Plastic has been a useful invention to say the least, and it has its use in every aspect of our lives, from medical syringes to baby feeding bottles, from household utensils to furniture, from pens to aircrafts, and so much more. Life without plastic will need a lot of innovation and invention to be able to replace plastic with a more ecofriendly material. Indeed, plastic is here to stay. However, to start with we can certainly target the single use plastics. We have to minimise the use of plastic, reuse the plastic that we have and recycle what cannot be reused.

I have listed some nasty plastic facts that I had included in one of my earlier reports some seven years ago! They still hold true:

*  Only 1-3% of plastic bags are recycled worldwide. 

*  Industry figures show 90% of all grocery bags are plastic. 

*  Plastic bags are made of polyethylene which is a petroleum product.  Production contributes to air pollution and energy consumption. 

*  It takes 1000 years for polyethylene bags to break down. 

*  The amount of petroleum used to make 1 plastic bag would drive a car about 11 meters. 

*  Plastic bags don't biodegrade, they photodegrade- breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways.  They then enter the foodweb when animals accidently ingest them. 

*  86% of all known species of sea turtles have had reported problems of entanglement or ingestine of marine debris. 

*  Approximately 1 billion seabirds and mammals die each year by ingesting plastic bags.  Not only that, these poor animals suffer a painful death.  The plastic wraps around their intestines or they choke to death.

To that end, I have often wondered as to why plastic bags are even allowed to be manufactured and this is more concerning than ever now when I came across a news report tells me that our oceans are fast turning into plastic soup!!!

We are all aware that a lot of plastic waste ends up in the oceans. Though eventually, it breaks down into tiny microscopic pieces or micro plastics, what is not clear is what exactly happens to this plastic in the long run. As a Marine Science student, I was shocked to read that our scientists and researchers are still not fully aware of the what chemical reactions the micro plastics go through as they dissolve in water under the intense heat of the sun.

“Sunlight Can Bake Plastic Waste Into a Soup of Tens of Thousands of Organic Molecules”

The title of the news report is horrifying. It goes on to inform that micro plastic fragments, while a major ecological hazard, are perhaps not the worst thing to come out of the disintegration of plastic waste in the oceans. Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, based on a study have inferred that besides breaking plastics down, sunlight can also convert their base polymers and additives into a slurry of new chemicals.

The study involved experiments with a variety of different types of plastic bags to analyse the extent of soluble organic carbon compounds that they leached after about 100 hours of sunlight exposure.

Swatches of the bags were placed in sterilized beakers in an ionized solution to simulate seawater. While one set of beakers were kept in a dark space and another set, another set was left in a temperature-controlled chamber under radiation that simulated sunlight.  Samples in the dark were released a small amount of organic compounds into the salty solution, those left in light, had a huge quantity of new chemicals. The longer the solution was left in the light, more was the concentration of chemicals in it.

It appears that the process is a lot more complex than chemists ever realized. Considering the results that came to light in a period of less than one week we can imagine the extent of dissolved organic compounds, produced in the ocean under the glare of the sun. I conclude by saying that plastic is more toxic that we can imagine and I hope my report will help all readers to work towards reducing plastic use and plastic waste.

Sources and references:

http://loveyourearth.org/Plastic_Bag_Facts.html

https://www.sciencealert.com/sunlight-can-bake-plastic-waste-into-a-soup-of-tens-of-thousands-of-organic-molecules