Plastic Products vs. Our Environment After researching throughout the databases and articles for a topic that needs dire attention I came to find that plastic bags marked the spot. I’ve always knew that plastic bags did have a impact on our environment, but I did not expect it to affect many things in our environment that could affect us in the long run. Everyday we go to the store to pick up an item and place those items in a plastic bag we step closer to what could end up destroying our home we call earth. Recycling Plastic products need to be a law because plastic destroys our environment, water life, as well as human life. Plastic is made up of toxic elements that could harm our environment regarding to our soil. Soil provides us with shelter for our homes, helps plants grow, and basically is needed to help all living things stay alive. When we throw away our plastic where does it go? Well as we know it gets dumped in a certain area and keeps piling up. But what happens when it gets into our soil? Well, when Jonas Pereira and others conducted an experiment on the affects of plastic straw material in our soil it showed how threatening plastic could be. In the experiment they planted sugarcane into soil and let it grow. They then planted the sugarcane with plastic to see the changes when it grew with plastic. They noticed that when they were grown with plastic the plants total dry mass was decreased by 46% during their experiment. Plastic is limiting the amount of nutrients the plant would normally release if it didn’t have plastic growing with it. Eventually if this continues it will negatively interfere with productivity and sustainability of the actual production. Therefore, plastic bags can interfere with plants physical properties and organic matter, which will have a negative impact on the productivity and sustainability of the plant. The next issue would be that plastic products affect our waters. They can kill the animals that live in the water. Dumanoski, the author of this research paper on how plastic can kill ocean life, stated that plastic material could last up to 450 years. Now how much plastic has collected in our waters throughout that amount of time? I bet a lot. Considering that the article stated that plastic kills about 100,000 marines lives each year means that we are killing off lots and lots of marine life. If we keep plastic in our waters we will eventually destroy our marine life and who knows what would happen then. Plastic products need to be recycled so it doesn’t end up in waters, which will kill the marine life in it. Finally, plastic can affect our life. Considering all the following I have explained plastic can affect plants and animal life. Human beings need plants for food or for the natural process as we all know photosynthesis to give us oxygen to breathe. We also need animals for food as well and to help keep the natural life process in our ecosystems. Plastic can kill off two of these important factors in our daily lives. If we continue using plastic and not recycling it we could end the human race on this planet. Therefore, recycling plastic products need to be set into a law so that it can stop threatening our human existence. Plastic products need to be recycled, but need this one little push which is to make it into law so that people are required to recycle plastic. We can’t wait for people to choose to recycle plastic because our planet only has one life and one chance to make it alive. We waited to long and now it’s taking a toll on our planet. We need to make it into a law that plastic must be recycled because it will destroy our environment on land, marine life, and our own life that we exist in.