"Plastic Menace"

“Plastic Menace”

                                                           Stephen N.M

Plastics… have we entered the climax of plastics age? ….how often do you buy or use plastic products or materials? How often do you come across plastic wastes along the streets, gardens, homes, playgrounds, waterways, culverts? I bet on regular basis.Today, Plastic is part of us. We use plastics in almost all aspects of our lives. Actually, plastic defines the modern phase of market products. But what is plastic anyway? A simple scientific definition of plastic would be; any synthetic or semi-synthetic material that can be remolded to form different objects.

Despite the fact that plastic is not a necessity, it’s one of the most sort element today as man seek to make his life more comfortable and enjoyable. In case you are wondering what am taking about, just think of any luxurious products and whichever comes to your mind first , see whether it’s  made of plastic. You will agree with me,that most luxurious goods today such as T.Vs, home theatres, laptops, flash disks, are all made of plastics.

Though plastic was first discovered in the last century, its usage is at its pick today. Almost every consumer products or least its components are made of plastics. This is more or less driven by the need to replace metals and wood with cheap alternatives that come handy with plastics. Plastics are relatively cheap source of raw material as it’s easily molded to finished products compared to metals and wood. It’s for these reasons that most company use it to process, package, furnish and even transport their products. On a positive side, plastics help reduce extraction of metallic raw materials and felling of trees.

Plastic pollution

As mentioned above, plastic is mainly used to package end users goods particularly processed food, drinks and beverages. As such, shops, supermarket and malls are the major source of consumer good derived plastic waste. Thus, most common plastic waste from such food stores includes polythene bags among other packaging containers.

Arguably, the discovery and development of plastic has made our lives more enjoyable and comfortable, however, their discovery has brought misery and agony to other living organisms particularly marine organisms as waste plastics waste finally end up into the ocean and seas.

Any form of plastic waste deposited on land whether upcountry or at coast eventually find its way into the ocean. This mainly occurs when it rains as such deposited plastics are washed away by surface runoff into waterways which end up draining and discharging the waste into the ocean. Once in the ocean, plastics floats vertically depending on their sizes and are carried by ocean current and waves either to the shore or are concentrated in to saturated areas called gyres. Today, there are five known gyres in the world and some of them are reported to cover huge areas comparable to the size of some countries.

Major threat to fisheries globally

Today, plastic waste is among the major threats to marine life globally. This is because plastics are polymers of synthetic materials and hence non-biodegradable. Once deposited in the environment (land and ocean) they stay   for many decades. And in the course of their cycle, they harm many terrestrial and marine creatures. Though concentrated into gyres, small sized plastics are distributed throughout the oceans and in many cases fisheries and other marine creatures confuse such small plastics for food.

When they feed on them in multiple times, they starve to death. In some situations, plastics nets and strings entangle marine organism hence drowning or injuring them. Also,wounds caused by such materials result in bacterial infection which end up killing the creature.

What next?

Of course we all enjoy the comfort of plastic chairs, tables and more so packaged foodstuffs .But, do we enjoy the misery and agony of other living creatures. I bet not. It’s for this the reason am writing to you hoping to jog your memory and remind you that it crucial to manage plastics responsibly. It’s therefore important to rethink of how we use and dispose off plastic materials. After you enjoy the services of any plastic packaged good or product, it’s your responsibility to carry it home or workplace, do not dispose it carelessly. Actually, it’s such simple things that we tend to ignore that matter. But suppose you were able to trace a particular plastic waste you deposited on the street last month, and you find it in the verge of killing another creature-let’s say a fish, would you be happy? Of course not. So let’s use plastic but dispose it wisely

And by the way, as you all know plastics can be recycled .You can always store empty plastics cans, containers and paper bag for reuse or sale .But one thing for sure ,let’s AVOID disposing  them irresponsibly, let’s end the plastic MENACE.