recent studies has shown that plastics are extremely hazardous to the environment on all grounds. suggest two points to justify the above statement.
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Explanation:
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Plastics have transformed everyday life; usage is increasing and annual production is likely to exceed 300 million tonnes by 2010. In this concluding paper to the Theme Issue on Plastics, the Environment and Human Health, we synthesize current understanding of the benefits and concerns surrounding the use of plastics and look to future priorities, challenges and opportunities. It is evident that plastics bring many societal benefits and offer future technological and medical advances. However, concerns about usage and disposal are diverse and include accumulation of waste in landfills and in natural habitats, physical problems for wildlife resulting from ingestion or entanglement in plastic, the leaching of chemicals from plastic products and the potential for plastics to transfer chemicals to wildlife and humans. However, perhaps the most important overriding concern, which is implicit throughout this volume, is that our current usage is not sustainable. Around 4 per cent of world oil production is used as a feedstock to make plastics and a similar amount is used as energy in the process. Yet over a third of current production is used to make items of packaging, which are then rapidly discarded. Given our declining reserves of fossil fuels, and finite capacity for disposal of waste to landfill, this linear use of hydrocarbons, via packaging and other short-lived applications of plastic, is simply not sustainable. There are solutions, including material reduction, design for end-of-life recyclability, increased recycling capacity, development of bio-based feedstocks, strategies to reduce littering, the application of green chemistry life-cycle analyses and revised risk assessment approaches. Such measures will be most effective through the combined actions of the public, industry, scientists and policymakers. There is some urgency, as the quantity of plastics produced in the first 10 years of the current century is likely to approach the quantity produced in the entire century that preceded.
Keywords: plastic, polymer, debris, endocrine disruption, phthalates, waste management
1. INTRODUCTION
Many of the current applications and the predicted benefits of plastic follow those outlined by Yarsley and Couzens in the 1940s. Their account of the benefits that plastics would bring to a person born nearly 70 years ago, at the beginning of this ‘plastic age’, was told with much optimism:
It is a world free from moth and rust and full of colour, a world largely built up of synthetic materials made from the most universally distributed substances, a world in which nations are more and more independent of localised naturalised resources, a world in which man, like a magician, makes what he wants for almost every need out of what is beneath and around him (Yarsley & Couzens 1945, p. 152).
The durability of plastics and their potential for diverse applications, including widespread use as disposable items, were anticipated, but the problems associated with waste management and plastic debris were not. In fact the predictions were ‘how much brighter and cleaner a world [it would be] than that which preceded this plastic age’ (Yarsley & Couzens 1945, p. 152).
This paper synthesizes current understanding of the benefits and concerns surrounding the use of plastics and looks to challenges, opportunities and priorities for the future. The content draws upon papers submitted to this Theme Issue on Plastics, the Environment and Human Health together with other sources. While selected citations are given to original sources of information, we primarily refer the reader to the discussion of a particular topic, and the associated references, in the Theme Issue papers. Here, we consider the subject from seven perspectives: plastics as materials; accumulation of plastic waste in the natural environment; effects of plastic debris in the environment and on wildlife; effects on humans; production, usage, disposal and waste management solutions; biopolymers, degradable and biodegradable polymer solutions; and policy measures
2. Burning plastics can lead to air pollution as harmful gases are emitted while being burnt