Plastic & Environment. How should we deal with it?

Lately, plastic has been the central of talks in so many different parts of the world.

Many governments have been trying to regulate, even banning the use of plastic (especially plastic bags) entirely. Every environmentalist have been making campaign of using less and less plastic on daily basis. But why is the plastic industry still growing strong?

As a part of a plastic manufacturer company, I feel the urged of addressing this issue very seriously. Just like many people who thinks plastic has a bad impact to the environment, we do think so.

However, being long enough in this industry, has taught us that there are also enormous benefits that plastics has given to our society. Not just economically, but ironically, environmentally as well.

Now, before you stop reading this. Let me explain. There is no denying how bad the impact of plastic to the environment. It does not degrade in the soil, it can be eaten by animals and kill them, it can be drifted miles and miles across the sea and just make a pristine deserted island becomes dumpster.

There is no denying those facts and i am sure that we are all aware of that.

Ironically, many people are not well educated about what are the things made from plastic?

We have strong opinions about plastic and sending thousands of tweets everyday using our smartphones and laptops that are made from plastic. We went to campaign about anti plastic using vehicle (cars, bikes, planes, ships) that are made from plastic. We eat our takeaway foods with plastic containers. We drink waters that are packaged in plastic bottles. We are wearing shirts or jersey that is made from plastic (or some parts of it).

You see, it is not that simple.

To understand this issue, we need to understand about why did we use plastic in the first place?

Historically, plastic was used for some engineering projects that required something that is easy to manufacture, lightweight, cheap, and durable. and as the time went by, population of the world are growing drastically, we needed a way to mass produce everything. With the value that is also economical. What kind of things can we make something like that from? well the answer is plastic.

To give you the big picture, a plastic injection machine, can produce about 1 million pieces of bottle caps per day. And the same thing goes to the blow moulding bottle machine. with a very-very little cost. Imagine if you are about to make it with metals, or woods, or papers. how long will it take? it won't even reach half of the plastic productivity.

Why do we need so much?

Well the demand is there, as long as we live our life in a modern way, plastic will always be there. It is simply a big part of our everyday life as modern humans.

Is there any solutions?

Yes, but certainly not a simple one.

Many places has banned plastic bags and actually replacing them with paper bags. That is just as terrible if not more than what plastic can do to the environment. Paper do degrade on the soil and water. But imagine, how many trees would be cut every day to make paper bags? not to mention the potential hazard that can be caused by the treatment of paper productions. How about metals? everything will be more expensive, heavier (which means more energy to operate. not so environment friendly) and actually many metals are very harmful to human health and environment. Everyday governments around the world are making sure there is no heavy metal contaminations on any products.

The problem is never the plastic, but it is our behavior towards plastic. We dump our plastic everywhere. not recycling it enough. and even buying a piece of candy we need plastic bag to carry it.

We need to change our behavior on using plastic to be able to safe the world.

Other alternatives method is to make a more durable and reusable plastic bags. But if don't reuse it, then it will still be pointless.

Or recycling. Recycling is another big issue. But i won't get to deep in this issue. To understand recycling, the governments around the world are making regulations all the time about human health. And what are the substances that cannot be presence on a certain products. Which is great for us humans. however, recycling is about using unused (garbage) material into something. Those things that we recycled are mostly coming from an unknown source. You cannot ensure if the product is entirely safe. imagine eating from a recycled container box. Will you use it if you know it was made from garbage?

This article is not about defending plastic nor that it is trying to stop the use of plastic entirely. It is about opening our eyes, about the main problem. It is not about the plastic, but our behavior. The technology is here, the solution has already been invented. But as long as we do not change, it will be pointless.