Ensayo plastic wastes

ESSAY

To what extent can biodegradable plastics be a real solution to long-term degradable plastics?

Gabriel Samanez[pic 1]

[pic 2]

To what extent can biodegradable plastics be a real solution to long-term degradable plastics?

Introduction:

The objective of this essay is to compare and contrast biodegradable plastics and degradable plastics as the most suitable solution to long-term degradable plastics. This topic is very important because plastic nowadays contribute to a lot of pollution specially to the sea which can cause animals to die, but also when degrading it hugely affects human and animal health, but specially animal health, and scientists are looking to create a plastic that can de tossed into the water, because the sea is majorly were plastics are disposed off, and that it can degrade with no chemical trace that could affect marine life, and biodegradable plastic, which is made from renewable sources like starch and sugar cane decomposes into chemicals or bispehol A which is toxic to animals, and degradable plastics degrade into little pieces which animals eat, these are really harmful to them to, also they take three to six months to degrade depending on conditions. More the 100.000 turtles and fish have died because of that, so I am going to investigate which plastic is better.

Body:

The word “degradable” just means that something breaks down. Technically, all plastic is degradable plastic.  You can break it with a hammer. You can grind it into a fine powder.  This all counts as “breaking down” the plastic, and therefore technically “degrading” the plastic.1, therefore we have got to look for a plastic that degrades without much of a down side or disadvantages. Biodegradable plastics take between 3 and 6 months to decompose, but it depends on many conditions like weather, etc. They’re made from similar petrochemical-based materials to conventional plastic, only with compounds added that cause them to disintegrate gradually in the presence of light or oxygen, then they degrade into toxic chemicals.

• Previously I was referring to the down sides of disadvantages so here I will present the main disadvantages and advantages of both biodegradable and degradable plastics because a decision is majorly influenced and based by looking at the positive and negative aspects. So the main problem with biodegradable plastics is that they are polymers, A polymer is a large molecule made up of chains or rings of linked monomer units. One of the useful properties of polymers is that they are unreactive, so they are suitable for storing food and chemicals safely. Unfortunately, this property makes it difficult to dispose of polymers. They can cause litter and are usually sent to landfill sites, which means it cant be recycled, I mean it can be recycled but it would cost a lot of money, this fact evidences that only 5% of the plastic we throw away we recover or use again. This disadvantage is a very big disadvantage, one of the reasons will be linked to another disadvantage which I will tell later, because we would have to produce a lot of plastic and it would have to be disposed and so much plastic being tossed into the sea would fill it quickly, if only in In the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments, like grocery bags, straws and soda bottles, are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day. Imagine if we wouldn’t be able to recycle anything that number would be even bigger. Another disadvantage is that as biodegradable plastics are made out of food so people in the rural areas are starving and if we cant recycle any of the plastic we use we need to have more, thus more food, therefore more land which we don’t have, this is the disadvantage linked to the other disadvantage I was previously talking about. Another disadvantage is that the compostibility of biodegradable plastics are more complicated, you need industrial composters, etc. Also, most country’s areas are not set up for bioplastic use, they are not prepared for it, and as I told before recycling can become impossible.

Now lets see the advantages of biodegradable plastics. First, they are cheaper, they have reduced co2 emissions and a reduced carbon footprint, and thet don’t generate as much toxic waste. Degradable plastics are more of the opposite of biodegradable plastics, they have a much higher cost, made form oil or renewable sources, they contaminate much more and they kill more animals in the sea when tossed in.

Conclusions

I think that for now none of the alternatives mentioned above are suitable, I think that the production of the plastics should be divided 50/50 as I don’t think one is better than the other, because one contaminates the environment and the other will fill up the ocean and fill up the lands. Thus I think that until scientists don’t come up with another better alternative there should be no choosing between plastics because that could affect humans and our environment.

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