Close your eyes, imagine yourself standing on the golden crunchy sand and the crisp waves splashing on the shore. Suddenly, you look around your feet. You spot soda/water bottles, plastic grocery bags, product packaging, straws, coffee cups, and single-use plastic bags. Horrifying as it is, you spot the blood of a dead fish on your feet and the fish was caught in the single use plastic you had thrown. How would you feel?
Single use plastic (SUP) is a derivative of fossil fuels and certain chemicals that causes a lot of pollution. It is then used ONLY ONCE and inconsiderately thrown away. Then it gets sucked in by the environment causing huge chaos and massive pollution. Is there still a doubt why SUP must be banned?
Plastic to Microplastic
The whole world has seen dominance in the use of SUP in the past 3 decades. In fact, since the 1950s, 8.3 billion metric tons of plastics have been produced, and half of that in the past 15 years alone. As proper disposal and treatment of SUP is still in experimentation phases, a lot of it gets dumped in landfills and an outrageous amount gets carried to the water bodies. This leads to it becoming microplastics which are then eaten by marine. More than 100 aquatic species have been found to have microplastics in them. The plastic floating in oceans can even pierce organs or block the digestive tract, causing death amongst them. Currently, marine litter is 60 to 80 percent plastic! This means that many sea creatures are swallowing sea water instilled with toxic chemicals from the microplastics.
Pollution
Single-use plastics don’t seem harmful at first but if you dig deeper you will come to know that they emit greenhouse gases in our environment. The process of extracting single use plastic from fossil fuels and other chemical substances can create carbon dioxide. This traps the heat and causes earth’s temperatures to rise. The same thing happens when they create things from single use plastics in factories. Once again a huge amount of waste enters the air and water polluting our environment. I am sure you are warming up to the idea that SUP MUST be banned.
Effect on Human Life
With the threat that comes with SUPs, they can even put an end to humans and wipe us all out. That is why they should be banned. Surprisingly, we eat, drink and breathe microplastics every day. If microplastics containing pathogens start entering our body, they may increase the risk of several infections. They can kill us by causing serious health problems such as cancers, neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD and autism and several others! To top it all, microplastics have even been discovered in human blood. What more are we waiting for?
With all these facts, I strongly advocate that Single Use Plastics should be banned right away. They contribute to climate change, hurt marine life, kill terrestrial wildlife, pollute the oceans, create microplastics, harm our bodies and what not! So, why hesitate? Let’s take action before it is too late and ban SUPs so that they are never seen again.
Writer : Amreen Mohal
Grade : 7 (Year 2022)
Place : Sydney, Australia
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