How to Overcome Problems Created by The Use of Plastics?

     

      Do you know now there is an invention that fuel is made from plastic? It is one of many ways people have done to make use of plastic waste that keep increasing in large amount this day. The fuel is made through gasification of granulated waste plastic. From the emissions testing, it is proven that the fuel produce an extremely clean- burning system. Everyone expects so much from this plastic invention, because now the plastic waste starts to give more disadvantages. Just take as an example,  in Indonesia 100 billion plastics shopping bags have been used and the same thing happens in the world. Actually, what makes plastic become a big problem is the chemical substance contained in it, such as PVC (Poly Vinyl Chloride) which gives so much damage to living things. Plastic should be eco-friendly, in control and recycled so that it won’t create environmental problems to the earth such as poisoning animals, human and not biodegradable by soil.

   Plastic is made from oil which contains a lot of carbon compound that plastics needed. One unit of carbon compound is called monomers while in large molecules, it is called polymers. Plastic made of many different types of monomers which can produce many different types of plastics. However, most characteristics of plastic do not react with almost all things like water, gasoline. So, plastic can be shaped into almost every variety of shapes such as bottles, cups, toys and many more. Plastics can be classified into Thermosets and Thermoplastics. In thermosets, it solidifies into permanent shape, while in Thermoplastics, it can be heated and remolded over and over again. Some examples of plastics are polyethylene terephthalate - PET or PETE, high-density polyethylene – HDPE , polyvinyl chloride – PVC. Plastic contains many chemical substances, such as polycarbonate, which leach Biosphenol A ; Polystyrene, which leaches styrene and PVC, and breaks down into vinyl chloride and sometimes contains phthalates. All of that substances have some bad effects that will be explained in the next paragraph. The procedure of making plastic includes polymerization reactions, the process when the polymers changed into final polymer resins which will produce plastic.

   Nowadays, plastics have big influences in human’s life. They are used in human’s life everyday life, because plastics are the raw materials of many items like container items (bottles, plastic bags), covers of many things like magazines, laptops, handbags, and clothes too (rain coats). Why do many people use plastic? The reason is that they have some advantages which other materials don’t have. They are lightweight, low cost and water resistant, but they also give bad impacts to life. The bad impacts actually come from the chemical substance inside it and the characteristic of plastic that cannot be decomposed.

   First, plastics can poison animals. Plastic waste that cannot be decomposed can mix up with animal’s food and will be eaten by the animals and it will poison the animals. If other animals eat the infected animals, they will be poisoned too, and the effect will be more dangerous than before.
Second, plastic can poison humans. The chemical substance can cause much damage in human body, Styrene, Dioxin are classified into a possible human carcinogen, and endocrine disruptor, Vinyl Chloride, Phthalates and BPA can cause breast cancer. Plastics also create environmental problems, first for the water. Plastic waste can clog the drains and stop the water from flowing, thus it will cause flood. For the air, plastics can be dangerous if they are burned. They will release poisonous smokes. For soil, plastics can be parasite too. Plastics that are thrown into soil will kill the decomposers and also disturb the air circulation, therefore the soil become unfertile.
Plastics can bring disasters if we don’t stop using them. What can we do to overcome the problems that plastics create? First we can make eco-friendly plastics. In this case we can substitute the dangerous substances of plastic with other substances that won’t give bad impacts. This method has been used to make new plastics such as plastic made of cassava and many more. Another method that can be used is to control the use of plastic. As we know, the use of plastic this day has become excessive. It happens because we can use plastic freely without any control. To reduce the use of plastics, the government should take control by making rules about plastic. And the last method is to recycle them. As we know, plastics are not biodegradable by soil, and what we can do is only recycling it to another useful thing so it won’t become garbage.

    In the conclusion, it is true that plastic is invented to make human’s life easier. However, the advantages of plastic are not comparable with the disadvantages that they make. Plastics can destroy nature and kill many living things. Because of that we should take actions to reduce the bad impacts of plastic. What we can do are to make eco-friendly plastics, and control and recycle them.

By : Evita Febrina