Individuals feel good and comfortable when handling packed commodities but are not ready to solve the problems of plastic waste. Packaging is more than just material used to carry products. It is the art and technology of enclosing and protecting products for distribution, use and storage. Packaging is meant to contain, protect and preserve a product. It also meant to inform the consumer about the product and thereby attracting the customer. It can also be used to reduce security risks on transportation by deterring manipulation of the product.
Plastic is one of the most commonly used packaging material in the world. High Density Polyethylene is the most widely used plastic type. It makes many types of bottles and containers as well as shopping bags. This is mainly because of its stable form, chemical resistant properties, non-interactive abilities and also the fact that it is of light weight and is cheaper to manufacture. In Africa, plastic packaging has reported high growth rates as demands for its uses increases. Despite the fact that plastics are useful in packaging of goods, they have a negative impact on the environment.
Statistics show that in the period between 1950 to 2018, about 6.3 billion tonnes of plastics have been produced worldwide. One can imagine how much has been produced to date considering the increased demand in cheaper packaging material. Of the billions of tonnes produced only 9% has been recycled and 12% incinerated. Zimbabwe alone produces about 300 million tonnes of plastic waste every year. This is mainly attributed to the increase in human population and consistent demand for cheaper packaging thereby resulting in continuous generation of plastic waste and its accompanied environmental pollution.
Indiscriminate disposal of waste from plastics can pose detrimental effects to the environment as well as human health. The evidence of the effects of environmental pollution due to plastic waste is manifesting itself in several ways. These include reduction in the aesthetic value of the environment, entanglement and death of aquatic organisms, sewage system blockages in towns and cities of most developing countries, creation of a habitable and conducive environment for breeding mosquitoes and other disease causing vectors, production of foul smells as well as reduction in water percolation and normal agricultural soils aeration.
In today’s world, biodegradable plastic is becoming the best and an integral part of the solution to plastic waste pollution. Biodegradable plastics are plastics that can be decomposed by the action of living organisms, usually microbes, into water, carbon dioxide, and biomass. These are being made by extracting sugar from plants like corn and sugarcane to convert into polylactic acids (PLAs), or can be made from polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) engineered from microorganisms. Biodegradable plastics are considered to be eco-friendly, because they are commonly produced with renewable raw materials, micro-organisms, petrochemicals, or combinations of all three. The acquisition of knowledge of biodegradable plastics is a noble idea as it plays an important component in the implementation of the circular economy model in Zimbabwe. Important environmental value of biodegradable plastics is in the areas of packaging, single-use items, and agricultural plastic mulches. Biodegradable plastics are gaining popularity worldwide, however, attention needs to be paid to additives used in biodegradable plastics to ensure that the additives do not pose an environmental hazard.
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