Plastic pollutes the environment, how about using glass instead?

Plastic pollutes the environment, but we have to use it because it is really cheap.

The price of ordinary plastic is about 8,400 yuan per ton, which means that the price of one kilogram of plastic is only 4.2 yuan. Plastic is a very light material. If it is used to make beverage bottles, one kilogram of plastic can make a lot of them. The low price of plastic makes people turn a blind eye to its harm. Another reason why people can ignore the harm of plastic is that the damage of plastic to the ecology is a slow process. We will not immediately see the harm caused by discarding a large number of plastic products. It takes a certain amount of time for plastic to flow into the ecosystem before the harm is manifested. We all know that plastic is a material that is difficult to degrade naturally. Although it is difficult to degrade naturally, it will be worn out due to the physical effects of nature.

In nature, plastics break down into tiny particles that become smaller and smaller until they become invisible to the naked eye.

These tiny plastic particles will enter the bodies of animals and then return to the human body through the biological cycle. You and I may already have these tiny particles in our bodies. Of course, we don’t feel uncomfortable because of these tiny plastic particles, but this does not mean that they are harmless. Everything takes time. Because of the harm of plastic, some environmentalists once advocated the use of glass to replace plastic, but now it seems that this is not a good idea. Researchers at the University of Southampton conducted a classification study on this issue and found that among the commonly used materials, glass is actually the most harmful to the environment.

The harm of glass to the environment does not occur after use, but before use.

Glass is also a material that is difficult to degrade. It takes about 100 years for it to degrade in nature. However, the essence of glass is sand, so even if it flows into nature, it will not cause harm to the ecosystem. The harm of glass to the environment mainly lies in its production and transportation process. As just mentioned, the essence of glass is sand, so a lot of sand is needed to produce glass. You may not know that sand is actually a rare resource, because the sand in the desert is too smooth to be used in production and construction, so the sand usually referred to is mainly obtained from quarries and aquatic ecosystems, such as river sand, so sand mining itself is a kind of destruction to the ecology.

In some parts of the world, such as the beaches of Jamaica, armed conflicts have even broken out over sand dredging.

The environmental pollution caused by glass is not limited to the acquisition of raw materials. The production process itself will also produce a large amount of pollutants. In the process of glass melting, petroleum coke powder, heavy oil and natural gas are used as fuels. These fuels will generate sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and other substances after combustion. These dust substances are very sticky and corrosive. If they are not treated or not treated properly, they will flow into the environment, which is very harmful. Silicosis is a typical pulmonary fibrosis disease and a type of pneumoconiosis. It is usually caused by long-term inhalation of dust with a high silica content. This disease is more common among glass manufacturing workers, and the reason is self-evident.

In addition to the production process, the harm of glass to the environment is also reflected in the transportation process.

Whether it is plastic products or glass products, they are always used to hold things. Take a one-liter beverage as an example. The plastic bottle usually used to hold it is only about 20-30 grams. But if the plastic bottle is replaced with a glass bottle, how heavy will the container be? Not a pound, but eight ounces. That is to say, under the same volume, the weight of glass products is more than 20 times that of plastic products, which means that the transportation cost will increase significantly. The transportation process consumes fossil fuels, and more fossil fuel consumption means more serious pollution. Therefore, using glass bottles to replace plastic bottles will not only increase costs, but also increase pollution.

Can't glass be recycled? Yes, but the recycling process is not as simple as you might think.

Recycling also has to go through the process of transportation, crushing, and melting before it can be made into new glass products. Although this process is less polluting than directly manufacturing glass, it still causes considerable pollution, so researchers have identified glass as the material with the most serious comprehensive pollution, followed by plastic. So what kind of material is less polluting to the environment? According to the research results, among the five materials involved in the classification study, recyclable aluminum cans have the least pollution, because overall, the process of recycling aluminum cans can save 95% of the energy used to make new aluminum cans. Of course, the premise of all this is that humans can effectively improve the recycling rate of these containers. If the recycling rate cannot be increased, everything is empty talk.

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