Plastic Speech

Plastic

 

Plastic. Plastic has only recently been introduced to our world since the 1960s, and already is having a major impact on our planet. Did you know that every plastic that’s been made from the 1960s still exists and most of is in the sea.Our generation has never even stopped to think about what plastic is doing to our environment. For example plastic bags which we only use for around 5 minutes on average, but it takes about 1,000 years to break down.

 

I am going to present to you how plastic is made, how it is killing the environment and what will happen to us if we don’t do something about it.

 

The first problem, is how plastic is made. It is produced from natural resources such as coal, natural gas, salt and crude oil  which are all  non-renewable resources, this means there is a limited supply. The 300 million tonnes of plastic that are being produced a year are wasting these  resources as they could be being used for better purposes. The other problem with the way plastic is made, is that only a small amount can be recycled, in fact only 10% is recycled out of the 300 million tones of it. This is why it is important to think about the products we use and purchase, like clothes, furniture etc as they all have some sort of plastic in them. Most of  these items will end up in a landfill or dumped into the sea. An estimated seven million tons a year.

 

The second problem with plastic is how it kills, It is a fact that plastic bags in one year kills over 100,000 animals a year like whales, seals, turtles, birds etc, from plastic bags alone, usually by the animals thinking that they are food and once ingested it cannot be digested by an animal so it stays in the gut and usually ends up killing them in slow painful death. Also plastic takes a lot of space taking up space for us like islands and landfills. Which would also be killing other living organisms like plants.

 

My last point is what will happen to us and our world if we keep using plastic the way we do. The first major problem we would face is how  we  will keep cars running when we run out of oil as we are overusing it to make plastics. The only chance we would have to keep them running is by producing more electric cars. Another issue we will face is the huge amount of waste caused by the non recyclable plastics. Currently hundreds of kilometers of land are being polluted by plastics, some Pacific Island coasts are being destroyed and covered by washed up plastic. This will have a major impact in the future because it will aesthetically and environmental ruin these islands.

 

In conclusion I think we as humans need to think twice before buying and using plastic. Our generation could have a huge impact on how plastic will affect our environment in the future. Therefore, we need to start acting NOW before it is too late.