Australia's Issue Of Plastic Pollution

Plastic is in our everyday life, whether it be plastic containers, lids on cups, and things as small as straws, and like 50% of plastics used it will be thrown away after just one use. It is ridiculous how much plastic is used and just chucked away like it is nothing. All the plastic that’s been thrown away ends up out into the ocean, surrounding the sea life, with a risk of the animals choking on the plastic bits and possibly dying. Us Australian’s need to all help out, and work together to completely BAN all use of plastic products including plastic straws and plastic cups! The job can’t be done without your help!

Do you ever stop and think what happens to the plastic we use? If you think that plastic just magically goes away and disintegrates, that’s wrong. The plastic used will most likely end up out in the ocean somewhere, or in our environment. Everybody in the world has at least used and wasted one piece of plastic whether it be on a packaging, a plastic straw, or plastic plate, and this is what is adding to the major current problem of plastic pollution. It is disappointing to think that every year in Australia approximately 130,000 tonnes of plastic leaks into the marine environment, causing serious danger to all our Sealife animals. Statistics according to the 2018 earth day video, states that “by 2050 there will be more plastic out in the ocean than fish,” which is almost more than impossible to think of.

Despite the fact of plastic pollution being a major issue in Australia, every minor thing helps, which is why something we could start of by doing is to take away plastic containers from all canteens/cafes. I’m not saying that we completely remove the products that are stored in plastic containers, instead we minimise it by replacing the plastic containers with reusable substances or bio gradable substances. For example, we could use glass and people could bring the containers back after they used it. Another solution we could use is using plastic like products that are actually biodegradable. The term biodegradable simply means that the product naturally breaks down into smaller components such as sugars and gases, unlike plastic products that take a while to decompose and cause harm to the environment. People may say that replacing plastic containers for glass containers will cost more money, however just think about how many turtles lives you are saving by helping out our environment by using glass products as a replacement of plastic.

The achievement of the ban of plastic across Australia, particularly across Victoria has partially been successful. In 2019 the single use plastic bag rule ban had come into place, and all plastic bags were forced to be removed from all major super marketing shelving including Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, Kmart, Target, etc. These single-used plastic bags were then replaced with cooler bags, and stronger more supportive plastic bags that can be re-used. This ban first started because once somebody would use one plastic bag, straight after one use it would be thrown away, therefore adding to the problem of plastic pollution in our environment.