“I Didn’t Know I Was Destroying the Earth! Why Is That?”
First, plastic does not biodegrade, so unless it is used again, it sits at the bottom of landfills pretty much forever or floats around the ocean.
What does BIODEGRADE mean? This is a natural process that turns our waste back into the soil. When you discard something that is biodegradable it can break down or dissolve because of the sun, water, and oxygen. The most common biodegradable waste comes from our kitchen.
If you threw a banana peel in the dirt, in a few weeks, it would dissolve and break down to simple compounds and it would actually feed the earth. (You can learn more about this in our section on composting and find out how worms are an important part of that!)
Plastic is one of the materials that we use every day that is NON-biodegradable. Plastic takes hundreds of years to break down and is hazardous to the environment. When it does start to break down it releases toxic chemicals that cause air pollution and also poisons the soil. Plastic does not biodegrade, it just breaks into smaller and smaller bits but never really goes away. These bits get into our oceans and are eaten by fish, which we then eat. It is a terrible cycle. Imagine if you started eating plastic that was made out of petroleum (gasoline is made out of petroleum) this would make you very sick.
Just think about this: If something is not good for you to eat, it is NOT good for the Earth and the creatures on it to eat either!
