Menace of a must Merchandise!

Since end of seventies, the houses of middle class families gone for a huge makeover. Slowly the age old wooden furniture vanished from their houses and smoothly it was replaced by a lighter and colourful plastic made furniture. It can be called a typical middle class mentality, it was cheap and it gave a fresh and young looks to our houses.

So, welcome to the world for plastic, we even don’t count that how many times a day do we use something made from plastic, of-course unaccounted numbers of times. Surprising, even last forty years plastic encroached to our houses but. plastic has been a part of our lives for over 100 years, and its use continues to grow. You name it, plastic chairs and tools, plates and glasses buckets, bottles and mugs and of-course plastic carry bags.  Therefore, after we thoroughly invaded by the plastic and cannot imagine life beyond it, we also realised how hazardous it is, is it too late?

All about plastic

It is believed that the first man-made plastic was created somewhere around  1862. It was an organic material  that once heated could be molded.  Plastics, materials made up of large, organic (carbon-containing) molecules that can be formed into a variety of products. The molecules that compose plastics are long carbon chains that give plastics many of their useful properties. In general, materials that are made up of long, chainlike molecules are called polymers. The process of making plastic is a complicated one. It begins with carbon from petroleum, natural gas, coal, or biological sources. The elements can be combined in various combinations in order to achieve a desired property and characteristic. The final product can be hard like the siding on your house or soft and flexible like shrink wrap.

Due to their insolubility in water and relative chemical inertness, pure plastics generally have low toxicity. Some plastic products contain a variety of additives, some of which can be toxic. For example, plasticizers like adipates  and phthalates  are often added to brittle plastics like polyvinyl chloride to make them pliable enough for use in food packaging, toys, and many other items.

Plastics are durable and degrade very slowly; the chemical bonds that make plastic so durable make it equally resistant to natural processes of degradation. Since the 1950s, one billion tons of plastic have been discarded and may persist for hundreds or even thousands of years. Perhaps the biggest environmental threat from plastic comes from nurdles,  which are the raw material from which all plastics are made. They are tiny pre-plastic pellets that kill large numbers of fish and birds that mistake them for food.

Pros and Cons of Plastic

Pros: It is Convenient, durable and can be used for years. Lighter, cheaper and occupy less  spaces.

Cons:  Plastic is a synthetic material that is both, easy and inexpensive, to produce. Its light weight, durability and versatility make it a preferred material for packing and manufacturing. However, its uncontrolled use leads to more problems than it solves. The most commonly known and accepted argument against plastic is that it is non-biodegradable, because of which it pollutes the natural environment and poses a risk to living organisms. But, while this is true, plastics are also known to have a harmful effect on individual health. Difficult to degrade, a single plastic bag can take 20 to 1,000 years to degrade and remain toxic even after they break down. Only 1% of plastic bags are recycled. Ten percent of the plastic produced every year worldwide winds up in the ocean. 70% of which finds its way to the ocean floor, where it will likely never degrade.

!!!What we call it, an Environmental hazard or a must (mast) artifact.!!!