What is something that you can’t live without? You might think that it might be something like air, water or your house. Well actually, these are the things you need in life The answer is plastic. You might think that it is actually possible to live without plastic, but if you think about it you might change your mind. Imagine having no pen, only pencils. Imagine there are no straws, only wooden straws that get smudgy very quickly and metal straws that are too heavy and not able to use it once and throw them away. When you think about it this way, it is almost impossible to live without it. However, when there is a good side, there always is a bad side. There is a lot of waste going into the ocean, and animals are eating it. Plastic may be convenient for us, but it is making a lot of waste and we may need to do something before something worse happens. 

People all around the world are using plastic. It is said that plastic is wasted 3.9 billion gallons every year. We can reuse plastic, but that “reusing plastic” is not as easy as it seems. When you are trying to recycle plastic, you need to think about what ways to reuse it. It's easy to  think that we can bury it underground, or even be washed away and will be gone forever. However, when you look at the facts, that is not the way it works. Plastic does not rot, or even break down for the next 450 years, so the only way to reuse plastic is to melt it. And when you are melting the plastic, it is creating a huge amount of pollution, and that is one of the reasons why there is air pollution around the world.

Sir P.s .Jagadeesh Kumar once said that “plastic is the most destructive weapon than a nuclear bomb or an atom bomb, its impact shall remain for centuries on the future generation.” this quote shows that plastic is the most powerful thing, that is not comparable to an nuclear bomb that is able to blow up an whole city.

For many reasons, plastic can also cause people to have cancer. We might think that when we recycle, we save the world, but actually that's when our job is done. When recycling, there is a process of shredding, melting plastic to make something new. And that process is a world damaging thing. You might think…… “why? We are recycling and saving the world!!” An article called “the world counts,” said that “When plastic is produced, it’s made from toxic materials such as benzene and vinyl hydrochloride.  It is destined to be toxic from birth to forever. These chemicals are known to cause cancer, and the manufacturing byproducts contaminate our air and soil.” This briefly means that people think that plastic is not harmful, it is very weak to us, but actually, plastic is made from toxic materials and the chemicals that are in the materials may cause cancer.

We can even reuse plastic into something that we can use it is our daily life, so we won’t have to throw away plastic. Here are some examples.

• Using plastic into a flower pot. We can cut the lid part and punch in some holes in the bottom of the cup. Then put in some mud and seeds and the way to make them grow is to water them the amount they need frequently and put them near sunshine.
•  Use them to be a soda bottle sprinkler. You can attach the hose with your bottle by turning it around like a water bottle cap if you have a double-ended (female/female) hose, which is similar to a clothes washer hose. The female connection on both ends lets you connect the spigot on the soda bottle to a standard outdoor garden hose faucet. Punch some holes, and it is finished! You can use it to water plants, or you can even use it to play around during summer!!

Animals are dying because of plastic. Over 14 million pieces of plastic are getting thrown away everyday. Even when we recycle, only 8.7 percent is getting recycled, so there is still a lot of plastic in the sea. And when plastic is floating in the sea, sea animals, such as  fishes, turtles etc think that those plastics are food, so the animals eat it and die. For example, such a thing as a turtle, they might have seen a plastic bag and thought it was a jellyfish but  that was a plastic bag. We eat fish, so the fish and other animals we eat have at least plastic in it. And plastic is toxic, so there is a chance that we might have been eating plastic without us knowing.

If 1 person tries to save the environment by not using plastic, like not using one time plastic straws, or using plastic bags, it is a very good thing because every effort and contribution counts to make a difference. However, the world is too big for 1 person to save the world and make it a plastic free environment. We need everyone to help by considering other ways to avoid using plastic. For example, instead of using plastic water bottles, you can use a reusable water bottle. We can make the world a better place if we work together and make it a plastic free world.