Plastic Pollution: How humans are turning the world into Plastic?

By Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
When the gods granted king Midas one wish, he wished that everything he touched
would turn to gold. Midas was delighted. Trees, rocks, buildings all gold. But soon he
found in horror that his food turned into gold as well. When he hugged his daughter
to soothe his pain, he realized his mistake too late.
The richest man in existence was starving, heartbroken and alone. Humanity got a
similar wish granted when we learned how to turn brown stinky goo into magic -
plastic. Cheap, sterile and convenient it changed our lives But this wonder of
technology got a little out of hand. Plastic has saturated our environment.
It has invaded the animals we eat and now it's finding its way into our bodies.
What is plastic? For most of our history humans used stuff we found in nature to
build the things we needed. But the invention of plastic roughly 100 years ago
completely changed our world. Plastic is made from polymers - long repeating chains
of molecule groups.
In nature, polymers exist everywhere : the walls of cells, silk, hair, insect carapaces,
DNA. But it's also possible to create them. By breaking down crude oil into its
components and Rearranging them, we can form new synthetic polymers. Synthetic
polymers have extraordinary traits. They are lightweight, durable and can be molded
into almost any shape.
Not requiring time-consuming manual work, plastic can be easily mass-produced and
its raw materials are a vailable in vast amounts And incredibly cheaply, and so the
golden era of plastics began Bakelite was used for mechanical parts, PVC for
plumbing electric gears and cases, Acrylic is a shatter resistant alternative to glass
and nylon for stockings and war equipment.
Today almost everything is at least partly made from plastic. Our clothes, phones,
computers, furniture, appliances, houses and cars. Plastic has long ceased to be a
revolutionary material instead it became trash. Coffee cups, plastic bags, or stuff to
wrap a banana. We don't think about this fact a lot. Plastic just appears and goes
away. Unfortunately, it doesn't.
Since synthetic polymers are so durable, plastic takes between 500 and 1,000 years
to break down. But somehow we collectively decided to use this super tough
material for things meant to be thrown away. 40% of plastics are used for packaging.
In the United States, packaging makes up 1/3 of all the waste that is generated
annually. Since its invention, we have produced about 8.3 billion metric tons of
plastic. 335 million tons in 2016 alone. More than 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic
have become waste since 1907. Piled up in one place, that makes a cube with a side
length of 1.9 kilometers. So what did we do with all this waste? 9% was recycled, 12%
burnt. But 79% of it is sticking around still. A lot ends up in the ocean. Around 8
million tons a year.
That's so much plastic that it will outweigh all the fish in the ocean by 2050. Because
it's everywhere, marine animals keep getting trapped in plastic and swallowing it. In
2015 already 90% of seabirds had eaten plastic. Many animals starve with stomachs
full of indigestible trash. In 2018 a dead sperm whale washed up in Spain.
He had eaten 32 kilos of plastic bags, nets and a drum While this is tragic and makes
for great magazine covers, there's an even more widespread, invisible form of plastic.
Microplastics are pieces smaller than 5 millimeters Some of them are used in
cosmetics or toothpaste, but most result from floating waste that is constantly
exposed to UV radiation And crumbles into smaller and smaller pieces 51 trillion such
particles float in the ocean, Where they are even more easily swallowed by all kinds
of marine life.
This has raised concerns among scientists, especially about health risks from the
chemicals that are added to plastic. BPA for example makes plastic bottles
transparent. But there's also evidence that it interferes with our hormonal system.
DEHP makes plastics more flexible, but may cause cancer. It would be pretty bad if
micro plastics are toxic, because they travel up the food chain.
Zooplankton eat micro plastic. Small fish eat zooplankton. So do oysters, crabs and
predatory fish and they all land on our plate. Micro plastics have been found in
honey, in sea salt, in beer, in tap water and in the household dust around us. 8 out of
10 babies and nearly all adults have measurable amounts of phthalates, a common
plastic additive in their bodies.
And 93% of people have BPA in their urine There is little science about this so far and
right now it's inconclusive. We need a lot more research before panic is justified. But
it is safe to say that a lot of stuff happened that we didn't plan for. And we have lost
control over plastic to a certain extent which is kind of scary.
But just to make sure we should simply ban plastics, right? Unfortunately, it's a bit
more complicated than that. Plastic pollution is not the only environmental challenge
we face. Some of the substitutes we'd use for plastic have a higher environmental
impact in other ways. For example : according to a recent study by the Danish
government, making a single-use plastic bag requires so little energy and produces
far lower carbon dioxide emissions compared to a reusable cotton bag, that you need
to use your cotton bag 7 thousand 100 times before it would have a lower impact on
the environment than the plastic bag. We're left with a complex process of trade-
offs. Everything has an impact somehow, and it's hard to find the right balance
between them. Plastic also helps solve problems that we don't have very good
answers for at the moment.
Globally, one-third of all food that's produced is never eaten and ends up rotting
away on landfills where it produces methane. And the best way of preventing food
from spoiling and avoiding unnecessary waste is still plastic packaging. It's also
important to note where the vast majority of the world's plastic pollution is coming
from right now.
90% of all plastic waste entering the ocean through rivers comes from just ten rivers
in Asia and Africa. The Yangtze (長江) in China alone flushes 1.5 million tons of plastic
into the ocean each year. Countries like China, India, Algeria or Indonesia
industrialized at an impressive pace in the last few decades, transforming the lives of
billions of people This development was so fast, that the garbage disposal
infrastructure couldn't keep up with collecting and recycling all the new waste this
brought. If politicians in Europe and the US want to address this issue, investing in
infrastructure in developing countries is just as important as fighting plastic pollution
at home with campaigns and redesigning products to minimize unnecessary plastic
production. The bottom line is, as long as we don't address plastic pollution from a
global perspective, we will not solve it.
Plastic pollution is a complicated problem. We found a magic material and we had a
really good time with it, But we need to be careful or just like Midas, we'll end up in a
world that we didn't wish for. Your individual daily actions still have a huge impact.
What you do matters! Refuse disposable plastics. Convince your friends and family to
do the same.

Ⅰ、 Vocabulary
 1. sterile (Adj.) Completely clean and free from dirt and bacteria. 無菌的
2. saturate (V.) To fill a thing or place completely so that no more can be
added. 使充滿、飽和
3. molecule (N.) The simplest unit of a chemical substance, usually a
group of two or more atoms. 分子
4. carapace (N.) A hard shell that covers and protects animals such as
crabs and turtles.(動物的)殼；甲殼
5. crumble (V.) To break, or cause something to break into small pieces.
(使)粉碎、成碎屑
6. hormonal system (N.) Relating to any of the organs of the body that
make hormones and put and put them into the blood, or to the hormones that
they make. 內分泌系統
7. zooplankton (N.) Very small animals that float near the surface of
water and on which other sea creatures feed. 浮游生物
8. urine (N.) The yellowish liquid waste that is released from the body
when you urinate.
9. methane (N.) A gas with no smell or clour , often used as a fuel. 甲烷；
沼氣
10. infrastructure (N.) The basic systems and services, such as transport
and power supplies, that a country or organization uses in order to work
effectively. 基礎設施

Ⅱ、Summary
Using plastic products is normal in our lives. Almost everything is
made of plastic. Plastic is not bad at all. This article is transcribed from the
video on Youtube, providing some new points to this cliché (老生常談的)
problem— what should we do to reduce the usage of things made of plastic?
First, why do we love plastic? It is light, sterile, and available on
packaging. Moreover, the most important is, cheap!! The resource for
producing product is far less than alternative things such as cotton bag,
reusable tableware, and environmental plate. However, everything is not
perfect. We all know the withdrawal—sea pollution, making human disease
and global catastrophe. 
Therefore, it is a big problem but, slow and steady wins the race, we
can take action from daily life. When you want to take away meals from a
restaurant, an environmental lunch box is come in handy. The best choice is
to convince your friends and parents, that let’s save our world!
Ⅲ、Discussions
1. Can you think of three things about products made of non- plastic?
2. What’s your environmental action for reducing usage of plastic?
3. Do you think it too late save world to do some environmental
actions? Why?

Ⅳ、 Feedback