Ethics, Sustainable and Social Impact | Plastic Pollution

Running head: ECONOMICS
Ethics, Sustainable and Social Impact
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

ECONOMICS1
Introduction:
The essay provides a deeper insight into plastic pollution and its impact on the planet.
Plastic pollution refers to the accumulation of the plastic particles and objects within earth’s
environment that impacts habitat, wildlife and the humans (Dauvergne 2018). These plastic
objects ranges from bottle, microbeads or bags. Most of these plastics are manufactured from
chemicals that comes from production of the planet warming fuels that includes oil, gas and coal.
Increased reliance on plastics prolongs the demand for the dirty fuels.
Plastic pollution has been the greatest dangers to sustainability of planet since it poses a
significant threat to the oceans. A study conducted in the year 2015, discovered 5.25 trillion
plastics to be floating around. It has been found that plastic sticks around the environment for a
long time thereby spreading toxins and threatening the wildlife. Plastic has also been found to
contribute to the global warming. However, some of the threats posed by plastic pollution
includes, acidification, ocean warming, climate change, habitat destruction and over fishing.
Besides, burning plastic has also been found to release the climate wrecking gases thereby
causing air pollution.
The company chosen for this essay is Walmart Inc. It is one of the most renowned retail
chain based in United States and operates departmental stores, grocery stores and hypermarkets.
In UK, Walmart acquired Asda in the year 1999 thereby becoming one of the biggest
supermarket of Britain (corporate.walmart.com 2020).The essay provides a detailed analysis of
the effects and causes of the plastic pollution along with an evaluation of its performance based
on six characteristics put forward by ‘New Plastics Economy Global Commitment report, 2019’.
The essay also defines and discusses circular economy and portrays how it will influences six

ECONOMICS2
characteristics of the global committee report. The essay concludes on making a judgment on
sustainability of business practice for an organization.
Discussion:
Causes of Plastic Pollution:
The uncontrolled dumping of the plastic waste has been a key environmental topic that
attracted attention of nations and conservationists (friendsoftheearth.uk 2020). A report put
forward by World Bank in the year 2014 indicated that solid waste mostly categorized as the
single use plastic materials has been doubling at alarming rate (Seltenrich 2015). In recent times,
plastic pollution has been major nuisance and posed significant threat to entire environment
thereby resulting in air, land and water pollution. The toxic compounds in plastics leads to grave
consequences to only wildlife, ocean life but also to the plants and humans. There are various
causes of plastic pollution. Some of the causes includes urbanization and population growth,
affordability makes it the raw material for manufacturing process, reckless disposal by the
consumers, slower rate of decomposition, impact of the fishing and the marine industry (Sigler
2014).
As far as population growth and urbanization is concerned, it can be said that the
enhanced growth rate of population leads to a higher demand for cheap and available resources.
The rising demands of the consumers have led to the increased demand and manufacture of
plastic due to its easy availability. In most of the urban areas, plastic comprised of a greater
portion of landfills and constituted close to 80 percent of municipal waste (Pai et al. 2014). When
it comes to raw materials for manufacturing process, plastic seems to be the best choice due to
affordability. This led to the tripling of their production in recent times. In the manufacturing

ECONOMICS3
industry, plastic has been used for making plastic cans, straws, bags, wrappers for packaging,
linings for cartons and food containers. Although, plastic seems to be an easier and cheaper
option for the manufacturing industry, it leads to environmental pollution. As far as the consumer
behavior is concerned it is primarily the reckless disposal of plastic by consumers. Plastic seems
to be one of the easily disposed items as a result of the lightweight. Some of these plastic items
includes plastic bags, plastic bottles, wrappers, food containers and straws (De los Rios and
Charnley 2017). The use period of these items seems to be shorter and are disposed quite easily
once their usage is over. Due to the easy availability as well as affordability, consumers are quick
at disposing used plastics. This culture has worsened the plastic pollution since the plastic ended
up in getting disposed in either the bins or roadsides or get discarded aimlessly in landfills. With
regard to slower rate of decomposition, plastic takes a lot many years for getting decomposed
since they possess a stronger chemical bonding that allows them to last. The simplest plastics
like the ones used for the grocery stores takes a minimum of close to 50 years for breaking down
while the complicated ones takes a minimum of 100 to 600 years for getting decomposed
(Lambert and Wagner 2017). Disposable diapers and plastic bottles takes close to 450 years to
get decomposed while fishing lines take a minimum of 600 years according to the conservation
reports. As far as the impact of fishing and marine industry is concerned, it contributes to the
plastic pollutions in the oceans. The rural beaches of the remote areas comprise of plastic rubbish
that tends to get washed to the shores. This plastic rubbish mostly comes from the ships, boats,
steamers and also the fishing net which is made from plastic. The plastics seems to give away
toxins in water that impacts the marine wildlife in different ways and are sometimes ingested by
marine creatures. Once in water, the debris takes years to undergo decomposition thereby
adversely affecting the marine wildlife and also killing them due to ingestion.