From birth to ban: Beat plastic pollution
Daily Observer-Published : Sunday, 8 July, 2018
Tarequl Islam Munna
We all know that plastic has become ingrained in the consumerist lifestyle. A world without plastics, or synthetic organic polymers, seems unimaginable today. But the accumulation of plastic products has led to increasing amounts of plastic pollution around the world. As plastic is composed of major toxic pollutants, it has the potential to cause great harm to the human health, air, water, land pollution, impacts of climate on eco-system.
The first plastic patent was granted in 1841by Alexander Parkes. In 1855, Parkes patented the first man-made plastic. Parkes was first exhibited to the public at the 1862 London International Exhibition. Meanwhile American chemist John Wesley Hyatt also developed a man-made plastic, which he called Celluloid, and several patent infringement lawsuits between Parkes, Spill and Hyatt eventually resulted in a US judge declaring Parkes to be the inventor of the first man-made plastic, in 1870. The addition of camphor to nitrocellulose led to the first thermoplastic (a modified natural polymer) known as celluloid.
By 1900 this material was used for the movie industry. The first synthetic thermo-set polymer (a phenol-formaldehyde (PF)), known as Bakelite, was obtained in 1907 by Baekeland through the polycondensation of phenol with formaldehyde. Bakelite was commercialized in 1909-1910. According to Dorel Feldman, Polymer History (2008) and The Robinson Library (2017).
"Beat Plastic Pollution", the theme for World Environment Day 2018, is a call to action for all of us to come together to combat one of the great environmental challenges of our time. The global celebrations were created by the UN in 1972 as a way of raising environmental awareness and action.
More than 300 million tons of plastic are manufactured every year. Humans have produced 8.3bn tons since the 1950s with the majority ending up in landfill or oceans. Scientist predicts more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050, according to the Guardian report (2017). Scientists estimate that there are at least 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing nearly 270,000 tons floating in the oceans right now.
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, Europe (EU-28, Norway and Switzerland) is the world's second largest plastic producer after China. In 2016, it produced 60 million tonnes of plastic, generating 27 million tonnes of plastic waste. WWF is urging governments to adopt of a legally-binding international agreement to eliminate plastic discharge into the oceans, supported by strong national targets to achieve 100 per cent plastic waste recycled and reusable by 2030 and national bans on single-use plastic items such as bags.
Globally over 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into the world's ocean each year, more than half of them estimated come from the just five Asian countries -- China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam and Thailand, according to the UN Environment Program report. Up to 60 per cent of the plastic waste leaking into the ocean, according to a 2015 report by the environmental campaigner Ocean Conservancy and the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment.
Top 20 plastic pollutant countries in the world ranked annual metric tons by mass of mismanaged plastic waste in global water: 1) China - 27.2m, 2) Indonesia - 10.1m, 3) Philippines - 5.9m, 4) Vietnam - 5.8m, 5) Sri Lanka - 5.0m, 6) Thailand - 3.2m, 7) Egypt - 3.0m, 8) Malaysia - 2.9m, 9) Nigeria - 2.7m, 10) Bangladesh - 2.5m, 11) South Africa - 2.0m, 12) India - 1.9m, 13) Algeria - 1.6m, 14) Turkey - 1.5m, 15) Pakistan - 1.5m, 16) Brazil - 1.5m, 17) Burma - 1.4m, 18) Morocco - 1.0m, 19) North Korea - 1.0m, 20) United States - 0.9m. A recent report published by Earth Day Network (2018) ranked Bangladesh 10th out of the top 20 plastic polluting countries in the world.
Plastic shopping bags were first introduced into Bangladesh early 80s; on an average each family uses four plastic shopping bags in Dhaka residents every day. About 14 million are thrown to the garbage every day, often ending up in rivers and oceans and causing hazards to marine life. Since 1982 plastic is used in Bangladesh as a packaging and every corner of country is using plastic shopping bags for daily use. The demand is rising everyday and new factories are springing up like mushrooms.
According to Jashim Uddin, president of Bangladesh Plastic Goods Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BPGMEA) (2018) "Bangladesh imports more than 155,000 metric tons of raw plastic materials each year and the figure is growing continuously." "Today, we have around 5,000 small, medium and large plastic goods manufacturing units, while the number was around 3,000 units a couple of years back, approximately, 1.2 million people are engaged in this sector.
Bangladesh is the first country in the world to ban plastic shopping bags in January 1, 2002, made a voluntary commitment last year at the Ocean Conference in New York to significantly prevent and reduce marine pollution by 2025. Other countries begin to follow suit.
A research on plastic conducted by the Korean Institute of Health Research, said workers at plastic factories are more exposed to cancer, skin disease and other fatal health problems. Plastic-wrapped fish and meat generate a kind of heat that creates radiation which ultimately makes the food poisonous. These discarded plastic shopping bags have posed a new environmental threat for an overcrowded city which is already suffering from high levels of water and air pollution and other kinds of environmental hazards.
Drainage systems blocked by plastic bags have been identified as a major cause of flooding in Bangladesh during monsoon season. Bangladesh experienced floods in urban areas in1988, 1998 and 2008 where plastic and plastic materials were one of the major causes for the blockage of the drainage systems. In the year 1990, 9.3 million plastic bags were dumped in the city every day, with only 10-15 per cent put in dustbins. The rest goes into drainage and sewage lines, according to the 'World leader in banning the plastic bag'.
Around 73,000 tons of plastic waste ends up in the sea everyday through the rivers Padma, Jamuna and Meghna in Bangladesh. Besides domestic waste, there is waste from India, Nepal and China floating down the Ganges, Jamuna and Brahmaputra. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) June 05, 2018.
Plastic remains intact in the soil, it causes problem for soil fertility which is a big concern in this food-producing country. Bangladesh is losing one per cent of arable land every year, in part due to erratic rains and land degradation, according to the UN World Food Program.
According to the UN report, we buy 1 million plastic bottles every minute. Every year, we use 17 million barrels of oil to produce plastic bottles for our water. Every year the world uses 500 billion plastic bags. In 2016, 480 billion drinking bottles were sold worldwide. 50 per cent of the plastic we use in single-use or disposable. Plastic makes up 10 per cent of all of the waste we generate. In the last decade, we produced more plastic than in the whole last century.
To solving world's plastic pollution, the Netherlands could become the first country to made road surface with plastic bottles after Rotterdam city council said it was considering piloting a new type of road surface touted by its creators as a greener alternative to asphalt. By paving the roads with recycled plastics, we can help in solving our plastic waste epidemic. We can also reduce global carbon emissions at the same time!
United Kingdom begins testing roads made of recycled plastic waste through MR6 product. Conventional roads offer a lot of problems for the community. United Kingdom devised a product called MR6 that integrates recycled plastic and other wastes in making roads, according to Digital Trends, UK.
The region of Tamil Nadu, in southern India, has turned more than 1,600 tons of waste plastic into 620 miles of roads in the past five years, according to 'One Green Planet' (June 21, 2017).
We can reduce the amount of plastic we use in our daily life by: 1) Recycling, 2) Banning single-use plastic bags, 3) Use reusable produce bags, 4) Use glass jar to freeze food, 5) Say no to disposable cutlery, 6) Avoid excessive food packaging, 7) Carry a reusable bottle. Managing waste plastic materials for road construction, we can also use recycled waste plastic to make Bangladesh's road surface with plastic waste. It was tested, environment friendly, more durable and 60 per cent tougher than standard asphalt.
The use of plastic is now not only creating health and environmental hazard in Bangladesh but also lost of 50,000 jobs that used to work in cottage industries that produced jute, plant leaf, paper and cotton bags (FEJB, March 2000). Jute Packaging Act, 2010 (53 no act of 2010) (amended by 38 no act of 2013), no one can packet, sale or deliver specific products without packaging without jute.
Implement plastic banning act, ban usage of polythene shopping bags, strict enforcement of existing laws and severely punish the violators of law, promote usage of jute goods as the alternate of plastic and aware people to use jute good. Moreover, high tax should be imposed on raw materials of plastic. At the same time we need to change our daily lifestyle relating to the use of plastics in our house, offices and workplaces, we should ban disposable the use of shopping bags, bottles, glasses, straws, cups, lunch box, spoons and packaging materials.
Without tougher environmental legislation, it will be very difficult for the government to attain any success in its fight against plastic. Managing plastic waste is increasingly becoming a global environmental and economic challenge. Plastic is not only a threat to human health but also impacts of climate on ecosystem as well as our present future generation.
Tarequl Islam Munna is Correspondent, American International News Service
By 1900 this material was used for the movie industry. The first synthetic thermo-set polymer (a phenol-formaldehyde (PF)), known as Bakelite, was obtained in 1907 by Baekeland through the polycondensation of phenol with formaldehyde. Bakelite was commercialized in 1909-1910. According to Dorel Feldman, Polymer History (2008) and The Robinson Library (2017).
"Beat Plastic Pollution", the theme for World Environment Day 2018, is a call to action for all of us to come together to combat one of the great environmental challenges of our time. The global celebrations were created by the UN in 1972 as a way of raising environmental awareness and action.
More than 300 million tons of plastic are manufactured every year. Humans have produced 8.3bn tons since the 1950s with the majority ending up in landfill or oceans. Scientist predicts more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050, according to the Guardian report (2017). Scientists estimate that there are at least 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing nearly 270,000 tons floating in the oceans right now.
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, Europe (EU-28, Norway and Switzerland) is the world's second largest plastic producer after China. In 2016, it produced 60 million tonnes of plastic, generating 27 million tonnes of plastic waste. WWF is urging governments to adopt of a legally-binding international agreement to eliminate plastic discharge into the oceans, supported by strong national targets to achieve 100 per cent plastic waste recycled and reusable by 2030 and national bans on single-use plastic items such as bags.
Globally over 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into the world's ocean each year, more than half of them estimated come from the just five Asian countries -- China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam and Thailand, according to the UN Environment Program report. Up to 60 per cent of the plastic waste leaking into the ocean, according to a 2015 report by the environmental campaigner Ocean Conservancy and the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment.
Top 20 plastic pollutant countries in the world ranked annual metric tons by mass of mismanaged plastic waste in global water: 1) China - 27.2m, 2) Indonesia - 10.1m, 3) Philippines - 5.9m, 4) Vietnam - 5.8m, 5) Sri Lanka - 5.0m, 6) Thailand - 3.2m, 7) Egypt - 3.0m, 8) Malaysia - 2.9m, 9) Nigeria - 2.7m, 10) Bangladesh - 2.5m, 11) South Africa - 2.0m, 12) India - 1.9m, 13) Algeria - 1.6m, 14) Turkey - 1.5m, 15) Pakistan - 1.5m, 16) Brazil - 1.5m, 17) Burma - 1.4m, 18) Morocco - 1.0m, 19) North Korea - 1.0m, 20) United States - 0.9m. A recent report published by Earth Day Network (2018) ranked Bangladesh 10th out of the top 20 plastic polluting countries in the world.
Plastic shopping bags were first introduced into Bangladesh early 80s; on an average each family uses four plastic shopping bags in Dhaka residents every day. About 14 million are thrown to the garbage every day, often ending up in rivers and oceans and causing hazards to marine life. Since 1982 plastic is used in Bangladesh as a packaging and every corner of country is using plastic shopping bags for daily use. The demand is rising everyday and new factories are springing up like mushrooms.
According to Jashim Uddin, president of Bangladesh Plastic Goods Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BPGMEA) (2018) "Bangladesh imports more than 155,000 metric tons of raw plastic materials each year and the figure is growing continuously." "Today, we have around 5,000 small, medium and large plastic goods manufacturing units, while the number was around 3,000 units a couple of years back, approximately, 1.2 million people are engaged in this sector.
Bangladesh is the first country in the world to ban plastic shopping bags in January 1, 2002, made a voluntary commitment last year at the Ocean Conference in New York to significantly prevent and reduce marine pollution by 2025. Other countries begin to follow suit.
A research on plastic conducted by the Korean Institute of Health Research, said workers at plastic factories are more exposed to cancer, skin disease and other fatal health problems. Plastic-wrapped fish and meat generate a kind of heat that creates radiation which ultimately makes the food poisonous. These discarded plastic shopping bags have posed a new environmental threat for an overcrowded city which is already suffering from high levels of water and air pollution and other kinds of environmental hazards.
Drainage systems blocked by plastic bags have been identified as a major cause of flooding in Bangladesh during monsoon season. Bangladesh experienced floods in urban areas in1988, 1998 and 2008 where plastic and plastic materials were one of the major causes for the blockage of the drainage systems. In the year 1990, 9.3 million plastic bags were dumped in the city every day, with only 10-15 per cent put in dustbins. The rest goes into drainage and sewage lines, according to the 'World leader in banning the plastic bag'.
Around 73,000 tons of plastic waste ends up in the sea everyday through the rivers Padma, Jamuna and Meghna in Bangladesh. Besides domestic waste, there is waste from India, Nepal and China floating down the Ganges, Jamuna and Brahmaputra. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) June 05, 2018.
Plastic remains intact in the soil, it causes problem for soil fertility which is a big concern in this food-producing country. Bangladesh is losing one per cent of arable land every year, in part due to erratic rains and land degradation, according to the UN World Food Program.
According to the UN report, we buy 1 million plastic bottles every minute. Every year, we use 17 million barrels of oil to produce plastic bottles for our water. Every year the world uses 500 billion plastic bags. In 2016, 480 billion drinking bottles were sold worldwide. 50 per cent of the plastic we use in single-use or disposable. Plastic makes up 10 per cent of all of the waste we generate. In the last decade, we produced more plastic than in the whole last century.
To solving world's plastic pollution, the Netherlands could become the first country to made road surface with plastic bottles after Rotterdam city council said it was considering piloting a new type of road surface touted by its creators as a greener alternative to asphalt. By paving the roads with recycled plastics, we can help in solving our plastic waste epidemic. We can also reduce global carbon emissions at the same time!
United Kingdom begins testing roads made of recycled plastic waste through MR6 product. Conventional roads offer a lot of problems for the community. United Kingdom devised a product called MR6 that integrates recycled plastic and other wastes in making roads, according to Digital Trends, UK.
The region of Tamil Nadu, in southern India, has turned more than 1,600 tons of waste plastic into 620 miles of roads in the past five years, according to 'One Green Planet' (June 21, 2017).
We can reduce the amount of plastic we use in our daily life by: 1) Recycling, 2) Banning single-use plastic bags, 3) Use reusable produce bags, 4) Use glass jar to freeze food, 5) Say no to disposable cutlery, 6) Avoid excessive food packaging, 7) Carry a reusable bottle. Managing waste plastic materials for road construction, we can also use recycled waste plastic to make Bangladesh's road surface with plastic waste. It was tested, environment friendly, more durable and 60 per cent tougher than standard asphalt.
The use of plastic is now not only creating health and environmental hazard in Bangladesh but also lost of 50,000 jobs that used to work in cottage industries that produced jute, plant leaf, paper and cotton bags (FEJB, March 2000). Jute Packaging Act, 2010 (53 no act of 2010) (amended by 38 no act of 2013), no one can packet, sale or deliver specific products without packaging without jute.
Implement plastic banning act, ban usage of polythene shopping bags, strict enforcement of existing laws and severely punish the violators of law, promote usage of jute goods as the alternate of plastic and aware people to use jute good. Moreover, high tax should be imposed on raw materials of plastic. At the same time we need to change our daily lifestyle relating to the use of plastics in our house, offices and workplaces, we should ban disposable the use of shopping bags, bottles, glasses, straws, cups, lunch box, spoons and packaging materials.
Without tougher environmental legislation, it will be very difficult for the government to attain any success in its fight against plastic. Managing plastic waste is increasingly becoming a global environmental and economic challenge. Plastic is not only a threat to human health but also impacts of climate on ecosystem as well as our present future generation.
Tarequl Islam Munna is Correspondent, American International News Service
Link: http://www.observerbd.com/details.php?id=146736
No comments:
Post a Comment