plastic life- elan brown

8/13/2019 Plastic Life- Elan Brown

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Elan Brown

Professor Collin Ludlow-Mattson

English 114 First Year Composition

13 November 2013

Plastic Life

Nearly everything we use in our everyday lives is made out of plastic. Plastic is in many

things you may not have thought such as clothes, chairs, and shoes. Without plastic we wouldnt

have many of the convenient items within our homes, if asked to empty our homes of all things

that contain plastic it would be most likely that our homes would end up nearly completely

empty. Plastic may be providing us with our daily conveniences but it is damaging not only our

health but the planets as well.

I decided to research this topic after noticing all the plastic that surrounds us, from

bathroom supplies and closets filled with plastic bags to going to the grocery store and seeing

plastic containers and bottles. This got me thinking about where plastic ends up after being

thrown away. I know that plastic is in virtually everything, but what I do not know is its history

and its impact on the world. However, I do know that it is one of the major pollutants on Earth,

its main contributors being bottles and bags. Due to plastic not being completely biodegradable it

ends up piled in landfills and trashing the oceans, harming precious marine life. I am aware that

plastic never truly goes away; instead it goes through photo degradation continuing to degrade

from solar radiation breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces eventually becoming small

plastic dust and debris that is still dangerous to marine life. This plastic dust and debris

eventually ends up in the mouths of small marine life who mistake the small pieces as food,

which if eaten in abundance can kill them. In some areas of the ocean there is more plastic than


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there is plankton, since plankton are at the bottom of the food chain and they are consuming this

plastic that means that any animal that consumes them will have plastic in their system as well.I

know that plastic and other trash also washes up on the shores of various beaches, ruining their

sands and coral life.

I would like to uncover more about the subject of plastic because it seems that if

something does not change with the way we throw out plastic than there will many

environmental consequences and by finding out more about this topic I would be able to make

better decisions and possibly also help my family do so as well. I want to find out if there have

been any drastic steps to reducing the use of plastic and if there has been ideas of a product that

is more eco-friendly that can replace it. Since plastic doesnt completely degrade I want to

research into ways of cleaning up the plastic that is already out there and also ways of reusing it.

Many people recycle plastic bottles so why is it that we throw away plastic bags instead of

recycling them. Is it possible for us to recycle plastic bags and items the way many of us recycle

plastic bottles, glass, and paper? I believe it would be helpful to discover when plastic was first

introduced and mass produced to see how this product has evolved over the years and would also

be nice to know where it comes from since once it is here it never really goes away. I already

know the harmful impact plastic has on our oceans and would like to find out if there are any

harmful things plastic can do to our bodies.

I researched this topic using two forms of resources; I watched three documentaries

related to the topic and researched using the internet as well. I started out doing my research

online, which led me to three documentaries which related to my topic and focused on the impact

of plastic. The first thing I began researching was where plastic came from. Plastic is a man-

made product and there are various types made out of different chemicals but usually the main


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ingredient in all types is petroleum. The type of plastic I focused on was the plastic that is used to

make plastic bags and the one used for bottled water since these are some of the main pollutants

in the world. Both types contain a chemical known as polyethylene which is produced annually

with eighty million tons and mainly used in packaging. It is classified depending on its density,

the most common ones being high-density (HDPE or PEHD), linear low-density (LLDPE), and

low-density(LDPE). The common densities of polyethylene plastic are high-density that is used

for bottles, and corrosion resistant piping, linear low-density polyethylene is found in plastic

bags, containers, lids, and sheets, and low-density polyethylene that is in dispensing bottles,

plastic bags, and objects requiring flexibility. The problem with plastic and the polyethylene in

them is that it does not biodegrade so when we throw it out and it gets sent to either the landfills

or littered into the oceans and just sits there. I then looked into when plastic was first introduced

to the public and I found that in 1922 a German chemist named Hermann Staudinger discovered

that plastics came from chains of thousands of molecules called super polymers. The 20s

introduce many new plastic products such as tableware, was used to make different patterns, and

adhesives. It started being massed produced in the 30s when manufacturers learned that plastic

could be made using petroleum and helped with injection molding, these two things helped to

bring down the prices of finished products making it more affordable for consumers.. Nylon,

polyester, and spandex started being used more during the 40s and 50s in clothes because

consumers preferred them to alternatives since they were easier to wash and required no ironing.

In the 50s the music industry was in a boom which was good for the plastic industry due to them

using plastic to make records and also stared being used in cars and boats.

When researching ways to recycle plastic I found a documentary called Tappedthat

focused on the bottled water industry. It sounded interesting so I decided to watch it, they


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mentioned some of the things I was already aware of such as plastic in the oceans but what I did

not know about was how the bottled water industry conducts business. This is relevant to my

topic because if we were to reduce our purchase of bottled water it would obviously reduce the

amount of plastic bottles being thrown out. I found out in this film that the tap water from our

sinks is under stricter regulations from the FDA than bottled water is. This means that tap water

in our homes could be a lot safer to drink, this is because of the plastic packaging bottled water

comes in. Studies were conducted on bottled water to find out how safe it is to drink; they had

one package of water left in the trunk of a heated car for a week and found that heated plastic

causes chemicals to release into to the product. I then started to research if plastic could have

any negative effects on our bodies. I found that certain plastics also contain chemicals that

influence how our bodies produce and handle estrogen, bisphenol A, phthalates, and

polyethylene terephthalate.

The final and most important thing I was curious about was how we can reuse and

recycle plastic. I thought that we could recycle bags and other products the same way we recycle

bottles, by taking them to the local recycling center and getting money in return. Recycling

plastic bottles and receiving money depending on the amount you returned is called a bottle bill

or a container deposit law, which gives consumers monetary incentive to recycle their bottles

after use. The refund value for the bottle is usually five to ten cents. I thought there would be

more states that implemented the bottle bill law however, in the U.S there are only ten states that

do this and two states that have repealed the law. Since this law worked in the states that did use

it, it would make sense if the same idea was used on other plastic products. Plastic bags and

other plastic film such as ones used in packaging arent meant to be recycled due to it being

capable of jamming the recycling sites machinery. This left me wondering about what was to be


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done with all the plastic thats already out there. There are some groups and companies that will

take plastic and reuse it to create something new. In the documentaryAddicted to Plastic, I found

out about the various ways individuals are reusing plastic. They described products being made

in Asia that took certain plastic and burned it to get the petroleum it was made out of, many

people in the U.S collect plastic items to recreate them into other items, and Anita Ahuja of India

takes the plastic products from the landfills of India and has started an accessory line called

Conserve India, not only cleaning the waste but also providing jobs in her community. I wanted

to find out if it was possible to stop the use of plastic and found many successful cases doing so

such as San Franciscos ban of plastic bags and charging a ten cent fee to get a bag. This works

because there is now one major city banning stores from handing out plastic bags and charging

customers for needing a bag. This law helps to entourage the purchase of reusable bags which

helps reduce that amount of waste piling up and also saves retailer money from purchasing the

bags. San Francisco is not the only place to have this law other places include Ireland who

charges 15 cents per bag, Los Angeles also charging ten cents, and other Californian cities are

trying to ban the use of plastic bags. There is also biodegradable plastic which I was unaware of,

this plastic has a corn base and will break down in landfills after four to twelve weeks.

Biodegradable plastic is a good alternative for retailers; however it is seven times more

expensive than plastic bags.

Plastic is an amazing invention but it is also a dangerous one. It provides us with many of

our needs but if not properly disposed of is guaranteed to have harmful effects on the

environment. I wanted to see if there was any way to replace plastic with anything that wasnt as

harmful and one of the only other things was the use of paper to replace packaging and bagging

which may not the best idea due to the amount of trees that would be required. In my research I


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Work Cited

Addicted to Plastic. Dir. Ian Connacher. Cryptic Moth Productions. 2008. Film.

Arizona State University. "Health and environment: A closer look at plastics." ScienceDaily, 23

Jan. 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.

Bag It. Dir. Suzan Beraza. Perf. Jeb Berrier, Jared Blumenfeld and Martin Bourque. Paramount

Classics. 2010. Film.

How Many Cities Have a Ban on Plastic Bags?. How Stuff Works. Rachel Cemansky. Web.

13 Dec. 2013.

NIH. National Institute of Environmental Health Science. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.

Plastic Bags PollutionEffects and Solutions.Green Living Bees. 13 Dec. 2013. Web.

Plastic Bottle Manufacturing. Thomasnet. 13 Dec. 2013. Web.

Tapped.Dir. Stephanie Soechtig, Jason Lindsey. Atlas Films. 2009. Film.

plastic life- elan brown

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