The ban of plastic material is a world wide thing that is being effected by the globe because of the effects in has in the environment and life of human and animals both dry land and under water.
But do we all understand the effects it has on life?
Plastic is a material made to last forever, it never goes away yet 33 percent of all plastic water bottles, bags and straws are used just once and thrown away. Plastic cannot biodegrade; it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces.
Toxic chemicals leach out of plastic and are found in the blood and tissue of nearly all of us. Exposure to them is linked to cancers, birth defects, impaired immunity, endocrine disruption and other ailments.
There are thousands of landfills in the United States. Buried beneath each one of them, toxic chemicals from plastics drain out and seep into groundwater, flowing downstream into lakes and rivers.
Chemicals in plastic which give them their rigidity or flexibility (flame retardants, bisphenols, phthalates and other harmful chemicals) are oily poisons that repel water and stick to petroleum-based objects like plastic debris.
So, the toxic chemicals that leach out of plastics can accumulate on other plastics. This is a serious concern with increasing amounts of plastic debris accumulating in the world’s oceans.
Wildlife become entangled in plastic, they eat it or mistake it for food and feed it to their young, and it is found littered in even extremely remote areas of the Earth. In our oceans alone, plastic debris outweighs zooplankton by a ratio of 36-to-1.
In America more than 30 million tons of plastic are discarded in a year. Only 8 percent gets recycled. The rest ends up in landfills, is burned or becomes litter.
Even plankton, the tiniest creatures in our oceans, are eating microplastics and absorbing their hazardous chemicals. The tiny, broken down pieces of plastic are displacing the algae needed to sustain larger sea life who feed on them.
Everything suffers: tourism, recreation, business, the health of humans, animals, fish and birds because of plastic pollution. The financial damage continuously being inflicted is inestimable.
