Sustainable Business Development: Plastic Production, Use, and Disposal - Essay Example

Introduction The burning of petroleum produces carbon dioxide that facilitates trapping of heat in the atmosphere, and this is harmful to the environment. One of the most common products produced through this process is plastic. The materials used in the manufacturing of plastics are crude oil, natural gas, coal, cellulose, and salt (Williams, 2015). Crude oil also has toxic components and if drilled in a shoddy manner in the ocean those components will also affect the marine ecosystem. In addition, the environmental effects of the production of plastics and global warming are inter related thus it is important to examine the ‘unsustainability’ of the production, use, and disposal of plastics (Gervet, 2007). This paper analyses the environmental impact of the production, use, and disposal of plastics, and ways to mitigate these environmental problems. The discussion also includes topics in sustainable development, sustainable business, and environmental impact assessment. Literature Review When the World Commission on Environment and Development publicised Our Common Future they tried to deal with the issue of contradictions between development objectives and the environment by articulating a definition of sustainable development: “Sustainable development is development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Lee, McNeill, & Holland, 2000, p. 42). In the wide-ranging application of and discourse on the notion of sustainable development from then on, there has largely been an acknowledgment of three features of sustainability (Harris, 2003, p. 1): Economic: An economically sustainable system must be able to produce goods and services on a continuing basis, to maintain manageable levels of government and external debt, and to avoid extreme sectoral imbalances which damage agricultural or industrial production; Environmental: An environmentally sustainable system must maintain a stable resource base, avoiding over-exploitation of renewable resource systems or environmental sink functions, and depleting non-renewable resources only to the extent that investment is made in adequate substitutes. This includes maintenance of biodiversity, atmospheric stability, and other ecosystem functions not ordinarily classes as economic resources. Social: A socially sustainable system must achieve distributional equity, adequate provision of social services including health and education, gender equity, and political accountability and participation. Apparently, the above three components of sustainable development raise numerous possible difficulties or complexities to the initial straightforward definition. In reality, it is almost impossible to prevent compromises or trade-offs. The intensely normative aspect of the sustainable development model makes it hard to identify systematically (Harris, 2003). Nevertheless, the three components—economic, environmental, and social—do have significance in a practical manner. They fulfil the principles specified previously for a strong, understandable concept which can have broad relevance. According to Lee and colleagues (2000), it may be simpler to define unsustainability than sustainability, and the definition of unsustainability can encourage or promote needed policy measures. ‘Sustainable development’, ‘sustainability’, ‘sustainable business’, and ‘corporate social responsibility (CSR)’ are all concepts applied, usually synonymously. CSR has become increasingly unpopular among several Europeans due to connections with earlier failures; whilst in areas of the United States ‘sustainability’ carries anti-business or anti-corporate meanings (Lee et al., 2000). For business organisations, the particular meaning of the concept is even more overwhelming. The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, a valuable attempt to offer recommendations on corporate best practice, places emphasis on taxation, competition, consumer interests, environment, and employment and industrial relations and has requirements on broad policies in other segments like supply chain management and human rights (Harris, 2003). It is not acceptable anymore for a company to attain economic success in separation from its stakeholders or those entities affected by its actions. A company should now place emphasis on both enhancing its profitability and being a socially responsible corporate entity. Keeping up-to-date with worldwide patterns and staying dedicated to financial responsibilities to provide both public and private welfares have compelled business organisations to restructure their business models, policies, and approaches. To make sense of and improve present attempts, the most socially responsible companies keep on amending their long- and short-term programmes, to overcome fast evolving opportunities and challenges (Lee et al., 2000). Furthermore, a major and complicated transition has taken place in how companies should see themselves with regard to a broad array of both global and local stakeholders. The kind of relationships that an organisation has with its major stakeholders, like employees, suppliers, investors, customers, and communities, is critical to its profitability, as is its capacity to act in response to competitive circumstances and CSR. These important changes demand global and national corporations to design their businesses in consideration of sustainability, and both organisational and individual leadership fulfils an important part in this transformation. Companies have created various techniques for addressing this interplay between the natural environment, societal demands, and parallel business needs (Harris, 2003). Sustainable development or CSR is thus a major component of the society and business literature, dealing with issues of stakeholder management, corporate social performance, and business ethics. Assessing Environmental Impact of Products Environmentally informed decision making demands knowledge, data, or information about environmental impact of activities, processes, or products. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodical instrument to examine and evaluate environmental effects over the product’s whole life cycle. LCA includes examining the main processes and phases comprised in a product’s life cycle—extraction of raw materials, manufacturing, use, reuse or recycling, and disposal, determining and measuring the environmental outcomes at every phase (Joshi, 2000). The objective of LCA is to create a holistic perspective in process and product assessment. The LCA model is broadly acknowledged as a valuable model and efforts are on-going to incorporate life-cycle analysis into corporate decision making. An important international programme in this path is the chain of environmental management standards (EMS) formulated and introduced by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) (Jonsson, 2000). However, even though theoretically plain, easy, and engaging, LCAs are hard to perform in the real world. Manufacturing of most common materials and products demands numerous varied inputs, which then utilise numerous other inputs in their process of production. Usually there are co-dependencies in inputs, which must be shown. Trying to identify all the indirect and direct inputs and related environmental costs up until the final extraction of raw material becomes a difficult activity (Hertwich, 2010). For instance, production of steel demands a huge number of inputs such as computer support, alloys, chemicals, electricity, limestone, iron ore, and others, which consequently depend on resources from virtually all economic sectors, as well as the steel industry. So as to maintain the manageability of the analysis, majority of LCAs restrict the scope only to the main inputs at every phase, resulting in issues of biased boundary comparability and description across analyses (Hertwich, 2010). Furthermore, information on input prerequisites and discharges for even these shortened LCAs has to be gathered from a huge number of various suppliers resulting in problems with data verifiability and confidentiality, and substantial costs. Consequently, LCA is regarded a faulty instrument that cannot fulfil what it assures (Jonsson, 2000). To deal with the issue of biased boundary description in traditional LCA, Lave and associates recommended applying economic input-output (EIO) assessment methods in LCA (Hertwich, 2010). Economic input-output life-cycle analysis performs an assessment from the top to the bottom and views the entire economy as the limit of analysis (Joshi, 2000). Environmental Impact of Plastic Natural gases and crude oil are the primary ingredients of plastics. These non-renewable resources are transformed into propylene and ethylene by means of high temperature heating systems. The subsequent procedures depend on what type of plastic is wanted. It is calculated that a single ton of plastic bags is equivalent to eleven drums of crude oil (Yano et al., 2014). In addition, toxic discharges are made during the process of plastic production. This is apparent with a variety of production processes. Plastics have been in existence for hundreds of years, and by this time they are in all places, for good and for bad. Plastic coverings and containers are used to preserve food or maintain its freshness, but they can also harm the human body by giving out neurotoxins like BPA, which is found in epoxy resins and polycarbonate plastics (Briassoulis et al., 2013). The effects of plastic waste on the environment and human health are becoming more and more obvious. A great deal of available information is about plastic waste in the aquatic environment, even though there are studies that show that plastic waste in poorly handled recycling facilities and in landfills could be generating an effect, most from the chemicals found in plastic (Zhu et al., 2011). In the aquatic ecosystem, the most widely known effects are entrapment and absorption by wildlife. Possibly one of the most problematic effects to completely understand, yet also possibly one of the most worrying, is the effect of chemicals linked to plastic waste. There are a number of chemicals in plastic components itself that have been included to furnish it with specific substances like flame retardants, phthalates, and BPA (Yano et al., 2014). All of these have recognised adverse impact on the health of animals and humans. Nevertheless, in certain instances plastic could possibly serve as a sink for waste products, reducing the exposure of wildlife to these wastes, especially if they are submerged on the seafloor. Microplastics, with their huge surface area-to-volume ration, could have a greater ability to expose the environment and wildlife to chemicals compared to bigger plastics (Williams, 2015). Still, when absorbed, microplastics could go to the digestive system faster than bigger plastics, possibly creating fewer chances for chemicals to be digested into the circulatory system. Even though plastic wastes may not constantly bring about evident damage or death as a remote variable, when merged with other effects, like oil spills or unrestricted fishing, it could add increasingly to severe effects. Such sub-fatal outcomes are not easy to observe or track, but are nevertheless vital to identify (Yano et al., 2014). Studies have shown that certain species or developmental phases are more susceptible to absorption of plastic wastes and the harmful impact of the chemicals found in it. Environmental Impact of Plastic Production, Use, and Disposal The most noticeable type of pollution related to plastic packaging is unused or discarded plastic dumped in landfills. Plastics are quite stable and thus remain in the environment for many years once they are disposed of, particularly if they are buried in landfills and thus protected from direct sunlight (Zhu et al., 2011). Rates of decomposition are additionally reduced by anti-oxidants that manufacturers usually use to improve the protection of containers from acidic substances. Moreover, plastics generate a huge chemical weight on the ecosystem. The Oakland Recycling Association directed an investigation of the harmful chemical load that depended greatly on Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) information (Yano et al., 2014). These pieces of information were inadequate because manufacturers in the ‘miscellaneous plastic sector’ failed to submit statements or reports (Briassoulis et al., 2013, p. 1264). Still, these data revealed that majority of lethal emissions went into the air, and manufacturers of plastics comprised 14 per cent of the overall total. Of the manufacturers ranked highest in terms of overall emissions, majority manufactured plastic foam products (Williams, 2015, para 2-3). Less noticeable but highly severe is the pollution created by plastic resin production. While ethylene is polymerised, the unstable combination is brushed with watered down aqueous caustic mixtures that become highly toxic pollutants. The process of refinement makes use of waste-reduction techniques, but point-source air discharges remain elevated due to innate problems in managing huge streams of pressurised gases (Gervet, 2007). Production of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resin produces higher levels of lethal discharges (benzene, ethylene oxide, ethylbenzene, nickel) than glass production. Manufacturing plastics can be harmful to workers, as well. Major accidents have comprised chemical spills, chemical fires, fogs of poisonous vapour, and explosions (Zhu et al., 2011). These types of accidents have brought about serious property damage, evacuations, injuries, and deaths. Yet, over the recent decades, there has been a quite sharp increase in plastic manufacturing, particularly in Asia. For instance, China alone makes up 15 per cent of global plastics production (Zhu et al., 2011, p. 2148). Polyethylene has the biggest production share of any polymer form, whilst four segments comprise 72 per cent of demand for plastics—electrical and electronic equipment, automotive, construction, and packaging (Briassoulis et al., 2013, p. 1266). Others involve segments like medical equipment, agriculture, furniture, and household. The plastics industry is continuously growing and developing, with technology advancing in response to continuously evolving demand. Several trends that arise noticeably are continuous developments and innovations like persistent expansion in bioplastics’ market share and increasing utilisation of plastics in the manufacturing of automobiles (Gervet, 2007). Plastic bags are a common item for retailers and consumers because they are an affordable, sturdy, lightweight, efficient, and sanitary means to carry food and other goods. Majority of these are dumped in garbage piles and landfill after use, and several are recycled. Even though plastic bags comprise a mere fraction of all wastes, the effects of these plastic bags are still considerable. Plastic bags produce visual pollution issues and can generate adverse impact on land-dwelling and marine wildlife. In developed nations an extremely huge number of plastic bags are disposed of annually, majority of which are used a single time before dumping (Williams, 2015). The most serious dilemma with plastic bags is that they do not easily decompose or disintegrate in the environment. It has been discovered that the regular plastic bag is discarded after using it for a few minutes, yet takes five centuries to decay (William, 2015). Plastic bags contain ethylene, a gas that is generated as an offshoot of coal, gas, and oil production. Ethylene is transformed into sequences of ethylene molecules, or polymers, known as polyethylene. This material is converted into pellets which are utilised by manufacturers of plastics to generate an array of products, such as plastic bags. Once plastics are used, discarded, or recycled, or dumped into the environment as waste, they decompose and emit poisonous chemicals (Yano et al., 2014). These waste products or contaminants comprise chemicals like dioxins and benzene, and heavy metals like lead and cadmium, and other contaminants, which all emit toxic pollutants into water bodies and air. At the moment, almost all plastics are being discarded—dumped at landfills or, more probably, furnaces (Yano et al., 2014). Burning plastics emits poisonous chemicals and heavy metals. Furnaces generates various poisonous emissions to land, water, and air that are major sources of highly toxic contaminants, such as chlorinated organic compounds (e.g. dioxin) that are widely recognised for their harmful impact on the environment and human health (Briassoulis et al., 2013). Leachate is generated in landfills when water absorbs contaminants as it leaks through the garbage. This garbage comprises plastics of all kinds (Zhu et al., 2011). Even though landfills try to amass this poisonous leachate, it also seeps into surface and ground water, discharging contaminants into the environment and posing health threats for wildlife and human beings. Global Warming and Plastics Global warming refers to a phenomenon wherein the atmosphere and oceans of the earth keep on warming up to very high temperatures. This leads to desertification, more dangerous storms, and destruction of wildlife. Global warming is presumed to bring about escalating sea levels, which will cause disruption of everyday life in coastal areas—usually the most heavily populated areas on Earth (Yano et al., 2014). The production, use, and disposal of plastics are some of those activities that scientists have associated with human-made global warming. Whenever one buys something from a supermarket and the cashier puts the bought items into a plastic bag, they are adding to the severity of global warming. Author Carolyn Sayre revealed in a 2007 Time magazine editorial that “only 3 percent of the 500 billion plastic bags clerks give to customers after every shopping trip are ever recycled” (Williams, 2015, para 2). She then recommends making use of plant-based bags, for plastic bags emit greenhouse gases when one dispose these of the landfills and they start to disintegrate. Plastic is also the main material used in making bottled water. The Natural Resources Defence Council made a statement that bottled water aggravates global warming during distribution/ transport and after consumption (Williams, 2015). During distribution or transport, manufacturers send the bottles from place to place, and then trucks and airliners ship them to retailers—contaminating the place with higher levels of greenhouse gases. After consumption, a massive number of water bottles clutter up or block landfills, taking centuries to decompose (Williams, 2015). Plastic production also emits greenhouse gases and poisonous chemicals into the atmosphere. Numerous products made from plastic are manufactured with crude oil. A report from the Lulea University approximates that the production of plastics creates “about the same magnitude than the gas flaring, less than the impact of nuclear power, and more than coal fires” (Gervet, 2007, p. 6). Plastics choke plants that have the capacity to absorb certain amounts of carbon gases trapped in the atmosphere and mitigate their effect. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation includes plastic in its ranking of top pollutants. Corals are one of the most important elements in preserving life in the bodies of water (Gervet, 2007). As stated by Algalita Marine Research Foundation, since plastic can release poisonous chemicals, scattered or floating plastic can destroy existing corals, and consequently other aquatic wildlife (Gervet, 2007). Nonetheless, even though global warming is recognised by the scientific community, its source remains uncertain. Some scientists proposed a very natural explanation—that global warming is an outcome of heat secretions from the worldwide use of non-renewable sources of energy (Yano et al., 2014). Global warming implies that heat has been building up in water, land, and air since the latter part of the 19th century. During the same time heat was emitted into the atmosphere through heat decay from the worldwide consumption of nuclear power and fossil fuel. Any kind of warm air pollution must aggravate the warming. Heat emissions are the main contributor to global warming (Briassoulis et al., 2013). Furthermore, the level of released heat is miscalculated, because the non-commercial consumption of fossil fuel is excluded, such as oil used in plastics manufacturing, consumed at a higher level than the growth (Zhu et al., 2011). The use of crude oil in the production of plastics generates heating that, in turn, contributes to global warming. How to Make the Production, Use, and Disposal of Plastics Sustainable? A substantial amount of waste that is dumped into landfills disintegrates, leading to the discharge of both carbon dioxide and methane. 20 million tons of carbon dioxide was discharged from the dumping of waste products on land in 2008 alone (Briassoulis et al., 2013, p. 1268). Waste regulations can affect choices made in business organisations, particularly within their supply chain, where production of greenhouse gases is normally more substantial. Utilising recycled materials in products rather than new materials normally lead to lesser greenhouse gas discharges over the life cycle of a product (Gervet, 2007). High materials and energy consumption levels in developed nations are the main reason for the deterioration in practically every primary life support system on the planet. Over the recent decade, more and more researchers and scholars reported that present-day energy and materials consumption levels have a disrupting impact on the earth’s atmosphere. The utilisation of energy directly influences climate change by raising the number of carbon-based molecules in the atmosphere (Gervet, 2007). These carbon-based molecules, mainly CO2 from heated petroleum materials, capture heat and prevent it from being released from the planet’s atmosphere. The consequent increase in air temperature has kept on affecting global climate (Williams, 2015). The consumption of materials directly affects climate change because it needs energy to explore, mine, gather, process, and transport unprocessed materials; greater energy levels for production, distribution or delivery, and disposal of wastes. The industry of plastics is one of the biggest and most rapidly expanding manufacturing sector globally, motivated greatly by intensifying global consumption and social demand to prefer expedient, useful products (Yano et al., 2014). Nevertheless, even though plastic products provide temporary uses, the lifetime, or longer term disadvantages are seldom measured. A vital mission therefore will be in the formulation of methods and measurements to evaluate the gains of a product in relation to the disadvantages of its longer term harmful, carbon, and ecological impact. Single-use plastic goods, such as bags, cups, straws, and packaging, could be appropriate products for this kind of cost-benefit analysis or risk assessment (Zhu et al., 2011). Only a small number of empirical findings on the polluting and carbon impact of single-use plastic products are available, yet studies on alternatives to plastic has placed emphasis on this set of products. Comprised in the expanding list of alternative resources are biodegradable ones (Yano et al., 2014). Yet, the environmental disadvantages of biodegradable materials are seldom evaluated and require additional academic investigation. As a case in point, plastics that have polyactic acid (PLA) need a specifically controlled setting so as to break down—oxygen lacking for bacteria and extremely high temperatures to disintegrate PLA plastics (Yano et al., 2014). According to Briassoulis and colleagues (2013), most household composting mechanisms and landfills cannot supply these requirements, leading to decomposition durations for PLA goods the same as those of common plastic products. Other arising issues with biodegradable plastics are their incompatibility with usual plastic products—they cannot be recycled alongside traditional plastic products. Biodegradable plastics are also generally regarded pollutants in recycling facilities (Briassoulis et al., 2013). Moreover, biodegradable plastics could disintegrate at an extreme pace leading to an escalation in the environmental costs of microplastics, and worsened littering may come about due to packaging marked biodegradable (Gervet, 2007). Thus, there is an apparent demand for addition studies to formulate and verify methods for evaluating the specific life-cycle advantages and disadvantages of alternative products when evaluated against the plastic materials they substitute. One technique of decreasing plastic is to utilise goods made from a broad array of other materials like glass, stainless steel, or cotton/hemp (Gervet, 2007). However, seldom have the effectiveness and efficiency of these alternative materials been evaluated. Furthermore, although it is apparent that product design and engineering attempts are continuing, and the creation of substitute materials or products to decrease the environmental impact of plastics is becoming increasingly popular, there is a definite need for studies on social and economic motivators to guarantee the adoption of alternatives. Clear measurements of the life-cycle disadvantages of ‘free’ plastic packaging are a successful means to alter consumer behaviour, yet there is considerable possibility for additional social- and economic-based studies in this area (Zhu et al., 2011). In general, the major challenge is to gain accurate knowledge of the comparative social, environmental, and economic costs and benefits of current products in comparison to new alternative products. Together these parcels of information are fundamental to enable appropriate assessment of product modifications so as to guarantee overall lasting environmental benefits. Resourceful packaging is one of the solutions to the growing environmental impact of the plastics industry. Environmental interests reunite the objective to lessen total life-cycle outcomes with the necessity to sustain value and quality. As regards packaging, this implies indirect and direct resource productivity, waste reduction, reuse, and recycling (Gervet, 2007). By lengthening food’s shelf-life and thus regulating quantities of food waste, packaging vigorously lessens the total environmental effect of the production of food (Briassoulis et al., 2013). With regard to preserving food, plastic products have facilitated major innovations like preservatives able to lessen the oxygen transmission into the package, also called ‘oxygen scavengers’ and interactive materials have been emphasised in a paper by Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a UK government department (Zhu et al., 2011). In industrialised nations where packaging is utilised there is a mere 3 per cent of food waste in comparison to 50 per cent in developing nations (Gervet, 2007, p. 7). This leads to substantial emissions and energy savings as the decrease in food waste implies lower production, processing, and delivery of food. Finally, these following strategies have the potential to mitigate the environmental impact of the production, use, and disposal of plastics (Yano et al., 2014): producing the information that specify and explain the environmental profiles of various polymers and their intermediaries; working with other stakeholders and the value chain to enhance awareness and knowledge of plastics as facilitators of secure, resource-competent processes and products; collaborating with regulatory agencies and policymakers to guarantee a practical, strong, and stable legislative setting; and performing scientific studies intended to examine the environmental effects of plastics, and its impact on the safety, wellbeing, and health of consumers and workers. Conclusions Plastic is one of the most common household and industrial materials made from crude oil and petroleum. It is widely known that the production, use, and disposal of plastics generate environmental problems, especially in relation to global warming. The most noticeable type of pollution related to plastic packaging is unused or discarded plastic dumped in landfills. Plastics are quite stable and thus remain in the environment for many years once they are disposed of, particularly if they are buried in landfills and thus protected from direct sunlight. However, these environmental effects can be mitigated through collaboration between public and private agencies, government and nongovernmental organisations, and among stakeholders. References Briassoulis, D et al (2013) Review, mapping and analysis of the agricultural plastic waste generation and consolidation in Europe. Waste Management & Research, 31(12), 1262-1278. Gervet, B (2007) The Use of Crude Oil in Plastic Making Contributes to Global Warming. [Online] Available from: http://www.ltu.se/cms_fs/1.5035!/plastics%20-%20final.pdf. 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