While many people look to new technologies for alternatives to improve our relationship with the environment, it may be that one of the answers lies not in the future, but in the past.
Hello dear friends of ecotrain, I hope you are very well, today I bring you that post where it is illustrated that there are ways to take better care of the environment but for the wrong reasons are not put into practice.
Plastic, an ecological disaster in its own right.
When we talk about caring for the environment, we tend to relate many things, climate change, species extinction, soil degradation, pollution, and certainly, most of these problems are related to a lesser or greater extent, even so, the problem of plastic pollution is so serious, that in its own right. To better understand the context of the terrible problem that is plastic waste, let's look at some numbers.
Every year, one million seabirds die from plastic debris, and 100,000 marine animals die as well.
50% of the plastic produced worldwide is single-use plastic, and only 9% of all plastic is recycled.
Between 8 and 14 million tons of plastic reach the seas every year.
The large plastic patch in the Pacific Ocean is 1.6 million square kilometers, larger than the state of Texas, USA.
These are just some of the figures, if you want to see more I recommend this site
https://www.condorferries.co.uk/plastic-in-the-ocean-statistics
In addition to this, the danger of microplastics for the health of all life on the planet is just being evaluated, but it is already a fact that most of the human beings and animals on the planet have microplastics contaminating our blood.
Glass, a cleaner alternative.
In contrast, glass has never really been a problem, mankind has been using glass containers for millennia.
Glass is 100% recyclable, it is produced from an abundant and inexpensive resource which does not create an environmental problem with its extraction, [Sand]. Although it needs a good amount of energy to shape it initially, after the glass is manufactured, when it is recycled to melt it, the energy consumption is much lower.
In addition to this, glass is an inert container, which does not alter the taste or contaminate the food contained in it, making it healthier to use. Glass containers encourage savings, since being inert containers are an incentive for canning or storing food for a long time.
Glass is also a very useful material, as high-strength glass is used in construction, making much of a building recyclable, materials such as fiberglass make lightweight automotive and aircraft components that promote fuel economy.
But if glass brings so many benefits, why isn't it used more?
There was a time, when the vast majority of goods packaging was glass, from the 1960s onwards was when the explosion of plastics began. This was due to the improvement in the use of petroleum derivatives.
In the United States, only 30 percent of glass is recycled, and for the rest of the world, across the entire glass spectrum, only 35% of glass is recycled.
Currently many beverage companies have made the transition to plastic containers because logistically it is cheaper, returnable glass containers require collection, sorting by category, shipping to the plant and cleaning to be put to use again.
In addition, companies can charge more for beverages in plastic containers because they offer the consumer the convenience of a disposable container that does not have to be returned and can be consumed and disposed of wherever the consumer pleases, an example that carries over to much of food packaging.
And while in the construction industry glass has seen much use in recent decades, as it is a reusable and economical material, in the automotive industry it has been largely replaced by plastic, perhaps because one of the major influences on the automotive industry is the oil industry.
The lobbying of the oil industries for the continued use of plastic is a verifiable fact, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/20/plastic-bags-have-lobbyists-winning-100587.
In the end, laziness and greed are two of the human attitudes that have made us stop using an environmentally friendly material that worked well enough for millennia, to use one that is destroying the planet.
Maybe it's time to take a step back, and recognize that not everything modern is better.
Thanks for reading me. Happy evening to all.
Recommended Bibliographic Reference
[1]SUSTAINABLE FULLY SAVING PRECIOUS NATURAL RESOURCES "
[2]FACTS AND FIGURES ABOUT MATERIALS WASTE AND RECYCLING GLASS MATERIAL SPECIFIC DATA"