Monitoringclub.org | How Does Plastic Affect Climate Change? Currently, the use of plastic has replaced many equipment materials made of bamboo, wood, and rattan. It can even be said that we are very dependent on plastic.
This is because plastic is easily available at a cheaper price. For example, when shopping in the market, we prefer to use plastic bags instead of carrying our own shopping cart, arguing that it is “more practical”.
Now that the plastic grocery bag is no longer needed, it will automatically be wasted. Whether it’s in the trash or in any place, and eventually it ends up in landfills such as seas or rivers.
Plastic waste that ends up in the oceans has the potential to pollute and have a serious impact on the balance of ecosystems in the ocean, because plastic waste can decompose hundreds to thousands of years later.
Plastic not only affects ocean pollution, it also triggers “climate change”. As we already discussed in a previous article, climate change is a significant change that occurs in temperature, precipitation, and wind that lasts for quite a long time, can be in a decade or even more.
Climate change is caused by the high amount of CO2 gas emissions that cause various negative impacts on our earth, such as damage to marine ecosystems, food needs, extreme weather, natural disasters, and others.
How Does Plastic Affect Climate Change?
From the production process, consumption, to disposal, it produces high carbon emissions, which contributes to climate change because the earth’s conditions are getting hotter. The higher the carbon emissions produced, the higher the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Check out the following explanation to prove it:
1. Plastic Production
Plastic is made from oil and natural gas extracted or taken from the bowels of the earth. Then it is sent to a processing site to go through a refining process in order to obtain various kinds of oil and natural gas derivatives, including one of which is naphtha which is the raw material for making plastic.
The naphtha is then further processed to produce pellets or plastic resins. The process of extracting, purifying and producing plastic pellets requires a lot of energy, resulting in carbon emissions of 1,781 Million Metric Tonnes of CO2.
2. Production of Plastic Products
After creating plastic pellets (resins), the next step is to send these pellets to the processing and molding site, for example to produce plastic bottles.
The plastic printing process requires high temperatures obtained from burning coal, approximately producing carbon emissions of 535 million metric tons of CO2.
3. Processing and Disposal of Plastic Waste
Most plastics are used only a few times, then simply thrown into landfills or processed by recycling or burning with incinerators.
Recycling does have the least environmental impact, but not all plastics can be recycled, especially low-quality plastics. Plastic recycling also requires a lot of energy, resulting in high carbon emissions.
Then, if it is processed by burning with incinerators? Plastic burning has the most environmental impact compared to recycling, plastic burning can produce emission gases of up to 5.9 Million Metric Tons of CO2.
That’s the effect of plastic on climate change, so what? We can’t possibly eliminate the use of plastic bags 100%, but we can reduce their use, what’s the easiest we can do?
- Bring your own tote bag/Eco bag.
- Bring your own place to eat and a drinking bottle for snacks.
- Limit the use of products packaged with plastic packaging.
- Replace plastic straws with stainless straws or bamboo straws.
- Replace your plastic toothbrush with a bamboo or miswak toothbrush.
Now it’s your turn, start to reduce the use of plastic in everyday life. And don’t forget to invite your friends too!
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