Plastic is bad!

What’s so bad about plastic?

Plastic is bad for the environment. Plastic takes a long time to decompose, sea life suffer from plastic pollution and the effect of the poison plastic emits could be very dangerous. But unfortunately plastic is still everywhere we look.

Why is plastic so bad for the environment?

In the past few years a lot of information on the impact of plastic has come to light. Social media outlets have allowed this message to reach more and more people and people are starting to listen and take action.

Plastic takes a very long time to break down. Lets look at a plastic bag (the ones that the supermarkets give out thousands of a day). The average plastic bag can take a VERY LONG time to degrade! The estimate for this is 500-1000 years! This is based on lab testing but due to bags only being used for the past 50 years or so it’s hard to give it an exact figure. It also depends on many other factors; like the environment in which the bag ends up. Regardless it is a long time and THOUSANDS of these bags are given away each day.

Where does the plastic go?

Think about it, millions of bags taking 500-1000 years to decompose… Where does all this plastic go? Land fill and the ocean become the dumping ground for this plastic. Have you seen images of the floating islands of plastic? Have you seen video footage of turtles mistaking plastic for jelly fish? Or the bird with all the plastic in its body? Or the whale with the 30 bags pulled from its dissected insides? Well that is the reason why the bags are harmful to the environment and wildlife. On top of all these devastating images is the visual impact it has on out beautiful environment.

There are many many documentaries about our plastic ocean on youtube. Here is one of those documentaries.  If you would like to read more about the whale full of plastic, click here.

What is plastic doing to us?

The plastic that ends up in land fill may also pose a negative affect on our health. The problem with this plastic is that once it’s dumped it sits for many years where it is weathered and slowly (very slowly!) decomposing and some toxins may end up in soils, running into the water tables, into the roots of plants and the impact of this could pose health problems. I am no expert so I won’t try and pretend I know what plastic does to our bodies but generally I’d prefer not to take the risk with mine or my families health. I veer away from all plastic as much as possible and I never microwave it. It is a very unnatural product that quite frankly, scares me a bit!

What can I do?

One person makes a difference, be it a small difference but a difference all the same. Lots of people means a bigger impact! If every other house hold stopped using plastic wrap and zip locked bags, opted for reusable bags while grocery shopping and tried, wherever possible, to reduce plastic waste then that would be a lot of plastic that would not end up in land fill, in the ocean and poisoning our planet.

Think about the next generation and try to educate them along the way as they will be the ones this will impact the most.

Regal Wraps can help!

Try Regal Wraps instead of plastic wrap or zip lock backs. Not only will they keep your food fresh, but they are biodegradable. They will last you 6-12 months of use, and once you are done they will take little time to decompose. So not only are they good for the environment, they are safe for you and your family to use and not made of toxic materials!

Conclusion

It would be great if we could rid the world of plastic. Unfortunately it is impossible to do this and a lot of damage has already been done. It is now up to us to do our bit and work towards eliminating one use plastics.