Research on Plastic Pollution:
-It is estimated that 8 million tonnes of plastic enters the ocean from coastal communities every year.
-Plastic micro-beads are used as exfoliates in personal care products, such as facial scrubs and even toothpastes, which are inevitably flushed down the drain. (one of the most dangerous thing)
-Damage to marine life (A staggering 90% of seabirds are now thought to have ingested plastic).
-Plastic pollution costs us $1bn a year (fishing damage, ship collision with plastic).
Source: https://www.boatinternational.com/luxury-yacht-life/marine-life/things-you-need-to-know-about-plastic-pollution–30337/frame-3
-As plastics make their way up the food chain, they pose a substantial threat to humankind– affecting hormones, immune systems, and even causing diseases like cancer.
-Plastic doesn’t biodegrade – which means that once it’s here, it’s here forever. We’re drowning in decades of plastic pollution and, on top of that, newly made plastics are finding their way into circulation every day.
-Fossil fuels are used in the production of plastic, so every piece of plastic in the world is responsible for generating carbon emissions.
Source: https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/news/news-archive/2019/everything-you-need-to-know-about-plastic-pollution
Reflection on the Readings:
Sustainability
This chapter that we read for this book was focused on the concept on sustainability. Some notes that I took away from this chapter was the three epochs the author talked about and his thoughts on sustainability. The first epoch was governmental and federal command and control of re-mediating and preventing environmental damage. This epoch was mainly focused on the reform of laws or rules in order to prevent environmental damage whether it is the ocean, the air quality, or the human health in general. The first epoch is actually very important because it is concerning the health and ecosystem of the whole earth since humans were mostly responsible for the unnatural damages that has been made. The second epoch was achieving economic efficiency in environmental protections. Climate change has been one of the most top problem that has been occurring in the past decades and there have been a minority group of people trying to take a stance on it. However, for most people, they simply do not care or want to take actions because they feel like climate change isn’t really affecting them personally. Meanwhile industries that produce mass amount of CO2 emissions are still doing the same thing because it actually costs people more money to shut it down than to keep it running. Industries like plastic and packaging productions cannot find a better and cheaper way to produce what they have been producing. Therefore the second epoch is to achieve economic efficiency while protecting the environment. The third epoch is sustainability. The meaning of sustainability is the economic development activity that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. In order to achieve sustainability, it needs to have the values of the first two epochs combined so that it prevents environmental damage yet it achieves economic efficiency. One of the points the writer talked about and I agree upon was achieving maximum sustainable yield. An example of that is fishing. We have to make sure that the amount we fish is about the same rate fishes reproduce. Therefore achieving a sustainable yield and trying to reach the steady state.
Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic
This chapter of Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic was mostly about how PET plastic bottles are made to be wasted. PET plastic bottles are a major contributor to the growing environmental burden of plastics. They are a major contributor because most plastic bottles that we buy at the convenient stores or that we drink out of are made of PET plastic; therefore they are everywhere. The disposability is a shifting quality of the PET plastic. The qualities of disposing the PET plastic is constantly being requalified in different arrangements and economies.
In the beginning when plastic was first made, glass and aluminum packaging especially for drinks were still dominating the market share because the initial plastic material couldn’t handle the fizz and carbonated drinks. Later on, scientist at the DuPont lab were able to create a form of plastic that could hold carbonated drinks which is very strong in terms of durability yet it is a fraction of the weight of glass bottles. Hence, the creation of PET bottles came about. It completely changed the game of packaging and how consumers uses plastic. The “plastic explosion” in the 1950’s happened because so many industries are creating mass productions of plastic. But later on, plastic just became a material that is cheap and something that is always there because it is all over the world. As we know now, it takes decades and up to centuries for plastics to actually “degrade” and even then, they just degrade into smaller pieces for animals to eat up and polluting oceans and landfills with their chemical release. Therefore in order to really change the plastic pollution, the best way is to absolutely cut out plastic.