Reduce Plastic Use Persuasive Essay By Luz W

Mary is hiking in Alaska. She is enjoying the fresh air. She stops at a cliff on a mountain and looks over the ocean. It is so beautiful but then, she sees a clump of plastic floating into shore. Then she sees the real thing. The mini island of trash. This happens a lot. All around coasts in the World. All of this is plastic gets caught in currents by littering or just by accident. We need to reduce the use of plastic in our world because, the plastic is polluting the Earth, killing off animals and we have more Earth friendly options to use.

We need to reduce our use of plastic because plastic is polluting our Earth. Did you know, that according to CNBC, each year only about 30% of plastic made gets recycled each year? That 30% is out of 6 billion pieces. So if you do the math, that is four billion two hundred million pieces of plastic that is not recycled each year. That is a lot! Many people forget to recycle. This leads to more trash that gets burned or put in landfills. When plastic is burned it releases highly toxic chemicals. When put in landfills each piece takes 400 years to break down! Those ways pollute our Earth! According to Columbia University “In 2014, Americans discarded about 33.6 million tons of plastic, but only 9.5 percent of it was recycled and 15 percent was combusted to create electricity or heat.” That is a lot of plastic that runs into the oceans, that goes into landfills, kills animals. We need to recycle more. It isn’t just the physical plastic that pollutes our Earth. It is also the factories producing the plastic. When they melt the plastic to reuse it or create new plastic they release harmful chemicals into the air. This contributes to Global Warming. We need to stop this. We have to reduce our plastic use because, plastic is polluting our Earth.

We need to reduce the use of plastic because plastic is killing animals. According to Ocean crusaders approximately 100,000 marine animals are killed each year from plastic entanglement, and those are the ones found. Also about 1 million sea birds die from plastic. That is a lot of animals. That is only the tip of the iceberg. Global warming from factories creates a different climate. This displaces many animals and causes them to be harmed. Many animals also die from ingesting chemicals in the water. These chemicals are put in all different types of water sources from accidental runoff to purposeful dumping. This means that factories dump harmful chemicals into the water. When animals ingest these chemicals they aren’t used to, they get hurt or die. Plastic is also killing animals by taking up their habitat. Have you ever heard of something called The Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Trash Island?  Well, according to National Geographic it is a huge island in the Pacific Ocean. This island is made of trash, a lot of it plastic. Trash Island is about the size of Texas. It is taking up marine animals’ homes and killing them. This island keeps growing every year. We need to reduce the use of plastic because, plastic is killing animals.

We should reduce the use of plastic because we have more earth friendly options to use instead. For example there is cardboard. Cardboard is made of layers of paper. It breaks down very easily. Cardboard can be recycled but, even when people forget to recycle it, cardboard still can decompose. According to Vocaltrash when cardboard is put into landfills it takes about 3 months to decompose. This is way better than plastic. When you forget to recycle plastic, it takes way too long to decompose. Cardboard is also good because it is reusable. The materials it is made out of can be grown back quickly. When made the cardboard doesn’t pollute, unlike plastic. Plastic is made out of non-renewable resources and pollutes the Earth when made. We should reduce the use of plastic because, we have more earth friendly options to use instead.

In conclusion we should reduce the use of plastic. It has very harmful effects on the earth. Plastic is polluting our Earth, plastic is killing animals of all kinds, and lastly we have more earth friendly options to use instead. For these reasons, to keep our Earth healthy, we should reduce the use of plastic!

Bibliography 

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/24/almost-no-plastic-bottles-get-recycled-into-new-bottles.html

Almost no plastic bottles get recycled into new bottles

Vanessa Wong

Published 11:51 AM ET Mon, 24 April 2017

Date visited Wed, December 6

http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/01/31/what-happens-to-all-that-plastic/

What Happens to All That Plastic?

By Renee Cho

January 31, 2012  

Date visited Wed, December 6

http://oceancrusaders.org/plastic-crusades/plastic-statistics/

Plastic Statistics

No author listed 

No date published 

Date visited Wed, December 6

Sources from site, 

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/ 

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

No author listed

No date published

Date visited Wed, December 6

http://vocaltrash.net/cardboard/

WHY ARE YOU NOT RECYCLING THIS MATERIAL?

January 25, 2012

VTManager 

Date visited Friday, December 8

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