Impact of Plastic

Since its development last century, plastic has become a popular material used in a wide variety of ways. It is now used to make, or wrap around, many of the items we buy or use and although generally used only once, plastic bags last for centuries.

The problem comes when we no longer want these items and need to dispose of them, particularly the throwaway plastic material used in wrapping or packaging. During the manufacture of plastic bags deadly Benzene gas, a known cause of cancer enters the atmosphere. Plastic can take centuries to decompose. When burned, highly poisonous dioxin and hydrogen cyanide enters our soil and natural water supply.

Every year, around 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. 500,000,000,000. Five hundred followed by nine zeros. That's a lot of bags. So many that nearly one million bags are being used every minute and they're damaging our environment.

British shoppers annually use up to twenty billion plastic bags - that's 335 per person.  Only one in every 200 bags is recycled and an estimated 100,000 tonnes of bags, the same weight as 70,000 cars, are thrown away each year.

Not only do plastic bags pollute our environment and are responsible for the deaths of many millions of unsuspecting animals but the processes used to make and destroy them release benzene - a known carcinogen - into our community.

The cheapness means plastic gets discarded easily and its long life means it survives in the environment for long periods where it can do great harm. Because plastic does not decompose, and requires high energy ultra-violet light to break down, the amount of plastic waste in our oceans is steadily increasing. There are now over 46,000 pieces of plastic waste in every square mile of the world's oceans. Plastic bags are responsible for the death of many marine animals, particularly Turtles who tragically mistake the floating debris for Jellyfish, a staple of their diet.

Mike Dunning from the Environment agency commented,”If everyone in the UK stopped using plastic bags and switched to a reusable bag, we’d save 7.8 billion plastic bags - that’s enough plastic to tie around the earth 103 times.”

Science Minister Peter McGuaran compared the environmental damage from plastic bags to nuclear waste.

“Their use from the supermarket to the home lasts just minutes, but their existence lasts for centuries. Politicians acknowledge the problem but don’t match this rhetoric with action. Government needs to stop tinkering at the edges, acting in a piecemeal fashion, and get serious about abolishing their use.”

Agenda 21:

At the Earth Summit in 1992 (a United Nations Conference on World Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro ) over 100 governments, including the UK , adopted Agenda 21 - a global plan for sustained development.

It has since become the blueprint for many national and local plans to tackle environmental pollution and sustained eco-friendly agriculture and industrial development. Everyone has their part to play - so log on to the United Nations website @ www.un.org for more information.