Approximately 51 trillion microscopic pieces of plastic, weighing 269,000 tons are all around us polluting the very planet we live in. That is about the same as 1345 adult blue whales and 500 times the number of stars in our galaxy. Well, this is just one of the facts of how much a seemingly harmless material like plastic is harming us, our environment and ultimately our planet every day.

Current estimates show that at last 8 million pieces of plastic are entering the oceans every single day. These plastics are causing an immense harm to the aquatic animals, fishes, plants and the ocean overall. Simple materials like the polythene we use as plastic bags and the plastic that is in each and every regular life objects are causing a great harm to our nature. A plastic bottle can last for 450 years in the marine environment, slowly breaking down but never really goes away because plastic is absolutely nonbiodegradable.

Dumping of plastic wastes are destroying our nature and polluting every bit of our soil. In the ocean, plastics cause many aquatic species like turtles and fishes to get trapped in it and eventually choke to death. Even burning of plastic releases poisonous gases like hydrochloric acid, sulphur dioxide fumes, dioxins, furans and heavy metals which pollutes our air and our ecosystem and degrades human and animal health and degrades the healthy living quality of Mother Nature.

Well, there is always a solution to every problem and in this case the only way to save our planet is to stop the production of anymore plastic and recycle and re-use the plastics that are already in existence so that this problem does not grow out of hand anymore and we can save our planet and try to reverse the damage we have already done. Only your voice can make a difference!

The effects of improper disposal of this E-waste on the environment are little known; these impacts nonetheless pose very real threats and dangers to the global environment at large. Improper disposal of these electronic wastes affect the soil, air, and water components of the environment.

Effects on air

One of the most common effects of E-waste on air is through air pollution. For example, a British documentary about Lagos and its inhabitants, called Welcome to Lagos, shows a number of landfill scavengers who go through numerous landfills in Lagos looking for improperly disposed electronics which includes wires, blenders, etc., to make some income from the recycling of these wastes. These men were shown to burn wires to get the copper (a very valuable commodity) in them by open air burning which can release hydrocarbons into the air.

Effects on water

When electronics containing heavy metals such as lead, barium, mercury, lithium (found in mobile phone and computer batteries), etc., are improperly disposed, these heavy metals leach through the soil to reach groundwater channels which eventually run to the surface as streams or small ponds of water. Local communities often depend on these bodies of water and the groundwater. Apart from these chemicals resulting in the death of some of the plants and animals that exist in the water, intake of the contaminated water

In the field of waste management, extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a strategy to add all of the environmental costs associated with a product throughout the product life cycle to the market price of that product. Extended producer responsibility legislation is a driving force behind the adoption of remanufacturing initiatives because it "focuses on the end-ofuse treatment of consumer products and has the primary aim to increase the amount and degree of product recovery and to minimize the environmental impact of waste materials".

EPR uses financial incentives to encourage manufacturers to design environmentally friendly products by holding producers responsible for the costs of managing their products at end of life. This policy approach differs from product stewardship, which shares responsibility across the chain of custody of a product, in that it attempts to relieve local governments of the costs of managing certain priority products by requiring manufacturers to internalize the cost of recycling within the product price. EPR is based on the principle that manufacturers (usually brand owners) have the greatest control over product design and marketing and have the greatest ability and responsibility to reduce toxicity and waste.