Plastics and the environment

• Plastics due to their advantages over other materials are widely used in our every day life. These are non-biodegradable i.e. cannot be degraded by microorganisms which creates problems in their disposal. Plastics get accumulated and cause damage to the environment.
• Burning of plastics produces poisonous gases causing air pollution.
• Reducing the usage of plastics and recycling plastic objects are two ways of countering the harmful effects associated with plastic disposal.

Threat to marine life due to plastic:

• Many plastic objects remain floating on the surface of waterways, the place where many food sources lie making them attractive to species of marine life.

• Over 1,000,000 seabirds and marine mammals die each year from plastic ingestion or entanglement.
• Dolphins eat pieces of plastic sheeting they mistake for jellyfish and other prey. Young ones can strangle on ingested plastic. Dolphins may also become entangled in recreational fishing line or plastic strapping, which can drown them, or wrap around and amputate their appendages.

Tortoise

Neck of Seal entangled in plastic

• Bottle caps and other plastic objects are visible inside the decomposed carcass of this Laysan albatross on Kure Atoll, which lies in a remote and virtually uninhabited region of the North Pacific. The bird probably mistook the plastics for food and ingested them.

• Platypus with cut around neck from plastic bag .

• Over 1 million sea birds and marine mammals die each year from plastic ingestion.

The four R’s:

• “Reduce, reuse, recycle, repair, make it over, make do, do without.  All of us have grandparents and great-grandparents that made it through the Great Depression, and this advice comes directly from them.
• Reduce: Waste prevention, or "source reduction," means consuming and throwing away less. Source reduction actually prevents the generation of waste in the first place, so it is the most preferred method of waste management and goes a long way toward protecting the environment.
• Reuse: Reusing items -- by repairing them, donating them to charity and community groups, or selling them -- also reduces waste. Reusing products, when possible, is even better than recycling because the item does not need to be reprocessed before it can be used again.
• Recycle: Recycling transforms materials that would otherwise become waste into valuable resources. In addition, it generates a host of environmental, financial, and social benefits. Materials like glass, metal, plastics, and paper are collected, separated and sent to facilities that can process them into new materials or products.
• Rebuy: In order to make recycling economically feasible, we must buy recycled products and packaging. When we buy recycled products, we create an economic incentive for recyclable materials to be collected, manufactured, and marketed as new products.
• Remember, you're not recycling unless you're buying recycled products.