FIRST CAPWIG CLUB FORMED

A 37 member club was formed during our resent awareness program at E.P.Basic School.
The participants were made up of the pupils of the JHS 1, 2 and 3 with attendance by some staff members and a welcoming headmistress.

The program took the form of power-point presentation as pupils were educated on the harms of plastic waste to the environment and ways to reduce the waste. The enthusiasm of the pupils towards the program was evidently demonstrated in their response to questions and answer.

Exercise books and pens were presented to some pupils who answered questions as a form of motivation. A plastic bin was also presented to the school to be managed by the CAPWIG club. The trash bin was a contribution from the pure water sellers in the school after we(CAPWIG) asked them to be responsible for the rubbish they make.

The CAPWIG club has the responsibility of living the 5 principles of Plastic waste reduction (please read the article (i have reduced plastic waste by something percent)and also educating friends and family to reduce plastic waste.

We hope to replicate this in as many schools that our resources will enable us and preach the message of plastic waste reduction.

Plastic: Where it goes

Like paper, when plastic has been used, it can go to one of two places: The landfill or the recycling center. In a landfill, plastics make up 7% of the waste by weight, and 18% by volume. Of the 44,100 million pounds of plastic products made each year, 26,700 million pounds ends up as municipal solid waste.

As landfill useage decreases each year, it is becoming more popular to incinerate our garbage. Today, with the requirement of emission controls on smoke stacks, burning garbage is 99.9% cleaner than in days of yore. About 10% of all garbage is burned, of this, plastic makes up, as previously stated, 18%.

One of plastics greatest assets is its recycleability. To recycle almost any kind of plastic is to mearely re-melt, and re-form. The re-melting will sterilize, allowing any recycled plastic to be used in even hospital grade products. And plastic can be re-formed into anything, many times over before it becomes brittle, whence it can be made into an ashtry or a mouse pad. If society were to implement a strict plastic recycling, an enormous percentage of plastic would efficiently be used, again.

Plastic: Where it comes from

Plastic comes from oil, and the oil industry is no small operation. In many places around the world, and in the U.S., sites exist where the geologic conditions are such that a gas and oil concentration has been trapped. Upon location of these traps, a hole is drilled and a pipe rammed into the oil deposit. The oil is pushed to the surface due to pressure in its chamber, and also from the weight of earth above. The oil drilling operation, itself, has become a rather small and sterile undertaking. An oil drilling/pumping rig is roughly the size of a house, and very little oil is spilled, anymore. Literally, you could 'mine' oil in your backyard.

At the drilling site, a storage drum is filled, and, when full, the content oil is loaded into trucks, but sometimes piped, to a refining facility. This is where plastic is made.

Plastic comes as a by-product of oil refining, and uses only 4% of the total worlds oil production. It is a 'biogeochemical' manipulation of certain properties of oil, into polymers, that behave 'plastically.' Plastic polymers are manufactured into 5 main types, of which, plastic bags are made of the type known as Polyethylene. Raw Polyethylene comes from oil refineries as resin pellets, usually 3-5 mm diameter, by 2-3 mm tall. The raw material, as it is called, since it is plastic, can be manipulated into any shape, form, size, or color. It is water tight, and can be made UV resistant. Anything can be printed on it, and it can be reused.

Since plastic is so maliable, there are numerous process used to turn plastic into finished goods. To make bags, a machine heats the Polyethylene to about 340 F and extrudes, or pulls out from it, a long, very thin, tube of cooling plastic. This tube has a hot bar dropped on it at intervals however long the desired bag is to be, melting a line . Each melt line becomes the bottom of one bag, and the top of another. The sections, then, are mearely cut out, and a hole that is to be used as the bags' handle is stamped in each piece. Further finishing may be done such as, screen printing, however, for the majority of bags, it's off to the stores, etc., where they will be used.

With the exception of large, fuel burning, heavy machinery, used in the aquisition of oil, the entire plastic bag making process uses only electricity. The electricity used from start to resin/raw material is mostly nuclear. The power used in the bag manufacturing, for the most part, comes from coal fire power plants. One interesting note is that approximately 50% of the electricity generated from coal burning power plants is not from coal at all, it is, in fact, wrought from the burning of old tires, they being made of rubber, which is plastic.

Hazardous effects of plastics (Prt 1)

Polluting substances
In terms of environmental and health effects it is important to differentiate between
the various types of plastics. Most polymers (macromolecules) are considered nontoxic
(PVC is an important exception). Polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), for
example, are inert materials,29 but it should be realized that polymers are not
completely stable. Under the influence of light, heat or mechanical pressure they can
decompose and release hazardous substances. For example, the monomers from
which polymers are made may be released and may affect human health. Both
styrene (which is used to make polystyrene, PS) and vinyl chloride (used to make
PVC) are known to be toxic, and ethylene and propylene may also cause problems.7
The environmental effects of plastics also differ according to the type and quantity of
additives that have been used:
• Some flame retardants may pollute the environment (e.g. bromine
emissions).32
• Pigments or colorants may contain heavy metals that are highly toxic to
humans, such as chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), cobalt (Co), selenium (Se),
lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) are often used to produce brightly coloured
plastics. Cadmium is used in red, yellow and orange pigments. In most
industrialized countries these pigments have been banned by law.
• The additives used as heat stabilizers (i.e. chemical compounds that raise
the temperature at which decomposition occurs), frequently contain heavy
metals such as barium (Ba), tin (Sn), lead and cadmium, sometimes in
combination.32
From the heavy metals mentioned, lead and cadmium are the most serious
environmental pollutants, and have different effects on human health, depending on
their concentrations. When present at or above specific concentrations, they interfere
with processes in plant and animal tissues, and in the soil.
Polymers such as PVC may also have serious impacts on the environment because
they contain a number of hazardous substances. For example, PVC contains chlorine
which can be released during heating as hydrochloric acid (HCl). As is the case with
many other hazardous materials, HCl in itself is not an unfamiliar nor a necessarily
harmful substance (it is produced by the stomach to digest food), but at high
concentrations in the air it affects the human respiratory system. Pure PVC contains
85
58% chlorine; when plasticizers are added, it contains about 49% chlorine. From a
survey of the composition of waste carried out in the Netherlands, it was found that
the chlorine present in PVC contributes about 50% of the total chlorine content of
municipal waste.32
Other potentially hazardous substances in PVC include the relatively large quantities
of additives such as plasticizers (up to 60%) and heat stabilizers (sometimes up to
3%).32 In the opinion of some environmental and consumer organizations in Western
Europe, the use of PVC and other plastics containing chlorine (or bromine),
especially for packaging, should be halted entirely.

The history of plastics production

From a historical viewpoint, the development of plastics can be regarded as one of
the most important technical achievements of the twentieth century. In just 50 years
plastics have permeated virtually every aspect of daily life, paving the way for new
inventions, and replacing materials in existing products. Plastics are light, durable
and versatile, and are now used in countless applications. The success of these
materials has been based on their properties of resilience, resistance to moisture,
chemicals and photo- and biodegradation, their stability, and the fact that they can be
moulded into any desired form.
The plastics industry is relatively young. The first plastics were produced at the turn
of the century, and were based mainly on natural raw materials. Only in 1930 were
(thermo)plastics, made from the basic materials styrene, vinyl chloride and ethylene,
introduced onto the market. But the main growth of the plastics industry did not take
14
place before the 1960s, reaching a peak in 1973, when production reached over 40
million tonnes per year.37 Following a temporary drop in production during the oil
crisis and the economic recession in the beginning of the 1980s, the world production
of plastics continued to increase, to approximately 77 million tonnes in 1986,37 and 86
million tonnes in 1990.38 Figure 1-1 shows the rapid development of plastics
production worldwide, which now far exceeds the combined production of non-ferrous
metals such as aluminium, zinc, lead and copper.
Figure 1-1: Development of plastics production worldwide. see picture
Source: Schouten,38 1991.


The major producers and consumers of plastic materials are North America, Western
Europe and Japan. Currently, about three-quarters of the world’s plastics are
produced in these regions.24 Table 1-1 gives an indication of the shares of plastics
production in the main world regions in the late 1980s. It can be seen that the share
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of "other" countries, which include the whole of Africa, is small, even compared with
countries in Central and South America and in Asia. However, considerable changes
are taking place.37 Western Europe’s share of production is in decline, and capacity
plans indicate that the shares of Asia (excluding Japan), Central and South America
and the Middle East will increase rapidly at the expense of the traditional producers.24
Table 1-1: Location of world plastics production in the late 1980s (%).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
North America 32.0
Western Europe 31.2
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union 12.3
Japan 11.7
Other Asian countries (excluding Japan) 6.9
Central and South America 4.3
Other 1.6
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Johnson,24 1990.
In contrast with most African countries, which import plastics, Egypt has rapidly
increased its output of plastics, largely as a result of the government’s policy to
encourage domestic production. The total value of the plastics produced in Egypt
increased from $18.5 million in 1979 to more than $200 million in 1991. A part of this
output is exported, and total export earnings rose from about $0.5 million in the early
1980s, to more than $60 million in 1990.17
The growth of plastics production has also brought about an increase in waste
production. The very properties that made plastics so attractive are now also
regarded as disadvantages, especially in the industrialized countries. There are very
few environmentally sound methods of disposing of plastics; most resist decay so
well that it will take centuries for them to break down naturally. Because of their light
weight, transportation costs of plastics are relatively high. Also, the huge amount of
different plastic types has made sorting a difficult process. For these reasons, the
recycling of used plastics into new products has been slower to become established
than of some other waste materials such as paper or glass.

I AM DYING, SO YOU ARE

I am dying, you are dying
And am not lying neither am I flying
But none is caring

I walk through the streets of Accra and I feel like crying
The gutters are choked and have stopped flowing
The stench from them is appalling
The sights; the least appealing
Black and white is the colouring
And the substance is plastic bagging
Our beloved country is choking;

Choking under huge plastic waste
Everything is plastic ranging from pure water to tooth paste
From what we wear to what we taste.

People walk empty hands into shops and return with plastic bags
‘Cos they are the cheapest of packaging for a mag
The leading perpetrators of the disaster are pure water bags
You see them everywhere even on facebook, tagged

We are suffocating, choking and dying
Under loads of waste that are not deteriorating.
It is our earth that is suffering and depleting

I am dying, you are dying and none is caring.
We are dying younger and our bodies are tearing
With diseases from gutters that are stinking
All because we litter our streets with plastic
Which no one cares to pick.



By Borsone Isaac (Inspired by my desire to reduce plastic waste in our Country)

I have Reduced Plastic Waste by something percent

I have resorted to doing the following in my bid to reduce plastic waste

1. I have refused to collect ‘take away’ rubber bags as packaging materials for anything I buy. Except in very peculiar cases thus when the items I buy are so much and am not carrying my cotton bag.
2. I have acquired a cotton material bag for buying food stuff from the market. Thanks to my sister. (Guess what? The market women tell me my ‘eye open’, in twi, when anytime I come with the bag). The bag is very neat and presentable.
3. I have resorted to no more buying ‘pure water’ I take coconut juice instead. I drink enough water where I spend most of my time. Thus in the office
4. I buy drinks in cans, cartons and in bottles but not those in Plastic bottles
5. I have separate bins for my trash; one for plastics and one for the rest.

Do not worry about what impact your singular act will make. The aim is to reduce the waste. So with you practicing the above we have achieved marginal reduction.

Let me know when you are practicing these things. Write a note on my blog