How Plastics Positively Affect Your Daily Life
Everywhere you look, plastics play a crucial role in our lives. They are folded into every aspect of our daily routine and serve as a necessity for modern-day living!
There are new efforts to help recycle and reuse this wonderful material that has given us so much, at times far more benefits than you might realize. Understanding how plastics positively affect your daily life can help you appreciate the good plastic has done.
Environmental Preservation
In rural America, farmers heavily rely on plastics, as do the consumers of agricultural goods. Without plastics, the cost of packaging for fresh meats and produce would increase significantly, considering the cost of alternative materials.
Surprisingly, stepping away from plastic could also increase greenhouse gas emissions due to the efficiency of plastics production today. While greenhouse gases are a concern, water quality is also at risk without the use of plastics. Knowing how to protect our water from drought and pollution with plastic tanks and other solutions has been key to our survival and comfort for decades.
Combatting Hunger
Plastics affect the packaging of our foods in more ways than one. How we perceive food, its overall quality, and freshness are all affected by plastic packaging.
Plastics preserve foods incredibly well, and they are transparent, so it’s easy to identify our foods and inspect them for hazards. The material is highly durable, flexible, and protects foods exceptionally well.
Manufacturers can also vent or tightly seal the packaging depending on the product’s needs. Metal and glass food packaging is much more expensive to produce and lacks the benefits that plastics offer. These benefits allow food in plastic packaging to travel long distances and provide safe, quality meals to those in need.
Healthcare Safety
Strict safety standards mitigate the risks of infections in healthcare settings. An integral part of that safety process involves plastics, specifically how manufacturers can seal sanitized medical equipment and create disposable tools and packaging.
Disposable medical does not require sterilization or reuse, keeping infections minimal. Disposable plastic products have many uses, from medication delivery to body part transplants and even prosthetics. It would be hard to imagine medicine without plastics production.
You can clearly see how plastics affect our daily lives and the essential role they have in the modern world. Understanding the realities of plastic allows us to give credit where it’s due, better our efforts with recycling, and consider the ways we choose to wield this wonderful material to advance our quality of life.
