The need for oil

Our media constantly discusses the need for oil. Without it, human beings will have to find some other form of transport beside motor vehicles fueled by petrol, in the next few years. Indeed, many people are convinced that one of the reasons America went to war in Iraq was to ensure that their oil supplies were maintained.

However, oil for cars is only one issue. There’s another matter related to oil which we hear far less about. Plastic, that stuff which surrounds out daily lives in thousands of ways, is also made from oil.

Ah, you say, but plastic is recycled. Yes, some of it’s recycled, but certainly not back into the same form. For example, plastic drink and milk bottles are never recycled back into drink and milk bottles. That recycled plastic is downgraded, and used for items like fibrefill insulation in clothing and sleeping bags, or polyester carpeting.

And yes, other recycled plastics contribute to plastic materials in motor vehicles or to bicycle helmets. These are the positive side effects of plastic.

But such gains have to be balanced against the use of plastic in the first place.

How good is plastic for us?

Many scientists are concerned that wrapping and storing foods in plastic is actually harmful to humans. Plastics can only be produced by using chemicals mixed with oil, and many of these chemicals contain toxins that are dangerous to people.

When such plastics are wrapped around the food we eat, the toxins will permeate the food. When we consume the food we consume the toxins. Is it any surprise that cancer in on the uprise in world?

Surrounded by plastic

Furthermore, we now live our lives surrounded by plastics. Take the room in which this article is being written, for instance. There is a computer monitor with a plastic frame. Two plastic printers, and a plastic mouse. Dozens of plastic CDs and cassettes in plastic containers. A plastic CD player and speakers. Plastic earphones.

Move to the kitchen, and even more plastic items appear: children’s spoons and cups, food boxes, a dish rack, plastic colanders and measuring cups, to name just a few.

But far more than these are all the plastic containers and packets in which food is sold. How many of these are ever recycled? How many of them have been manufactured in some way that leaves harmful toxins in them, toxins that affect the food we eat?

Our lives are wrapped in plastic and items made from oil – dishwashing liquids, paint, hand lotion, panty hose, eyeglasses, movie film, vitamin capsules, boats, curtains, toilet seats, ballpoint pens, transparent tape, contact lenses, glue, tires. The list goes on and on.

Yes, let’s be concerned about how we’ll move from place to place in the near future, and what emissions are doing to the atmosphere. But let’s also give consideration as to what we’ll make things from once the oil runs out. Can you now imagine a world without plastic?