TAIPEI: Taiwan is planning a blanket ban on single-use plastic items including straws, cups and shopping bags by 2030, officials said Thursday, with restaurants facing new restrictions from next year.      It is the latest push by Taiwan to cut waste and pollution after introducing a recycling programme and charges for plastic bags. The islands eco-drive has also extended to limiting the use of incense at temples and festivals to protect public health.Its new plan will force major chain restaurants to stop providing plastic straws for in-store use from 2019, a requirement that will expand to all dining outlets in 2020.   Consumers will have to pay extra for all straws, plastic shopping bags, disposable utensils and beverage cups from 2025, ahead of a full ban on the single-use items five years later, according to the road map from the governments Environmental Protection Administration (EPA). "We aim https://www.yongfengchina.com/product/automobile-series/ to implement a blanket ban by 2030 to significantly reduce plastic waste that pollutes the ocean and also gets into the food chain to affect human health," said Lai Ying-ying, an EPA official supervising the new programme.  According to Lai, a Taiwanese person on average uses 700 plastic bags annually. The EPA aims to reduce the number to 100 by 2025 and to zero by 2030. The government has already banned free plastic shopping bags in major retail outlets including supermarkets and convenience stores, expanding the move to smaller businesses including bakeries and drinks kiosks from this year. The island started recycling plastic and pushing to reduce single-use plastic items more than a decade ago. Last year, nearly 200,000 tonnes of plastic containers were recycled, the EPA said.In a bid to clean up the oceans and rivers, the UK government is also planning to ban plastic staws. Media reports say Environment Secretary Michael Gove will make the announcement before Brexit.  "Watch this space. If it is bad, then banning it is a good thing," he is quoted as saying by The Sun.Plastic sea pollution was pushed into the spotlight after scenes in one of Sir David Attenborough’s wildlife documentary showed a whale carrying her dead newborn around for many days.

The US is known to ship over one million tons of plastic waste overseas every year. But how much of the plastic we use is being recycled and in the right way? How much of it is ending up in the environment or landfills and are causing newer problems that are difficult to fix?A new report finds that we are often drinking a credit-card size amount of plastic along with https://www.yongfengchina.com/product/automobile-series/ water every week. This new finding highlights that a number of plastic bottles that people drop on the streets of New York arent always broken down or made into some new product. Out of that one million, most of the plastic used to land in China for recycling, until it put a stop to the import of plastic waste in 2017.Recycling plastic waste can significantly help the environment.Moving away from China, much of the plastic waste is now redirected to some of the poorest nations including Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Laos, and Senegal, according to The Guardian.For example, Malaysia improperly disposes 55 per cent of its own plastic waste, and yet it receives more US recyclables than any other country.

The US in 2018 shipped about 68,000 containers with plastic waste to some developing countries, which mishandle about 70 per cent of their own plastic waste.This unwanted pileup of plastic around the beaches or even in the processing facilities in these countries is posing serious health hazards to people who are subjected to contaminated water supply with the smell of plastic fumes in the water. The report also added that an estimated 20-70 per cent of the plastic waste going for recycling facilities worldwide is not fit for use hence discarded as trash. Thus, these end up lying around the globe around the beaches or even in someones backyard, according to Live Science.

I hope that this project will allow the ancient skills of boat building to live on, by shifting from ever-scarce wood to plastic," Morrison told Reuters.So the tall, bearded 42-year-old decided to try to design a traditional dhow, or sailing boat, from recycled plastic, offering a market to recyclers and persuading locals to conserve shrinking woodland."It is getting harder and harder for boat builders to find wood."We struggle to produce a consistent material out of the recycled plastic," he said. This is something we can do.The East African country is now contemplating measures to control plastic bottles, said John Konchellah, chairman of the National Environment Management Authority. There is so much plastic scattered. "Some people have been asking what we can do about this problem. "We want to borrow some technology from the region like PETCO in South Africa, where major manufacturers came together with a body that recycles plastic bottles."Petco is a company formed by the South African plastics industry to recycle some types of plastic. How could I build a boat out of plastic?" he asked."Ali Skanda, a 44-year-old master boat builder, said in his childhood there was no litter on Lamu’s sandy golden beaches - just fishermen, dhows and donkeys."We want to see plastic bottles out of circulation," he told Reuters.In August, Kenya introduced one of the world’s toughest bans on plastic bags mandating four years in prison or a fine of $40,000 for even using one.Plastic pollution is a growing global problem, with patches of sea larger than some countries covered in plastic soup that strangles or poisons wildlife. Now many donkeys are dying from eating plastic, he said - and so are turtles, cows and other animals.Morrison, working with eight expert Kenyan boat builders, is using plastic planks from the fledgling local recycling industry to build his boat, which he hopes to sail to Cape Town in South Africa. "It’s not easy. Sometimes we receive plastic planks from the factory that are full of air bubbles.When a resident organized a beach clean-up that collected 33 tons of rubbish in a single summer, British-Ethiopian safari organizer Ben Morrison decided he couldn’t stand by while his beloved island was ruined. The UN says by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish unless drastic action is taken."At the beginning I thought it was a crazy idea.The beaches https://www.yongfengchina.com/product/ of Kenya’s idyllic Lamu island are dotted with traditional Swahili stone and coral houses, mansions built by European royalty, the odd donkey and, increasingly, tidal lines of plastic trash.". We can’t build with them and so we have to start from the beginning again

One recent innovation is the Choose Water Bottle — a completely plastic free, decomposable bottle that aims to replace plastic water bottles. Of the myriad reasons causing such a decline, an important one is pollution caused by the presence or introduction of such substances in the environment that harm the ecosystem, or have poisonous effects on life forms.Research conducted by scientists from the University of California, University of Georgia and Sea Education Association in 2017 reports that approximately 6,300 mt of plastic waste has been generated as of 2015, of which around 9% had been recycled, 12% burned, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environments. This product, developed by a British inventor James Longcroft, is made up of recycled paper layered with a biodegradable waterproof lining on one side. Scientists have been researching ways to reduce toxicity and shelf life of plastic to make it bio- and eco-friendly. Bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates — key ingredients of modern plastic, have been found from a trace to lethal quantities in numerous food items, potable water and even in our bodies.Perils of plasticPlastic has permeated everywhere from the environment to our bodies. One such example is plastic. Researchers have produced biodegradable plastic and the global production capacity of bio-based or biodegradable plastics is estimated to be only 4 mt.Reducing plastic waste seems difficult, but is necessary.Worldwide, research has proved that all forms of pollution pose a serious threat to biodiversity, and many instances of local extirpation/extinction of native flora and fauna have been documented.Not just the chemicals leaching out of plastics are the immediate threat, but owing to its nature of long shelf life, plastic also is a physical hazard to scores of living organisms both on land and in water.(Dr Chelmala Srinivasulu is FLS Assistant Professor of Zoology Osmania University). Since its synthesis in 1907, plastic has become the most used synthetic material for varied purposes.Earth, the only place where life can exist, is fast losing its life-supporting ability due to ever-increasing negative changes brought about by human activities.InnovationsMany innovations to create biodegradable plastic or alternatives have been reported in the new millennium. Use of ProDegradant Concentrates and MasterBatch Pellets to plastic make it degradable either through microbes or naturally through chemical processes in the environment. Both the paper and the inner layer degrade naturally over a period of three weeks. It is believed that if traces of BPA are not detected in your urine, then you do not belong to the modern world! As long as the dosage is below the threshold levels no direct harm to life forms can be detected.Every human being has come in contact with and used plastic of all types many times.

Japanese scientists have also discovered an enzyme, extracted out of bacteria Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6, that can break down plastic in six to 10 weeks. Manufacturing of plastic has outpaced other materials in the last 65 years, and the uptrend will continue in future.Plastics are mostly chemical polymers and depending on their type, may be one of the following: acrylics, halogenated plastics, polyesters, polyurethanes, and silicones. Ever-increasing human population has not only put pressure on natural resources but also has resulted in increased pollutants. Change in our attitude in https://www.yongfengchina.com/product/ this regard will go long way in curbing this menace. The production of raw materials that feed the plastic industry has increased from 2 million metric tonnes (mt) in 1950 to 380 mt in 2015, with as much as 7,800 mt produced, of which a little over half has been produced in the last 15 years or so.The scientific and technological revolution has no doubt helped humans to advance at an unprecedented rate, but it has also quickened the production of lethal pollutants.There are many alternatives to plastic ranging from cotton to paper. There is an urgent need to increase the production of biodegradable plastics. Other innovations aimed at reducing plastic waste include seaweed based wrappings, agriculture by-product and food waste based fully compostable packaging material, etc. But these alternatives have their own limitations due to their natural origin.

The same study also predicts that by 2050 roughly 12,000 mt of plastic waste would be accumulated in natural environments throughout the world. Our dependence on plastic needs to be reduced through the use of better and safer alternatives.Ocean-dwelling animals are facing greater threat due to the large quantity of plastic finding its way into the seas and are causing imbalance and in some cases life threats to many species including scores of fish species, turtles, etc.Alternative to plasticsThe modern world cannot survive without plastics, but keeping in view the price that life and the environment is paying for using plastic, its alternatives need to be encouraged