Plastic is everywhere. It’s in almost everything we use daily, from bottles and bags to packaging and even clothes. But over time, I’ve started to realize how bad plastic really is for the environment. I never used to think much about it, but now, I can see that plastic has some serious consequences.
One of the biggest problems is that plastic doesn’t break down. Unlike things like food scraps or paper, plastic can take hundreds or even thousands of years to decompose. That means all the plastic we’ve used over the years is still out there, filling up landfills, polluting oceans, and getting stuck in nature. It’s like we’re burying a mountain of trash that never goes away.
The most obvious place you can see plastic piling up is in the oceans. Every year, millions of tons of plastic end up in the sea. That’s because people often toss plastic into the trash without thinking, or even worse, they just throw it away on the ground. Rain can wash it into rivers, which then flow into the ocean. The plastic gets stuck in the water, where it harms animals like sea turtles, whales, and fish. Animals might eat the plastic by mistake, thinking it’s food. If they swallow it, it can block their stomachs, making it hard for them to eat real food, and sometimes, it even kills them.
But even if animals don’t eat the plastic, they can get trapped in it. I’ve seen pictures of birds, turtles, and seals caught in plastic rings or tangled in nets. They can’t get free, and it makes me think about how terrifying it must be for those animals. Plastic doesn’t just disappear, so it keeps affecting wildlife, even long after it’s been discarded.
Plastic also affects us, even if we can’t always see it. As plastic breaks down into tiny pieces called microplastics, it gets into the air, the water, and the food we eat. Microplastics are so small that you can’t even see them, but they’re still there, and they might be getting into our bodies. Scientists are still studying what happens when we consume microplastics, but it’s pretty scary to think about what they could do to our health. If plastic is in our food and water, it could be harmful in ways we don’t fully understand yet.
What’s even worse is that plastic is used in so many things that we use only once and then throw away. Think about plastic straws, single-use water bottles, or plastic bags. We use them for just a few minutes, and then they end up in landfills or oceans, where they stay forever. It’s a huge waste, especially when there are alternatives that we could use, like reusable water bottles or metal straws.
