03 November 2012

Persuasive Speech: Paper Bags or Plastic Bags ?

Both plastic bags and paper bags are usefull for humankind in daily activities. After shopping at mall, buying stuffs in minimarket, buying foods on the roadsides and so on. So, what a huge our needs for plastic and paper. However, the uses of them have emerged a negative impact. 

Plastic
Plastic is made of polyethene, a thermoplastic material which is more than 60 million tons of this material is produced worldwide every year. Then, producing 1 tons of plastic requires 11 barrels of crude oil. According to the research, in one year 1 trilion plastic bags are used worldwide. each person uses about 170  plastic bags each year. It means in every single minute, 2 million plastic bags discarded and become waste. This plastic also has a strong texture and are not easily degraded by soil microorganisms, therefore to decompose, it needs 500-1000 years. Another problems is if plastic waste scattered on the ground it would disturb soil fertility , inhabit water infiltration so it will cause flood.

why dont we try to recycle a plastic bags?
well, only 1% of plastic bags can be recycle, especially it's because the difficulty of choosing plastic used. And recycle costs is not comparable with selling price of recycle product, therefore most of plastic bags then remain as a waste. 

And how about papers?

To reduce the negative impact of using plastic bags for example, in developed countries the use of plastic shopping bags began to be restricted and replaced with paper bags. But, it's not a solution! papers come from trees, meanwhile the function of trees to decompose carbon dioxide (CO2). faster trees are cut to produce papers, faster the problem of greenhouse effect which triger global warming. And to produce papers, it requires 2 tons to 3.5 tons of trees to make 1 tons of paper.

So, which one should we choose? plastic bags or paper bags? or not both?

The most important is:
Minimize the use of plastic and paper bags
Using bio-degradable plastic bags: maizena (degrdable in 6 months)
Self awareness, prefer using our bags than plastic or papers

By Agis Cevi

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