With the development of industry and economy, environmental problems are becoming more and more serious in China. Trees were cut down, the rivers were heavily polluted, and the air is flooded with car exhaust. Moreover, wherever we go today, the city is littered with random plastic rubbish. White pollution has brought about negative effects and even poses a great threat to humans existence.
We must face the situation that exists and take actions to solve it.
1. What is urban white pollution
With the remarkable improvement of peoples living standard, people tend to buy more goods. In order to meet this demand, disposable foam boxes, plastic bags, chopsticks began to frequently enter peoples daily life. These easy-to-use, low-cost packaging materials brought a lot of convenience to peoples life. However, they are often threw around after use and caused white pollution.
2. Negative effects of white pollution
The main hazards of white pollution are “visual pollution” and “potential hazards”:
Firstly, visual pollution. In our cities, especially in those commercial and tourist areas, scattered waste plastic packages give people poor visual stimulation, which not only do harm to the environment, but also affect the overall beauty of cities and scenic spots, giving people the impression that the city is dirty.
Secondly, potential hazards. As we all known, plastic bags are non-biodegradable material and it will stay in the soil for a long time, and the poison released from them will cause potential harm to the ecological environment. For example, plastic landfill treatment can encroach on too much land; plastics and scraps of paper will pollute the air when they were burned; floating plastic bags, bottles, boxes not only pollute the water, but also kill animals that eat them; whats worse, white garbage is almost combustible, fire accidents are likely to occur in the case of open fire, causing great losses to human beings. Meanwhile, white rubbish could become a nest for harmful pests, such as mice, mosquitoes and flies, which could lead to more infectious diseases.
3. White pollution countermeasures
The prevention and control of white pollution in our country should follow the principles of “taking propaganda and education as the forerunner, strengthening management as the core, recycling as the main means, and substitute products as supplementary measures”. So the government, administrative department, communities, schools, enterprises and citizens must make joint efforts to deal with it.
Firstly, the government needs to enact and promulgate more laws and regulations on white pollution, and clarify the obligations and legal responsibilities of producers, sellers and consumers to recycle and use waste plastic packaging. All supermarkets, shopping malls and market markets are prohibited from using disposable and non-degradable plastic packages free of charge. Secondly, the government must force citizens to recycle and reuse clean waste plastic packages for oil refining, paint making, construction materials and so on. It not only can avoid visual pollution, but also can solve the problem of causing potential hazards, relieving the pressure of resources, lightening the load of solid waste disposal, and obtaining certain economic benefits.
Secondly, the administrative department should strengthen the management according to law, urge the enterprises such as tourism, hotel, catering, retailing to collect and dispose of the waste plastic packaging properly, and change the phenomenon that no one is responsible for the throwing of the white rubbish. At the same time, they should strictly supervise and manage those irresponsible enterprises, punishe them if necessary, in order to urge them to pay for their own bad behavior.
Thirdly, communities and schools should strengthen propaganda and education, improve peoples understanding of white pollution and its harm, guide citizens to form good living habits and environmental consciousness, so that the whole society can actively participate in the environmental protection and resist the bad behavior around them.
Fourthly, enterprises should take responsibility actively. As we all know, what is more important to prevent white pollution is to solve the deep harm of waste plastic packaging to the ecological environment. This requires enterprises to make efforts to reduce the production of waste plastic packaging, recycle waste plastic packaging and strengthen the research and development of alternative packaging products.
Last but not the least, as high school students we should actively pay attention to the environment, consciously raise our own awareness of environmental protection, actively take responsibility and obligation to protect the urban environment, stop littering from ourselves, and bravely fight against the bad behavior around us, so that to make our own contribution to the prevention and control of urban white pollution.
【作者簡(jiǎn)介】趙宇軒(2001.12-),男,漢族,河北辛集人,石家莊二中實(shí)驗(yàn)學(xué)校學(xué)生。