Canadian macroeconomic policies
The world is drowning in plastic pollution. According to Condor Ferries (2020), around 8
million pieces of plastic make their way to our oceans every day and a rate of 12.7 million tonnes
of plastic a year pollutes the water resource. The ocean is the life support of Earth with about
97% of the world‟s water and its richness in marine resources and diversity makes it the number
one source of protein, economic support, and ecological balance for over a billion people and the
environment. Plastic consumption is now inevitable due to its advantages to humankind; it is
cheap and durable. It is commonly used in product packaging, medical advances, and economic
support for the sustainability of other resources.
The rise in the world‟s utilization of plastics has changed the daily lives of people, and its
annual production is likely to reach 300 million tons which are nearly equal to the human
population. Plastic bottles, plastic straws, drinking cups, shampoo bottles, and protective
packaging such as food wrappers are those frequently used kinds of plastic in daily living.
According to the marine biologists from Westminster City Council (2020), plastic ending up in
the ocean every year will double by 2025, and by the year 2050, there will be more plastics than
fish on our planet, when not managed and controlled the earliest time possible.
Massive accumulation of plastics without the scientific process of reducing and recycling
creates what is called plastic waste. Controlling the number of plastics and plastic waste present
in the world is a massive and demanding challenge because it requires more than 400 years for
plastic waste to decompose and recycling it was not easy. Half of 50% of the total percentage of
plastic waste the world possesses today is mostly single-use and the statistics data says that 79%
of the plastic waste is accumulated and piled up in mountain ranges at landfills and floats above
or sink beneath the ocean. Only 1% of marine litter floats above the ocean and everything left
sinks to the seafloor. Moreover, merely 9% of the total rate of the world‟s plastic waste is being
recycled and 12% gets reduced to ashes. Plastic waste or plastic pollution broadly contributes
unfavorable effects to the environment, biological health of the wildlife, and all living things.
Ingestion of polluted or contaminated food from the water resource like the ocean
because of plastic wastes increases the numbers of humanity troubled by illnesses such as cancer,
skin diseases, genotoxic, immune disorders, and birth defects. Plastic wastes usually clog the
drainages or draining system of communities which contributes to flooding. According to the
Solar Impulse (2020), plastics distinctively plastic bags disturbs the photosynthesis of plants
which is a great source of food production. Moreover, plastics possessing chlorine that is thrown
in the soil does not only affect soil but also the ecosystem beyond and around the field. A
statement by Verma et. al (2016), the incineration of plastic contributes to air pollution as well
for it releases toxic gases like mercury and dioxins when plastics are burnt.
Furthermore, plastic waste pollution adversely gives destructive damage to wildlife and
their habitat. When animals, especially marine species starve can easily misinterpret the small
fragments of plastics as food which when consumed cannot be digested simply and can result in
death and mortality and the species might be endangered. 700 species of marine animals are in
danger of extinction owed to plastic ingestion. 1 out of 3 marine animals has been found
entwined in plastic. Marine plastic pollution has affected more than two-thirds of
the world‟s fish
, education, industry, and medical fields. Concurring to The
stock market. Likewise, the coral reefs which serve as the nurturing habitat and home to more
than 25% of marine species encounter plastics and are shaken as well. The Republic of China is
the biggest polluting country with the most produced and contributed plastic waste as of 2020
with a rate of 29%. China is followed by Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka
completing the top 5 contributors to plastic waste with around 60% of all plastic pollution. The
world‟s water resources are greatly disturbed by the discussed global issue and the world can
barely manage the crisis.
Also, deforestation is a global issue and the main environmental problem being solved
and faced nowadays. World forests are the motherland of Earth‟s terrestrial biodiversity which
provides water and gives sustainability to food production.70% of the world‟s plant and animal
species live within the forests. Trees within providing habitat to wildlife absorb the carbon
dioxide we exhale, emit oxygen that people used to breathe in, and traps the greenhouse gases
human activities produced. According to Nunez (2019) of National Geographic, forests cover
about 30% of the Earth‟s terrain but vanish at a very alarming rate. Every one minute, about 36
football fields‟ worth of trees are lost due to deforestation. According to the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2020), in the middle of 2015 and 2020, the
deforestation rate was estimated at 10 million hectares per year, from 16 million hectares per
year in the 1990s. The area of primary forest worldwide has decreased by over 80 million
hectares since 1990. Livestock grazing, farming, drilling, mining, urbanization, forest fires, and
wildfires account for the regular causes of deforestation.
Furthermore, the world‟s wood and paper products are provided from trees through
logging operations. In line with this, massive production of paper requires a large number of
trees to be cut down. Besides, illegal logging builds a road to access more and more forests and
causes deforestation as well. Corresponding to Aithal (2016), exclusive of raw and produced
material‟s transportation and machine maintenance, paper production is luxurious and requires
twelve trees, 540,000 liters of water, and require chemicals to manufacture one ton of paper- 324
liters of water to make 1 kilogram of paper (The World Count, 2020). The paper industry is also
registered as one of the country‟s supreme vital industries since it is diversely utilized in
agriculture, business, communication
World Counts (2020), 40% of the world‟s commercially cut timbers are used for paper
production. 42% of all global wood harvest is used to make paper. The mentioned pulpwood
agricultural estate and mills threaten natural occurrences and over 30 million properties of woods
are damaged annually and lead to deforestation. In line with Daniel Matthew (2016) of the
AIChE, goal 1 of the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) is to end forest loss in 2030 and
aims to reduce 50% of deforestation rate by 2020. Dependent on paper can be detrimental.
Therefore, the rationale of this paper review of research studies is to provide data,
arguments, and pieces of evidence of how the above mentioned environmental issues, water
pollution, and deforestation are reduced and lessened. This paper will give profitable, effective,
and proven processes and methods on how to reduce plastic waste pollution and lessen the
depletion of trees through manipulating plastic wastes as an alternative resource or material for
paper production. This will be mainly significant to the people around the world to raise
awareness about the current global issues and how they can be unified to solve the problems as
mentioned.