HH Yea Won,
Very nice job! I am proud to have you as part of the Department of Health and Social
Welfare. You talk about how useful plastics are, and that is an irrefutable truth, yet
you also talk about the harm that they cause. I was not aware of the leaching problem
with typical landfills – this could also destroy our water table!
I am happy to see that you can recommends some very promising alternatives.
Though these may disrupt our economy in the short term, the long-term benefits
would be huge. I also think that if we set up plastic alternative industries, these could
produce a lot of jobs and may increase the countries exports!
Great stuff!
The Pres
The Honorable T. Charles Donohue
President of Peoples Republic of Mbantu
Mbantu City
Dear Mr. President,
As a member of the team at the privileged Department of Health and Social Welfare, I
am writing to you because I am deeply concerned of the threat that the plastic plague
poses to our distinguished citizens of the Peoples Republic of Mbantu. Much to our
concern, disturbing amounts of plastics are being consumed in the stock markets of
our nation. From plastic toothbrush, to plastic water bottles, plastic containers,
computers, to even plastic forks, this hard, synthetic, and flexural material is
becoming frighteningly integral to the lives of our beloved people! For the good of
our nation, the proliferation of all plastic materials must be immediately stopped and
alternatives ought to be found.
Plastic is used in multifarious aspects of today’s industry. In a world that requires a
cost effective, fast, and short lived material, plastic is the perfect substance meeting
all those requirements. Plastics are light, hard, cost effective, and are able to be
compressed into many different shapes and forms. Moreover, plastics are convenient
to carry and versatile, thus, making it a commonly used material for a variety of
packing purposes. Not only are plastics used for packaging, but indeed, from
aeronautics, construction, electronics, to our daily necessities, plastic is simply
ubiquitous. It is now difficult to imagine a world without plastics. As a matter of fact,
it is simply an incontrovertible truth that circumventing the mass production of plastic
is difficult.
Plastics could easily be overlooked as a common object or material we use in our life.
Nonetheless, this light, polyethylene “material” is not becoming, but is already a huge
threat to our society. Speaking in terms of disposal, the result of plastic has been
devastating. These plastic materials that we’ve carelessly thrown away accumulate,
and then forms a congregation of plastics called landfills. And these landfills, are so
massive and all-consuming that a cliché “the Great Wall of China is the sole man
made structure seen from the moon” is invalid unless a new addition has been made:
the fresh kills landfill.
However, the landfills really become deadly when leachate starts to come out. When
rain falls, a toxic, unpleasant liquid called leachate flows out from the plastics. These
toxic “juice” flows into the nearby fields and contaminates the crops. Moreover, the
toxins from the leachate are infamous for causing cancer, neuron damages, and
simply unnamable disorders in our body systems. I am deeply disturbed at the fact
that Mbantu has more than 50 landfill areas. At this rate, more and more leachatecaused diseases will appear in the people of Mbantu. Already, there have been
increased complaints of the farmers of Mbantu regarding the toxic liquid in their
farmlands. Plastics are not only a threat to the health of your citizens, but are also a
great economical harm. It is a well known fact that Mbantu’s main industry is in
agriculture and farming. With the damage landfills causing to the crops, the crop
market of Mbantu will more or less deplete. If 50 million dollars are saved by
producing cheap plastics, there is a potential that we will lose another 200 million
dollars due to plastics.
We can easily observe that Mbantu is slowly leading to its oblivion by dint of plastics.
Robert Frost, a prominent poet once wrote: “Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.” At the way things are going, plastic is the most probable way the
world will end with. But please do not take this as a fact. Thankfully enough, the
Department of Health and Social Welfare has found veritable alternatives for plastic
as the biodegradable plastic we have introduced last month. This plastic, in contrast to
the one currently in use, disintegrates quickly without releasing toxic materials to the
environment. All production of plastic must be stopped, I am afraid to say, or, we will
definitely meet our end as the poet declared.
Yours Sincerely,
The Department of Health and Social Welfare with the Peoples Republic of Mbantu