Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Expanded polystyrene
(EPS)
is a petroleum-based plastic product that is used for food
take away packaging, other types of packaging and shipping, which easily breaks
down into small loating pieces that pollute marine and terrestrial ecosystems even
in microscopic fragments. EPS products are the least expensive food packaging, have
insulating properties to keep food and beverages either warm or cold and are supplied
free of charge to consumers with their purchases.
Plastics have many beneits such as low permeability, resistance to chemicals, to
impact, to moisture and to ire. Plastic shopping bags are widely used for transporting
a range of small consumer goods, and in some regions, also serve secondary roles
for conveying drinking water and disposing of human and other domestic wastes.
It is estimated that between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags are used globally
each year [2]. Nevertheless the production, processing and use of plastics do generate
wastes. Uncontrolled disposal of these bags has been causing environmental problems
worldwide, and many municipal, regional, and national governments are beginning
to take action.
It is reported that almost 90% of the debris loating in our oceans is plastic.
The scale of contamination of the marine environment by plastic debris is vast. It is
found loating in all the world's oceans, everywhere from Polar regions to the equator
[3]. The information that is being collected and compiled through the International
Coastal Cleanup (ICC) operating in 132 countries globally since 1989, which is
coordinated by Ocean Conservancy (a US based ocean observation non-governmental
organisation (NGO)) provides a valuable database that can be used to help catalogue
and analyse the main sources and activities responsible for marine litter pollution, of
which the plastics are an integral part.
The most common plastic debris observed on the near shore areas are artifacts made
from plastics. The majority of plastic items consist of soft drink and water bottles,
kitchen and detergent containers, plastic ishing loats, plastic bags, broken pieces of
buckets and bins, plastic strapping and so on. The continuous discarding of plastics
into the marine environment and their slow degradation has led to the observed
increase of this contamination of the sea.
Technical information on the environmentally sound management of plastic waste
is critical for parties to the Basel Convention, in particular developing countries,
to prepare adequate programmes and policies in this ield. Environmentally sound
management is deined in Annex II of the Basel Convention as 'taking all practicable
steps to ensure that hazardous wastes or other wastes are managed in a manner
which will protect human health and the environment against adverse effects which
may result from such wastes' (United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)) [4].
