Vol. 11, Issue 5 (2022)

Author(s):
Dr. Manorama Singh, Dr. Manoj Kumar Pathak and Srishti Rai

Abstract:
Plastic is defined as a polymeric material. The term applies to a vast variety of material, these material at some stage of their manufacture have capacity to flow. Plastic is capable of being shaped or molded or layered as a coat, spun or casted under adequate heat and pressure. It is a well-known fact about plastic that it is resistant to degradation. Owing to this property of plastic it can travel far away from the source as waste and get accumulated in the environment. It is estimated that more than eight million tons of plastic enters the ocean annually. Despite of the knowledge of how plastic is damaging the environment only a small fraction of plastic waste (around fourteen percent) is collected for recycling. The rest enters the environment as waste. Presence of this non-biodegradable small particles of plastic is so strong that it is also present in the food that we eat and in the water that we drink. Their impact on the living world is so strong that it is known to affect almost all the levels of biological organization.