Reduce Plastic Waste: The general information

            

Plastic has been a material that has been used for quite a long time now. It's used in almost every single product you use in your daily life: shampoo bottles, tape, buckets, frisbees-you name it! However, plastic has many side effects on the environment as well as humans. Some of them are drastic and have a long-term effect while others are small effects with a short-term effect. Either way, plastic is harming our planet and unless we do something about it, the process will continue until it reaches a stage of horrendous events and Earth won't be your "home, sweet, home" anymore. 

Image from The Guardian

"Plastic is polluting every corner of the planet"(greenpeace.org). They are even found in the most remote places! It's almost like everywhere you go, you see someone using plastic, you use plastic, or see plastic on the ground. Two-thirds of the plastic waste that is in the ocean lands on the seafloor creating a wasteland underneath the waves. All of this plastic eventually breaks down into smaller pieces called "microplastics". These are even more harmful to the ecosystem as they are invisible to a natural eye(No scientific inventions or any microscopes used in order to see). 

        What happens if we don't reduce plastic waste anyways? Even that small plastic toothbrush you throw into the dustbin can make an animal suffer. Unlike some materials like cardboard, plastic is not biodegradable and can stay for a very long period of time. The span of a plastic product's life depends on what the product is. Usually, they can stay up to 1000 years! The plastic bottle you might have thrown last night after having takeout or dinner outside takes 450 years to decompose! To know more about the effect that plastic pollution has on biodiversity, check out my post "Impact of plastic waste on the natural world". 

What happens if we do reduce plastic waste? One person reducing plastic waste only has a small effect. Those small actions count but to actually have a global impact that will help the biodiversity thrive, everyone needs to be part of this movement. Reducing plastic waste can have a huge impact on the biodiversity of the Earth-especially marine biodiversity. It can also help with public health around the globe. Diseases and health issues like asthma, liver damage, and nerve/brain damage are all caused by plastic pollution. Reducing plastic waste results in decreasing plastic pollution which then leads to a healthy and sustainable life for all, especially the ones living in urban areas where they are more affected. 

Plastic does have a huge impact on our environment and health so unless we start taking action now, planet Earth won't be a place where life can thrive. What can you do? Well, there are plenty of simple actions you take in your daily life to reduce plastic waste. The first and foremost action to take though is to decrease the use of single-use plastic. Single-use plastic is designed to be used only once(you can realize that from the name) and will be thrown away after one use. 

Roz Savage once said, "It cannot be right to manufacture billions of objects used for a matter of minutes, and then are with us for centuries". Up to 50% of plastic waste is single use-used only for a few moments but thrown into the environment for a few hundred years. To more about what you can do check out my post "The change you can make". Start taking action from your side so that we all can live a sustainable and positive life! 
                                                                                Image of Roz Savage from world fellows

Have your say about my post in the comment section below!

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