Plastic is one of the most beneficial human inventions. Due to its properties, people can utilize this material in any industry. Nowadays, almost any natural material can be replaced by lighter, cheaper, and more durable plastic. However, there is no efficient way of recycling it globally, so most plastic wastes cause severe water, and land pollution destroys whole ecosystems.
Components
The material people conventionally call “plastics” consists of various chemical elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, and sulfur (American Chemistry Council, n.d.). Humans produce it by modifying natural products or synthesizing chemicals extracted from oil, coal, or natural gas. Plastics bases on a carbon atom that bonds to other particles, mainly building long chemical chains creating thermoplastic.
Degradability
Plastic is one of the most useful, yet environmentally harmful materials because it is highly resistant to the process of environmental degradation. People primarily use it in the food industry, so plastic does not quickly decay when water, light, or microbe enzymes affect it. Thus, it can be degraded by incinerating or applying other chemicals that negatively impact the environment, releasing a range of hazardous substances into the atmosphere. Otherwise, some plastic take around 500-1000 years to degrade depending on its structure (Pelacase, 2020).
Recycling and Reusing
Only 18% of plastic waste is recycled, 28% is burnt, the rest is landfilled or remains in nature that crucially harms the environment (Chamas et al., 2020). There are also recycling techniques that allow melting and utilizing it in making new products, but they do not solve global plastic pollution. Since plastic poses a threat to the world’s ecology, scientists explore alternative methods of decomposing, such as creating special enzymes able to degrade it. Although it is a solid material, only a part of plastic products is reusable, while some of them negatively affect people’s health when utilized repeatedly.
American Chemistry Council. (n.d.). How plastics are made. Retrieved from https://plastics.americanchemistry.com/How-Plastics-Are-Made/#:~:text=The%20term%20%E2%80%9Cplastics%E2%80%9D%20includes%20materials,thousands%20of%20atoms%20bound%20together.
Chamas, A. et al. (2020, February 3). Degradation rates of plastics in the environment. Retrieved from https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.9b06635
Pelacase. (2020) How long does it take for plastic to degrade? Retrieved from: https://pelacase.com/blogs/news/does-plastic-degrade
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