Learning more about plastic pollution
1- What can be made from plastic bottles recycled?
The plastic bottle that you throw in the yellow bin is recovered, cleaned, crushed and transformed! And you can’t imagine everything that it can become: a smart card, another bottle in plastic, a duvet, a watering can, a pillow and even a sweater polar! You will find HERE plenty of ideas to give a second life with plastic bottles!
2- Where does most of our waste end up?
Waste thrown into nature are carried by winds and rains to rivers, and end up in seas and oceans. These wastes are very dangerous, because the plastic kills over 1.5 million marine animals a year. It’s the case in particular of sea turtles which swallow plastic bags in taking them for jellyfish!
3- To reduce waste, it is better to buy
A solution to reduce waste is first to pay attention to what you buy. In the supermarket it is better favor products without packaging, avoid single-use products like wipes or plastic cups, and remember to take a shopping bag rather than plastic bags!
4- Instead of throwing away the toys that you no longer use, you can:
The rest of your meal, your old worn out shoes, your chewed gum, your ballpoint pen exhausted: all this waste ends up in the trash, but not all have the same future. Biodegradable waste, like the rest of your meal, will be assimilated in nature. In contrast, plastic waste take years to disappear. It is for this reason that it is necessary to sort them!
5- Among these wastes, which is not recyclable?
– Plastic bag – Your shampoo bottle. Before throwing away toys or clothes that you do not use plus, ask yourself if they can’t be of use to someone else. You can, for example, bring them to a waste management center: a place that collects used objects to restore them and share them with new people ! Better to give them away, then. on
6- What is composting?
– The use of waste to enrich the land. If you have a garden, think about composting! You can get the organic waste and use them as fertilizer for the earth or even as a heat source.
7- What is the name of large garbage like TVs, the fridges, the computers?
– The bulky. Your old game console, the TV that no longer works or the computer in breakdown is not a waste like the others. They are called “the bulky ”. Before you throw them away make sure they can’t be repaired, and know that there are people who collect them for transform.
Selective sorting is more and more widespread. In large cities, it is easy to find garbage cans yellow for paper and cardboard, and special bins for recover the glass. All this recyclable waste is then recovered, cleaned and processed. Only household waste cannot be recycled, this is the case of plastic bags.
A recent study showed that in Europe, all countries do not produce the same volume of waste. Romania, Czech Republic or Latvia produce little waste. In Denmark, on the other hand, is the bad student in Europe.
These differences are explained by behavior of different consumption. They are even more marked in the rest world. Photographers took pictures of the trash cans of the all over the world, to see the result of their work.
8- There is in the Pacific Ocean an immense sheet of waste, it is the size of:
– France. In February 2010, scientists discovered north of the ocean Atlantic a huge sheet of waste, floating on the ocean: capsules, plastic bags, caps and all kinds of garbage cover almost 700,000 square kilometers, the size of France. This giant trash can represents a danger to all marine species.
