Should We Be Using Plastic?

Plastics can be helpful in many different ways, but there are also downsides of plastic. In this article, I will tell you the pros and cons of plastic and why they are important. 

Plastic can be good for many things because of its durability and strength under pressure. You see plastic almost everywhere in the world, which makes plastic a very easy to find source and while this is true it also makes plastic hard to get rid of by polluting our ecosystems and environments. Plastic can be used for just about anything including water bottles and plates. And eating off those can cause plastic to build up in your body and can cause health problems. For this reason you should not be eating off of plastic products. 

Since plastic is useful, durable, and accessible, it is used all over the world. This causes plastic pollution. Plastic pollution happens all over the world and mostly in our oceans. For example, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a large mass of plastic and trash bunched together. This patch causes harm to marine life that lives in those waters and we are the ones that are responsible for this. Plastic also takes hundreds of years to decompose making it hard to clean up. One way to fix this pollution is recycling. Although recycling helps, many plastics can't be recycled, and if a plastic is dirty it also can't be recycled because it can contaminate the other plastics being recycled, making plastic hard to get rid of. There are many alternatives to plastic such as biodegradables and using glass instead of plastics. 

Overall, plastic can be useful but is hard to get rid of, causes pollution, and is harmful, so you probably shouldn't be using plastics but instead finding healthy substitutes to keep the world healthy and clean. 

Citations:

https://www.epa.gov/plastics/impacts-plastic-pollution

https://www.britannica.com/procon/single-use-plastics-debate