Plastic Usage, A Human Addiction
York, ME
2015, Junior, Creative Writing
According to the American Heritage Dictionary an addict is defined as “to cause to become compulsively or physiologically dependent on a habit forming substance”. Humans are addicted to plastic. Our oceans are being choked and distorted by plastic. Many people know this, but few find it disturbing enough to take action against it. Like many addictive substances, plastic provides an artificial way out of a problem, then leaves increasingly dangerous and upsetting problems in its wake.
For decades, discarded plastic has stewed in our oceans. It has caused the death of countless marine animals, spreading like a disease through the currents. It is threatening the well being of around 300 oceanic creatures. How can so many people be oblivious to the innocent lives being taken because they enjoyed a brief moment of convenience? Why are we so reluctant to counteract this earth-consuming addiction? We are hypocrites! We scoff at alcoholics and other addicts whose lives have been taken over by an addiction, then we go home and refuse to discontinue our significantly more destructive and constant use of plastics.
We deem ourselves superior to all other animals because of our inventive minds. Is it not our inventions that are causing more environmental imbalance than many natural disasters. I believe that we should be using our “superior” minds to cure our addiction by finding a plastic substitute instead of greedily sucking up the earth’s resources individually we should unite to find a cure! Towns, counties, cities, countries, democracies, dictatorships, first world nations, third world nations, every individual capable of making an impact on the world, we need everyone to set aside their differences to help inoculate us against the greed and destruction that our plastic
addiction is choking us with.
Our plastic addiction is killing us in many ways. One way is that our plastic waste is actually physically affecting us by causing deformities, cancer, skin diseases, deafness, blindness, and many other awful diseases and disabilities (“ADVERSE HEALTH EFFECTS OF PLASTICS.”). Are we going to let other people suffer in such an extreme way because we use such an unnecessarily large amount of plastic just for brief moments of convenience to help in such a simple task as carrying groceries or working as a utensil? As we blindly dismiss our plastic to be sent “away” into a dump, many of us are unaware that it will eventually, through natural processes, reach the ocean where it will exponentially degrade into smaller and smaller pieces. These invisible, dangerous particles are distributed by the currents just as the wind scatters dust, small oceanic creatures then mistake these particles for food and are in turn consumed by consecutively larger marine animals until they are consumed by humans at the very top of the food chain. It is estimated that over two thirds of the world’s fish are suffering from plastic ingestion (“Plastic Ain’t so Fantastic.”). We are contaminating our earth as well as our own food with our addiction, why do we continue?
We continue because our ways of looking at problems have changed, we were once avid inventors ready to solve any problem in any way, now we have become passive, pushing aside the intimidating state of our world today and longingly looking back on “the glory days”. We need to develop a new way of thinking, rather than solving a problem in any way and most often the “easy” way or leaving the problem to get steadily worse. We need to thoroughly solve problems by taking into consideration the long term effects of our solution. By thinking longterm, we can solve solve problems without causing greater problems in the wake of the solution.
Many times when people purchase plastic items they are not thinking long term, to them after the product is used, it goes elsewhere to a far away dump were it disappears. Many people simply don’t think about how our plastic addiction is affecting the ocean, this is partly due to the high commercial use of plastic. Products containing plastic are being marketed often through very successful advertisers, making those products very desirable to the public, many people just decide to “go with the flow” but that is the flaw in our logic because going with the flow is how we got here. We all need to think about what our plastics are doing to our oceans and start directing the flow towards a better and more innovative future.
I must acknowledge the many individuals who would oppose ridding the world of plastic. Corporations such as the American Chemistry Council make an excellent point in saying that plastic is essential to many tasks now in the modern world, especially in medical procedures to ensure the utmost cleanliness(Plastics 101). They are very right to say that plastic has saved many lives and will save many more if it continues to be used, but I believe that now, plastic is causing more problems through environmental destruction than what it is solving medically. Our plastic addiction makes us feel as though we are taking the safer path when it is actually having a paradoxical effect as it pollutes our oceans, causes diseases, and turns up later as pollution on our own plates. I, by no means think that we will be able to or even should suddenly stop the use of all plastics throughout the earth. I believe we should carefully solve this problem by using thorough logic. One idea would be to collaborate to invent an environmentally sound plastic substitute, then carefully integrate it into society by advertising it so that it would eventually replace most if not all plastic products on the market. I think that solving the problem of our plastic addiction carefully through thorough logic will bring the essential balance between the needs of humans and the needs of our environment.
Reflection
I wrote this essay because I believe that our ever growing plastic usage is becoming a problem that we often dismiss. We do not take into consideration the long term effects of our actions. I feel that by comparing our constant use of plastic to an addiction, people may begin to see more clearly the dangerously real problem that we are prolonging as it continues to choke us and our future generations by polluting the ocean. I urge you to think, why have we not collaborated to make that perfectly achievable change through thoughtful logic that could lead us to a brighter future?