To put it simply, considering only pollution and ignoring other factors, landfilling is more environmentally friendly. For common plastic bags, burning consumes energy and causes pollution. Landfilling consumes less energy, and with proper management, the pollution is almost negligible. However, while landfilling does not consume energy, it consumes a large amount of another resource: land, which is a completely non-renewable resource. In particular, the large-scale landfilling of plastic waste inevitably pollutes groundwater.
I. Composition of Plastic Bags
The main components of plastic bags are polyethylene (PE), polyvinyl chloride (PV), polypropylene (PP), and polystyrene resin (PS), all of which are petroleum derivatives. According to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, producing one ton of plastic bags requires 11 barrels of crude oil. Analysis by environmental departments in Japan and Germany shows that producing 50,000 plastic bags requires 1,000 kilograms of polyethylene. Currently, China uses more than 3 billion plastic bags daily, with an annual usage exceeding 1 trillion. Assuming each plastic bag weighs 3 grams, China consumes 9,000 tons of plastic bags daily, equivalent to 99,000 barrels of crude oil.
II. Plastic Bag Burning
Currently, a major method of disposing of plastic bags is burning. Incineration produces a substance called dioxin. It is known that the greatest harm of this substance is its irreversible "three-fold" toxicity: teratogenicity, carcinogenicity, and gene mutation. It is one of the most toxic endocrine disruptors. Once it enters the human or wild animal body through environmental media and the food chain, it will interfere with their endocrine and reproductive systems, affecting the survival and reproduction of offspring.
Dioxin is a colorless and odorless fat-soluble substance with extremely high toxicity, 130 times that of cyanide and 900 times that of arsenic, earning it the title of "poison of the century." The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified it as a Group 1 carcinogen for humans. Environmental experts say that dioxins often exist as tiny particles in the atmosphere, soil, and water.
III. Landfilling of Plastic Bags
Landfilling waste plastics not only occupies a large amount of land, but the occupied land cannot be restored in the long term, affecting the sustainable use of land. Since waste plastic products in household waste cannot degrade in 200 years if landfilled, this exacerbates the pressure on land resources. Humanity will not only be surrounded by garbage in our generation, but future generations will also lose their living space. be addressed at its source.
IV. Fundamental Solutions
(1)Use fewer or no plastic bags in daily life, or reuse them. Many countries have implemented a paid plastic bag policy. Supermarkets and shopping malls no longer provide plastic bags free of charge in order to cultivate our habit of using fewer plastic bags and the concept of recycling.
(2)Research on biodegradable plastic bags: Currently, biodegradable plastic bags mainly include four categories:
1. Photodegradable plastics: These plastics contain photosensitizers, causing them to gradually decompose under sunlight. They belong to the earlier type of biodegradable plastics, but their degradation time is difficult to predict due to variations in sunlight and climate.
2. Biodegradable plastics: These plastics can be completely decomposed into low-molecular-weight compounds under the action of microorganisms. Their advantages include convenient storage and transportation; as long as they are kept dry, they do not need to be protected from light, and they have a wide range of applications.
3. Photo/biodegradable plastics: These plastics combine photodegradation and microbial degradation, possessing the characteristics of both photodegradable and microbial plastics.
4. Water-degradable plastics
These plastics contain water-absorbing substances, allowing them to dissolve in water after use. They are mainly used in the medical and hygiene fields, such as medical gloves, and are easy to dispose of and disinfect.
For the sake of our survival and living environment, it is recommended that everyone use as few plastic bags as possible, or reuse them, or only use biodegradable ones, in order to reduce their pollution to the earth.
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