CAUSES OF PLASTIC POLUTUION

PLASTIC POLUTION

Biotechnological processes are being developed as an alternative to existing route or to get new biodegradable bio-polymers. 20% of solid municipal wastes in US is plastic. Non-degradable plastics accumulate at the rate of 25 million tones per year. According to an estimate more than 100 million tones of plastic is produced every year all over the world. In India it is only 2 million tones. In India use of plastic is 2 kg per person per year while in European countries it is 60 kg per person per year while that in US it is 80 kg per person per year. Plastic is one of the few new chemical materials which pose environmental problem. Polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene is largely used in the manufacture of plastics. Synthetic polymers are easily molded into complex shapes, have high chemical resistance, and are more or less elastic. Some can be formed into fibers or thin transparent films. These properties have made them popular in many durable or disposable goods and for packaging materials. These materials have molecular weight ranging from several thousands to 1, 50,000. Excessive molecular size seems to be mainly responsible for the resistance of these chemicals to bio degradation and their persistence in soil environment for a long time.

Plastic in the environment is regarded to be more an aesthetic nuisance than a hazard, since the material is biologically quite inert. The plastic industry in the US alone is $ 50 billion per year and is obviously a tempting market for biotechnological enterprises.

Plastics are used because they are easy and cheap to make and they can last a long time. Unfortunately these same useful qualities can make plastic a huge pollution problem. Because the plastic is cheap it gets discarded easily and its persistence in the environment can do great harm. Urbanization has added to the plastic pollution in concentrated form in cities. Plastic thrown on land can enter into drainage lines and chokes them resulting into floods in local areas in cities as experienced in Mumbai, India in 1998. It was claimed in one of the programmers on TV Channel that eating plastic bags results in death of 100 cattle's per day in U.P. in India. In stomach of one dead cow, as much as 35 kg of plastic was found. Because plastic does not decompose, and requires high energy ultra-violet light to break down, the amount of plastic waste in our oceans is steadily increasing. More than 90% of the articles found on the sea beaches contained plastic. The plastic rubbish found on beaches near urban areas tends to originate from use on land, such as packaging material used to wrap around other goods.