Plastic is a huge problem because each year we produce about [380 million tons] of it and [91%] of it ends up as garbage. Plastic can take as long as 1,000 years to decompose, therefore, plastic accumulates in nature, and particularly in landfills and the oceans.

But before we dig deeper into why plastic is causing such problems form men and women, let’s first understand what plastic is and also run through a brief history of plastic.

What Is Plastic?

The word plastic comes from the Greek verb plassein, which means “to mold or shape.

Plastic is any synthetic or semisynthetic polymer. The vast majority of these polymers are formed from chains of carbon atoms, and typically with hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine, fluorine, nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, and sulfur atoms attached to the carbon atoms.

The organization and number of these atoms can be arranged in a multitude of ways, which then gives rise to all the different kinds of plastics we have today: Hard, soft, elastic, bendable, transparent, etc.

Today there are thousands of different plastics or polymers, and we know them by names such as polyethylene, polystyrene, and polypropylene.

While plastics may be made from just about any organic polymer, most industrial plastic is made from petrochemicals.

Although there are many polymers, plastics in general are lightweight with significant degrees of strength. Plastics can be molded, extruded, cast and blown into seemingly limitless shapes and films or foams or even drawn into fibers for textiles. Many types of coatings, sealants and glues are actually plastics, too.

There are also naturally occurring polymers such as tar, shellac, tortoiseshell, animal horn, cellulose, amber, and latex from tree sap.

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“There are literally now hundreds of thousands of different kinds of polymers,”

Why Is Plastic Such An Environmental Problem?

Why has plastic become potentially the largest environmental problem we face today other than global warming?

It is primarily such a large problem because we produce immense quantities of it. Every year we produce about [380 million tons] of plastic. That is more than one million ton every day!

Let’s say that one more time: more than one million ton every day!

However, that wouldn’t be such a huge problem if we recycled all of it.

But we don’t. In fact, we throw away approximately 91% of it after use.

In other words, each year, we throw away 91% of 380 million tons = 346 million tons of plastic.

We throw away a million ton of plastic every day!

From the 1950s up to 2018, an estimated 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic has been produced worldwide, of which an estimated 9% has been recycled and another 12% has been incinerated.

Which means that 4.98 billion tonnes are still out there somewhere.

The problem with plastic, as opposed to paper, wood or many fabrics – is that plastic does not easily decompose into the atoms it is built of (normally carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine, fluorine, nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, and sulfur).

Whereas a wooden chair left to itself somewhere in nature will normally decompose into its individual building blocks (atoms) in about 10 years, a toy made of plastic may need 1,000 years to decompose.

What is the consequence of this?

The consequence is that plastic accumulates in nature.

For every day that passes by, there is more plastic in landfills, in the woods, in our drinking water and in the oceans.