested plastic, the growth really socking tough, only 20 years after the figure escalated dramatically by 80%. If this problem persists, by 2050, an estimated 99% of seabird species will be ingesting plastic. 

The way of seabird dying is different from one and another depends on the type of plastic. If the plastic is sharp it could kill seabird quickly, and if it’s not, the seabird will starve to death as a result of feel full but not receive any nutrients. Some of the seabirds may dye as the effect of chemicals that coat plastic. Seabird is not the only animal that is affected, other animals such as fish, sea turtles, and other marine animals are also facing the same problems. 

2. Accelerate Climate Change

If the plastic pollution on the ocean brings lots of damages to animals, why we do not just dump into landfills and or burn it? First, that is not easy, and second, that also brings another environmental impact that I want to talk about. Before we jump into plastic waste, let’s start from the beginning. Over 99% of plastic is made from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels. And as we know, fossil fuels produce a lot of carbon dioxide when burned and it leads to climate change. The process of creating plastic itself emits 12.5 to 13.5 million tons of carbon dioxide per year and not to mention the area in which to develop plastic must be cleared. 19.2 acres have been cleared for this matter and this of course increasing carbon emission. In the United State, 1.6 million billion metric tons of carbon dioxide are released to the atmosphere as a result of clearing. 

We often found the incineration is an effort to stamp out plastic waste. That actually doesn’t solve the problem because incineration emits CO2. Emission from plastic incineration in 2015 were 5.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and expected to be increased to 49 million metric tons by 2030 and 91 metric tons by 2050.

Now the only option that we have is recycling. I agree, and many industries should make new plastic from the recycling process. Unfortunately, recycling is high cost with low commercial value.

I will talk more about the numbers of carbon dioxide and what damage relating to each grade of the number.

Plastic is like every where in our daily life. And we use it every day, it’s cheap in can be useful in any need. We might use plastic for carrying thing, or maybe our cloth is made of recyclable plastic, or perhaps the smartphone case that we use is also made from it. The point is, plastic has been very useful in our daily basis.

From all we know, plastic is good, but why we should be wiser?. Alright, let’s break it down from the beginning. Plastic is made of fossil fuel. What is fossil fuel? it’s basically fuel formed by natural process. There is many kind of it. And transforming fossil fuel into plastic consuming a lot of energy. And it’s danger, we might run out of energy if there is a bunch of industry burning fossil fuel out of control. And it’s also produces large quantities of carbon dioxide when burning it,

Plastic start produced in 1950, and now there are about 4,9 billion tonnes plastic waste, it’s all not recycled. Most of our plastic end up in landfill or ocean. Not so many of them are recycled. Many industry choose to create new plastic instead of recycle waste plastic into another plastic. And it’s because of the cost.

to be continue…

Today I really want to start writing something. Something that my be could be useful. I don’t really expect that much, I just want to practice my english while writing. I do start a lot of things about english, yet I rarely practicing it. My be I’ll make a lot of mistake in this learning journey, but yea.. every big people start from fail. So might be some day, when I read my writing, I’ll be laughing knowing how bad I was in the past.

TOEFL or IELTS both has writing test in part of it’s question. So I though it would be useful if I start often writing. I still collecting some ideas about what should I write. One that is obvious, I don’t have any particular theme in my writing. I’ll just write what the f*k I want.

Wow I would say, I just learn so much from this writing. Some of the words that I write turns out less correct. Fortunately, this amazing WordPress editor, has it’s own build incorrect word, so that I can look for the correct one on Google Search. Yeah, thanks both for WordPress and Google Search, you made my life a lot easier.

My be I will not say too much, oups I mean write. Because this time, I have no idea to talk about, every topics thats occur in my mind, seem to be boring. I’ll looking for the interesting topic to talk about.