Solutions to Plastic Pollution

Plastic can mean anything from credit card use to a fake personality.  Right now, it is  the biggest environmental hazard on this planet to date.  Sometimes the more successful you are, the more credit cards a person has.  A credit card is, not surprisingly, made of plastic.  Credit cards are pretty much a waste of money at some point. Plastic is something that is a huge part of our lives, taking up space in landfill after landfill. It poisons our environment.  I have jugs of purified drinking water in my house made of plastic although some of it is made of recycled plastic, seemingly a step forward in the right direction.

Plastic pollution is a huge problem on this planet right now.  Forget about coronavirus for a minute.  While plastic is the material in an IV, it is a material found in most commercial packaging.  When you open a box of crackers you find a plastic bag housing the crackers. This bag is what you tear at to get to the food.  We each have to be careful with how much we use our carbon footprint.  Plastic is in everything.  We have got to focus on recycling programs that make a difference in what is going on with how badly we are polluting this planet.

Our use of plastic is everywhere and many times it is not biodegradeable.  There are chemicals that can biodegrade plastic, turning it back into oil. Indeed, this problem is not as dire as it may seem to continue getting.  But it could get a lot worse, given the situation with not putting out biodegradeable plastic more. The ocean is filthy from all the plastic on this planet.  This is why we need to work on better plastic materials.

What is being done about plastic getting into the ocean and being cleaned?  Plenty, such as reducing your use of single use plastic products. There are organizations out there addressing plastic pollution. https://www.oceanicsociety.org/blog/1720/7-ways-to-reduce-ocean-plastic-pollution-today. We do not have good waste management on this planet, and that is something, which has to change now. Plastic pollution has its effect on ocean life, affecting sea turtles, whales, seabirds, fish, coral reefs and other types of animals.  This is why the people of this planet want to start something about healing the planet’s oceans. For now only 9% of plastic is recycable worldwide.

Another step is to organize a beach clean up day. Don’t use single-use plastic bags to get groceries.  Avoiding products containing microbeads, or devices found in face scrubs, toothbrushes, and bodywashes, with microbeads labeled “polythelene” on the materials used in whatever product you are using.  Support organizations that combat plastic pollution.  Cleaning up after ourselves has to become a routine on this planet.  We don’t do enough of that. Creating a chemical that can biodegrade plastic in a landfill is a next step.

We need to use existing plastic for fuel.  How is this? By breaking it down into an oil form that can power cars.  We really don’t need to use fossil fuels anymore but this is something happening anyway. There are more options now for cars that use a different type of fuel, be it electric, or diesel oil. If public transit were better in different regions of our planet, more people would use it. Public transit is great in big cities but bad in rural communities where you need a car.  

This inequality needs to be fixed.  People get stranded by the bus all the time.  There are many ways to fix global warming and climate change.  By far you fix it first by making your mind understand that global warming is real.  This cold winter the Midwest is having is directly affected by climate change.  California is only having a normal winter now, and has for the last three years if only because somehow our drought is over.

Plastic pollution is a drastic problem, we have to find ways of disposing our plastic without contributing to global warming by burning it.  Getting into the habit of using reusable plastics is a first step towards mitigating plastic pollution. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/10-ways-reduce-plastic-pollution.  Plastic water bottles are a huge problem. The resolution is to not buy them, to use reusable materials in your drinking utensils. There are many ways to fix this planet. To fix the rising sea levels, all we need are fleets of ships designed to collect water.  The water collection can then be desalinated and shipped to desert regions or to California where there is a drought so we have enough water for our crops.

We face water shortages in the 21st.  We have to deal with pollution.  There may be a way to rid us of everything, but only if we put our minds to it and make an effort at it as a planet.  We need to be rid of fossil fuels also at some point.  Haven’t we all had enough of global warming causing very cold winters and very hot summers?  We cannot afford to put this stuff on ignore.  We need to start doing something about impactful climate change scenarios.  We will be awash in situations for the next decade.  People are not making progress ignoring plastic pollution that comes from buying water bottles that leave an impact.  Having to throw out many home goods because they are wrapped in plastic is not helpful either.

Less plastic is more plastic.  Plastic as mentioned above, takes forever to biodegrade.  Chemicals that cause it to break down would take care of the problem, particularly if they can be able to fade into the environment.  I don’t know enough about the problem in this present moment.  All problems on this planet can be worked on if people took the time to think things through and work on them.  Anything can be fixed rightfully so, if we are able to sit there to think about it.  Some people don’t think much can be fixed.  But the thing is we can, just like the guy who cured Ebola because he spent his life working on one problem.  We have got to start dealing with our environmental problems.  It does us no good to avoid it.  Not when this winter has been so cold for certain parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

We have got to start solving our plastic pollution situation.  The oceans are polluted, COVID-19 has brought many global climate change crisis to life that we need solutions for.  Some people could make it their full time job to find them, namely billionaires.  We need think tanks devoted to solving the climate crises since there are multiple ones brewing.  There have to be jobs created to help staff efforts like water mining in the Antarctic region and then desalinating the water.  This would solve California’s water crisis indefinitely.  Not every article out there is focused on solutions.  No, many articles written are written in an alarmist way. Some of that content can be downright depressing to read.  We need to focus on the positive scientific breakthroughs that are being made not the negative news cycles coming up, causing the reader to feel angst like nothing is being done.