My Second Blog Post

Recycling Plastic

Someone goes to the grocery store, and they buy a single-use plastic water bottle. When they get home, they are finished, so they toss it into the recycling bin. Is this a good idea? What happens to the plastic bottle once it gets put outside to be picked up by the recycling companies?

Plastic is actually not always recycled, even if it is put into the recycling bins and taken to the recycling companies. For example, in 2020, only 8 percent of the plastic the US generated was recycled. Even if it is recycled, it will be turned into another thing made of plastic. Take that single-use plastic water bottle. When it is recycled, maybe it was turned into a plastic Tupperware container. After the container has done its job, the person who owned it put it in the trash, and it got sent to a landfill. Plastic bags take 20 years to break down, and even then, it isn’t actually gone.

Different plastic items take different amounts of time to break down. But is that plastic really gone? The answer is no. The plastic actually just turns into millions of microscopic pieces, and those pieces float around in the air, water, and in the soil. A plastic straw takes 500 years to break down into tiny pieces, and 6-pack plastic rings take 400 years.

According to a 2019 study, “Of the 8.3 billion metric tons that has been produced, 6.3 billion metric tons has become plastic waste.” That means that only 2 billion tons of plastic have been recycled in the entire time plastic has been around, which is about 100 years. We use plastic in our packaging, in our toys, in our food storage, in our tools and supplies. We use it in situations where we could use other materials, like glass, metal, or even clay.

Every year 100 million marine animals die from plastic waste, and 100,000 birds and mammals are killed by accidents with plastic. The plastic problem is getting out of hand, and we need to stop it. It is killing animals and destroying our oceans and ruining our environment. We can take small steps to reach a big goal. Everyone can make a difference.

Works Cited

“Plastics | Initiatives | WWF.” World Wildlife Fund, 2019, www.worldwildlife.org/initiatives/plastics. Accessed 13 Jan. 2021.

“The Problem with Plastic in Nature and What You Can Do to Help.” World Wildlife Fund, 6 June 2019.