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There has been a lot in the news about the dangers of Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in plastic water bottles that can seep into the contents and have serious health risks. Unfortunately, this is not the only health risk associated with plastics. As discussed in the previous section, plastics do not degrade very easily, but as they do they leach hazardous chemicals such as polyvinyl chloride which can cause cancer, phthalates which are linked with asthma, Polycarbonate with Bisphenol A which can cause cancer, diabetes, obesity, and hyperactivity among many other things. One way that all of these chemicals can escape is when they are attempted to be reduced by burning. This method can be disastrous because the chemicals become airborne, which allows for quick entry into human bodies. Also, formed when plastic is burned are chemicals called dioxins, which coat the leaves of plants, and enter the food chain, wreaking havoc on plants and animals in an eco system. The other way that chemicals can escape from plastics is when they slowly decompose and allow bits of their composition to absorb into the soil, and eventually past the water table into the ground water. This event can have even worse repercussions than burning, because if contaminants get into the groundwater, it is easy for them to spread and make the water being pumped to all surrounding communities dangerous to drink. This in itself creates a drawn-out cycle, because when tap water is contaminated, people are forced to buy bottled water to drink, creating more bottles to end up in landfills and eventually pollute more water.

The monetary problems associated with disposable plastics can be grouped into two sub categories; personal, and communal. Personally, the cost of purchasing and consuming one time use containers adds up. If a person were to purchase one water bottle1 a day for a year, they would spend $547.50, money that could be used for better purposes. Although not yet proposed in North Carolina, many other states and communities have begun enacting “plastic bag taxes” that make consumers pay a small fee (usually around $0.05) for every plastic bag that they require when shopping. These taxes are good, because they provide incentive for people to bring reusable cloth shopping bags along with them, but they can also cause a problem to someone not wanting to bother with keeping up with shopping bags. All of this adds up to the fact that using disposable goods is throwing away money that most people do not have to waste.

Aside from the personal expense associated with using plastic materials, there are also many expenses that the whole state and country suffer because so many choose these products. Plastic is made from natural gas or oil, and a lot of it. About .2% of the world’s oil is used up in the production of plastics. Because oil is a non-renewable resource and becoming increasingly less easy to find, prices have sky rocketed to the disappointment of drivers everywhere and the abundance of oil being used to make all of the plastic is doing nothing to help the high prices. In addition to the burden on the citizens, the abundance of plastics being disposed imposes on the government. $250 million tax dollars are spent by the federal government each year to subsidize recycling programs to try to prevent plastics being sent to landfills. All of this money is basically wasted, because it could easily be saved if only we reduced our consumption of disposable plastic products.

                                                            1 Using $1.50 per bottle, the cross‐brand average. 

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Works Cited Assembly, North Carolina General. "SESSION LAW 2005‐362." 7 September 2005. 

Berkley Ecology Department. Adverse Health Effects of Plastics. Fact Sheer. Berkley, CA: The Ecology Center at Berkley, 2002. 

Burt, Tim. "Nitrate pollution in rural catchments: a long‐term issue?" Geography Review (2009): 38. 

Cozic, Ed. Charles P. ""Preface to 'Is Toxic Waste a Health Hazard?'."." Greenhaven Press 1997. 

Daily Mail. "The life cycle of a plastic bag." This is Money (2008). 

EPA, US. "Municiple Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2008." Governmental Report. 2008. 

Gibbs, Lois Marie. Dying from Dioxin. Boston : South End Press, 1995. 

Guala, Piergiacomo. Security bottle closure device. United States of America: Patent 3937348. 10 2 1976. 

Jacobson, Robert. Water: No Longer Taken for Granted. Detroit, 2005. 

Joseph, Stephen. SavethePlasticBag.com. 2008. 1 January 2010 <http://www.savetheplasticbag.com/ReadContent601.aspx>. 

Lee, Jenifer. "Taxing Plastic Bags, From Pennies Here to Millions There." City Room 2 February 2009. 

Moser, Laura. "Message in a Bottle." Slate (2007). 

Mundane, The Joy of the. Walmart;s Phone Card Packaging is Very Efficent.  

National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences. "Potential Health Risks Of Plastic Drink Bottles Under Investigation." Science Daily (2007): 1 Jan. 2010. 

Orange County, North Carolina Collection Statistics. 11 September 2009. 1 January 2010 <<http://www.co.orange.nc.us/recycling/stats.asp>>. 

Pulsifier, Catherine. The "Reduce" of Recycle and Reuse. Recycle, Reduce, Reuse Articles. 2008. 

Rice‐Oxley, Mark. "Plastic Bag Revolt Spreads Across Britian." USA Today.com 20 June 2007. 

Savage, Melissa. "A Profusion of Plastic." State Legislatures Vol. 34, No. 5. SIRS Researcher. Web. 31 December 2009., 2008. 16‐17. 

Stanford University Recycling Program. Commonly Asked Questions. 20 November 2000. 1 January 2009 <http://recycling.stanford.edu/recycling/caq_plastic.html>. 

SustainablesPC. "http://sustainablespc.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/bottles1.jpg." 2008. 

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Health & Environmental Effects of Burning Agricultural Plastics. Fact Sheet. Madison, 2008.