For urban solid waste, plastic bags have become major items in the litter system. This has resulted in many detrimental environmental effects including animal choking, pollution, blockage of channels, rivers and streams, and landscape disfigurement. As a result of these effects, the public at large, activists and legislatures have voiced outrage to the degree that some national governments have banned the use of plastic bags for shopping.
There are many root causes to attribute the problem of plastic bag waste in Nigeria and other countries. South Africa, for example, has restricted the manufacture and usage of plastic bags by enacting parliamentary legislation.
Several European countries have adopted a fee for plastic bags, taking into account the negative effect of plastic bags on agricultural production. The Japanese government has also levied a plastic bag fee to limit production and use Md-Jalil et al. Prohibitions on the use of plastic bags and the development of alternatives are a most welcome step when compared to putting pressure on people's production and use of plastic bags. Even though charging a levy on plastic bags has a positive effect on protecting and preserving the fertility of agricultural land, the resulting continued and dominant use of plastic bags itself would negate the benefits or advantages of the levy.
The major impact of plastic bags on the environment is that it takes many years to for them to decompose. In addition, toxic substances are released into the soil when plastic bags perish under sunlight and, if plastic bags are burned, they release a toxic substance into the air causing ambient air pollution.
Simons suggests that, owing to the unregulated accumulation of carcinogenic compounds, the use of plastic bags may allow inroads into cancerous diseases. Plastic bags are dumped indiscriminately into landfills worldwide that occupy tons of hectares of land and emit dangerous methane and carbon dioxide gases as well as highly toxic leachates from these landfills during their decomposition stage.
Waste from plastic bags poses serious environmental danger to human and animal health. If plastic bags are not properly disposed of, they can impact the environment by causing littering and stormwater drain blockages. Animals may also get tangled and drown in plastic bags. Animals often confuse the bags for food and consume them, therefore blocking their digestive processes. This means more plastic in our oceans, more greenhouse gas emissions and more toxic air pollution, which exacerbates the climate crisis that often disproportionately affects communities of color.
Sign our petition to protect marine wildlife from deadly plastic pollution. Learn more about how plastic pollution threatens wildlife. Get the latest on our work for biodiversity and learn how to help in our free weekly e-newsletter. It has also been linked to kidney and heart complications. Certain chemicals used in the manufacturing of plastic bags, especially BPA, act in the same way as oestrogen.
In the long run, these chemicals may interfere with hormonal balance in women and affect reproduction. Moreover, studies have linked BPA to breast cancer in animals. This chemical has also been associated with thyroid issues and neurologic disorders in humans.
While plastic-related chemicals largely affect women and children, men are also at risk. According to a study by the World Health Organization, men who are often in contact with phthalates and BPA have a higher risk of developing prostate cancer.
These chemicals can also undermine their reproductive health. The plastic bags in the dumpsite will normally release chemicals that seep into the ground, ending into the groundwater reservoirs. Then, the detrimental effects of plastics would be passed through the ground to our bodies through the plants we consume and the water we drink. While many of us believe that groundwater is safe for drinking, the truth is far from that.
Therefore, avoid drinking groundwater unless it has been treated for human consumption. Otherwise, you will be ingesting a lot of toxic substances.
Pollution from plastic materials, such as plastic bags, affect the natural order of feeding. For example, are plastic water bottles purchased, say, at the airport biodegradable?
Should they be disposed into the recycling bin or into the food waste bin? Once again, as demonstrated by the rubber duckie escape, plastics survive even the harshest conditions, such as floating around in a marine environment under blistering, unrelenting sunshine or frozen into Arctic ice for years before finally floating away and landing on some faraway shore. For this reason, plastics will probably outlast humanity itself. It is this apparent immortality leads me to my last point, which is that plastics may be co-opted for good.
It is tempting to demonize plastics, but realistically, plastics themselves are not inherently evil. Plastics make life better, and easier, for us. For example, one of the first things you use every morning and one of the last things you use every night -- your toothbrush -- is made of plastics. Every time you visit your supermarket, you meet many sorts of plastics that serve as packaging to prolong the freshness of foods, and in a hospital, a variety of plastics help prolong your life.
The key lies in the chemical structure of plastics. Plastics are made of long chains -- polymers -- of carbon molecules, such as carbon dioxide CO2 and methane CH4. Methane gas is a molecule in cow farts that is eighty times more powerful than CO2 for causing climate change. CO2 gas is produced by burning natural things, like gas, oil, wood or plastics, and for this reason, we produce far more CO2 than methane, so the cumulative effects of all that CO2 are much greater than those of methane gas.
Basically, if we could permanently remove a portion of CO2 or CH4 gases from the atmosphere by sequestering them into plastics, we would effectively be preventing these gases from causing further damage to the climate.
One such enterprising company, Mango Materials , a small start-up in California, is working to reduce the methane gas problem in wastewater treatment plants by harnessing the ability of particular microbes to capture methane and stick them together to create polymers that then can be manufactured into larger and more useful pieces of plastic.
This company converts already existing plastics, like water bottles, into plastic filaments that are used by 3D printers.
This repurposes plastic waste into other useful forms instead of dumping it into the ocean, or incinerating it, which then liberates CO2 into the atmosphere where it can contribute to climate change.
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