What is a common feature between laptop computer bags, hair loss products, skin care treatment? The common feature is plastic. Plastic is extracted out of petroleum. Petroleum is extracted from the earth and taken to a refinery. The crude oil is refined into gasoline, LPG, ethane, butane, propane, naphthalene, tar, grease and other products.
Then propylene and ethylene are made by cracking ethane and propane at 3000 degrees centigrade. Propylene and ethylene are mixed with a catalyst to make fluff which is a powder like substance which looks like detergent. Other additives are put into the fluff and blended consistently. The polymer thus formed is then molten by feeding into an extruder.
This melted plastic is cooled while making pellets in a pelletizer. These pellets are the plastic, which is shipped to the customers. The customers then mould the plastic through various processes of moulding by injection, blowing and extrusion. Plastic is considered as the greatest innovation of the 20th century and is used in all aspects of life.
As plastic is used because it is so flexible, mouldable into any desired shapes like packets and bottles, as it does not rot, rust or break and is light it is reduces transportation cost. Plastic is used because it is it is believed that it saves an ecosystem from destruction, sand comes from the intertidal zones of the beaches which are rich in its flora and fauna.
Efforts are being made to even make televisions of plastic which would fold up like a screen from plastic. In spite of all the benefits of plastic why is its use opposed?This is because it is one major toxic pollutant besides sewage and industrial wastes. It is non-biodegradable and toxic; it remains in the environment for more than 700 years.
There is no safe way to dispose plastic and it causes damage and danger to the environment from its production to disposal. Hence the only way to deal with it is to decrease our dependence on it, reduce production and phase it out.
Right from its production to its disposal plastic is a threat to the environment and there is no safe way to deal with it. At present the only way to deal with this menace is to decrease its production and ban it. The other way is to engineer a bacterium which feeds on plastic like the once we use in dissolving oil-slicks. Hopefully these are reasons enough to avoid plastics?
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