Plastics

Introduction

The manufacture and distribution of plastics is everywhere. Between 1950 and 2009, the global production of plastics grew at an average rate of nine percent annually and all indications point to continued growth at a similar rate. With the explosive growth in the manufacture of plastics comes the need to ensure that these materials are recycled in an environmentally responsible manner once they reach the end of their useful lives. From an environmental perspective, recycled plastic can provide enormous benefits over the use of its virgin counterparts. For example, plastic lumber made with scrap plastic bags, and other materials, conserves trees and eliminates the need to use hazardous chemicals to treat wood that will be used outdoors (Stein, pp 12).

Discussion and Analysis

Impacts

Environmental groups estimate that between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year. Over 12 billion gallons of oil are used in the production of these bags, which, after use, proceed to be recycled, sent to landfills, or littered into the environment. While over 100 million pounds of plastic bags are recycled in the United States each year, this is only a percentage of the bags produced. Most plastic bags end up in landfills where they can take thousands of years to decompose. Many bags end up in our streets, trees, bushes, creeks, rivers, streams, and oceans. According to California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, not only do communities endure a high financial cost for cleaning up this litter (California spends roughly $300 million annually), but the impacts on wildlife and humans can be significant.

Tens of thousands of birds and marine animals die each year from ingesting plastic products such as plastic bags. When the bags degrade in the ocean, they break into smaller pieces and concentrate in an area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where the semi-degraded plastics are consumed by animals mistaking it for food. The indigestible plastic remains in the animals' stomachs. The more plastic that is consume the less space for food, which may eventually result in death due to lack of room for food. Plastic bags have also been linked to animal deaths by asphyxia (Hans, 56-89).

Plastic Industry

The plastics industry transformed the visual and tactile qualities of manufactured objects in the twentieth century and contributed to a proliferation of inexpensive consumer goods. Public exposure to a wide array of plastics suggested that material reality was malleable in response to human desire and promoted an aesthetic of artificiality in design and architecture that defied the traditional American faith in nature exemplified by Henry David Thoreau and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Although plastic was already used as an adjective meaning phony, the very existence of plastics came to embody a larger fear that humanity had lost control of its future in seeking to transcend natural limits through technology. Some industry leaders feared that plastics might be legislated out of existence. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, as people grew up who had never known a world without plastics, and whose automobiles, sporting ...