Have you ever wondered what plastic bags are really doing and how much it really costs to make them not just cash, but the air we breathe, and the food we eat are all getting affected. Which means these simple single use plastics that we love;use are actual destroying us more than we could possibly know and heres how.

The problem with plastic bags isn’t just the pollution its that we only use it for one purpose only shopping. Americans use 100 billion plastic bags annually you can say of the least because with human population increasing more and more we are going to be using more and more plastic bags to fulfill our needs. Instead of using plastic bags we can use the fossil fuels for something greater than just shopping how about transportation. Did you know it take 14 singe use plastic bags to make enough gas to drive exactly one mile. Imagine how much gas we are technically wasting on a single use plastic that has no purpose besides holding our items.

Plastic bags are near 1/3 of what we waste each year and guess what it is just used for one thing and one thing only. The average american actually takes home about 1,500 plastic bags a year; Do you think that’s a problem or an achievement? The biggest problem is that we use all of this time to make a bag but we don’t even recycle them. Only 1 percent of plastic bags a year are recycled which means that we our using non-renewable resources for something wasteful. With these statistics it shows that the average family recycles enough plastic bags for one mile of gas thats it. (10factsaboutsingleuseplasticbags.com)

Whats our purpose if the only thing we can do is consume and destroy the world with our demands and needs. What are we going to do when our whole life is impacted by the death of everything around us from the pollution we started in the 1800’s. Yes, I said we because everyone is responsible because I bet you grabbed a plastic bag and brought home groceries with it last week or even today. The use of plastic is killing our animals; over 100,000 marine animals are killed by these little handy bags annually which means that the world might slowly end right in front of our generation. Like plastic bags only are used for a total of 12 minutes on average.

But what we can do to change this world problem is to make bags out of algae. Since, the bags will be made out of algae our problems will be solved because while the algae is decomposing it will create oxygen, and soil while it is in the land fill and if it goes into the ocean plankton can eat it and get rid of it without any health problems like todays plastics. If we just gave up or consuming nature and worked together to fix this world problem of people just buying. We could save so many resources instead of buying the newest thing, because now a days people waste so much resources on new items that we don’t even need that our planet is slowly dying.

The coral reef is dying because of oil pollution like the oil spill and the plastics all over the ocean. One other place that is falling apart is the rainforest because all we do is use,use, use and never replace what we take. I hope that you readers have learned something to help save our world that we live in because if we just let this world die. All of us will die; from the faults that we are all a part of.

Have you ever wondered what plastic was really made out of instead of just oil? I have too, that’s why we are going to discuss how plastic is made and where it is from. Plastic is made from many elements that occur in nature abundantly for example, gas,oil,coal, minerals and plants but thats not all we are going to talk about how many different kinds that we use in everyday life.

“Most of these plastics are made from polymers”.

Most plastics that we use every day is a polymeric material that is able to be molded or shaped with the application of heat. Most plastics are quite malleable but it all depends on the chemical compound. A glassy polymer such as polystyrene is stiff, and it shows high ratios of stress which means it can withstand some pressure. Some materials like plastic bottles and recording tape require stiffness and high dimensional stability. The last characteristics of plastic is its toughness which means that it is able to absorb more of a impact before breaking. Most of these plastic are an extremely bad conducted of heat, and you can decrease the conductivity even more by using a gas to spread out the atoms. For example, styrofoam cups used for hot beverages has a thermal conductivity of 1/4 of regular plastics. (Britannica.com)

There is many types of plastics that we use daily that are made out of the same substances including carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and hydrogen. But there is two main groups that plastics seem to be grouped into like thermoplastics(which soften from heat and then harden once cooled) and thermosets(which never soften once hardened). Examples of thermo plastics include

Thermoplastic examples

• Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)-
• Polycarbonate (pc)-is a synthetic resin that is linked through carbonate groups.
• Polyethylene (PE)- its a tough light resin that is the most commonly used plastic, its used in plastic bottles, bags, and packaging.
• Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)- used for clothing and containers for liquids and food.
• Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)- teflon
• Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)- used for piping, flooring and sheeting.
• Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) -plexy glass
• polypropylene (PP)- used for ropes, fabrics and molded objects.
• polystyrene (PS)- used for protective packaging for CDS and DVDS etc.
• Expanded polystyrene (EPS)- is known for being used with concrete in green homes.

Examples of thermosets

• Epoxide (EP) an organic compound that contains three-membrane rings that contain one oxygen atom and two carbon atoms
• Phenol-formaldehyde(PF) is used for lab tables,coating and adhesives.
• Polyurethane (PUR)- used primarily for paints, varnishes and adhesives.
• Unsaturated polyester resin (UP) used for bulk molding and the toner of laser printers. (what are plastics and how are plastics made.com)

Have you ever wondered what plastic does and how it affects every single thing in the world? well, I have and its way worse than you have ever thought and we use plastic every single day. Imagine what all of us don’t know. Plastic is found almost every where on earth from the sea, many islands and landfills that collect plastics that aren’t even recyclable. Im going to talk about BPA, micro plastic and the alternative to plastics that are in our diet from this world epidemic. Plastics need to stop being made for the whole sake of the world.

“Turtles eat plastic bags because they mistake them from being jellyfish; which is actually part of their everyday diet”. (National Geographic)

Micro plastics are becoming more and more abundant especially in the ocean we all know and love but their is a problem that we must face, before the problem faces us. Micro plastics are small pieces of plastic smaller than a sesame seed and thiner than a single thread of human hair. These micro plastic are from clothing, straws, and even beauty products that we use daily. All of these micro plastics are being eaten by animals of the sea and all of those chemicals are being passed on from that animal to others animals including us. Hilary brueck wrote that every single american women eats about 100,000 micro plastics every year because it is found in everyday foods, while men consume up to 120,000 micro plastics a year. Plastic water bottles are even worse because it increases the amount of micro plastic you consume by at least 90,000 per year. (business insiders)

The Environmental Impact of Plastic Water Bottles [Infographic]

The chemicals that are used to make plastic is extremely harmful to us and everything around us in this environment. BPA and phthalates are a huge threat to people who consume foods that are stored in plastics not even including if you ate micro plastics. BPA and phthalates are responsible of multiple health problems through out the whole animal kingdom. Population in the sea is declining due to the problem we know and face today. Us humans are affected but the chemicals because the sperm count of a male has dropped way over half since the 1870’s. Many studies of plastic has shown that peoples hormones are affected from these chemicals we ingest and include into our diets. Having plastic in our diet can make us infertile or unable to reproduce, and it can make us gain weight due to BPA increasing the size of fat cells. (Business insiders)

I belive to stop this epidemic we should use these plastic for a energy source that we can use at an every day basis just like bio-diesil. Bio-Diesis is made from chip bags and other plastics that can’t technically be recycled into black beads to be used again into plastics.

This machine is used to change plastic bags into diesel that runs some trucks.

I hope that we get better with our addiction to using plastic and then throwing it away right after we use them aka single use plastics. If we stop using plastics maybe we can turn back this epidemic and prosper once again, instead of destroying the world and everything that lives on it.