INTRODUCTION TO NEWS WRITING & REPORTING.

Prepared for Madam Norazlinda Hj Mohammad

• By Nazifa Nizat (2018218914)
• MC1103E

ℙ𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕔𝕤 ℙ𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕚𝕟 𝕄𝕒𝕝𝕒𝕪𝕤𝕚𝕒.

Sources: Google Image 

Plastics is one of the worst pollution that is happening in our world, especially in Malaysia. Today’s products are mostly made from plastics such as bottles and packing materials. Plastics also has been used as a food packaging.

The worst part is, plastic is toxic and it took a very long time to decompose, that is why it becomes one of the problems in the world also in Malaysia. Leblanc (2019) claimed that, plastics took up to 1000 years to decompose.

Sources: Google Image

The reasons why most of the products are made out of plastics is because plastics are cheap and it is flexible. Plastics can be reused and recycle, however, plastics was thrown away in the river and drains by irresponsible people which causes the floods and the injured of our underwater animals.

Plastics are used to replace woods, stones and many other objects that comes from traditional natural materials. We can conclude that nowadays, plastics are everywhere (Hamid, 2018). Recently, Malaysia has come up with the new idea which called “Eco-Bricks”. 

Sources: Google Image

There are a goods of using plastics as a brick which in terms of the cost, it is much cheaper (Goyal & Manisha, 2016). But the cost does not matter since Malaysia needs extra help to abolish all of the harms including the plastics pollution.

In 2018, Channel News Asia reported that, within a year, Malaysia will ban the usage of plastics bag. We are now in 2019, but instead of banning the use of plastics, we encourage people to stuff plastics in plastics bottles to make it as a brick. Using plastics as bricks are bad for our planet and people since it will weakens the ozone layer.

Furthermore, some of Malaysians do not aware of what actually happened in our country. There are over 800,000 loads of plastics trash that has been shipped from advance country to Malaysia in 2018 that meant to be recycled. But according to Reuters (2018), most of them are non-recyclable. Luckily, Malaysians found a way to overcome this issue which the plastics junk will be send back to it sources.

Sources: Google Image

Yet, it does not solve the plastics problems in our country. Malaysia currently still ranked as one of the world most awful plastic pollution (Balasegaram, 2019). So basically, the plastic chaos comes from our own people with our own hands. Malaysia rated as the 8^th in top ten countries with worst plastics waste.

Moreover, there are a study that has been conducted and they found that Malaysia has produced 0.94 million tons of bungled plastic wastes, of which 0.14 to 0.37 million tons of it may have been carried away into the oceans. (Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, environment & Climate Change (MESTECC), Malaysia, 2018). 

Almost all of the Malaysian knows the bad of plastics to our environment and our health. Firstly, plastics can lead to other pollutions such as water pollution. Plastics also can affect human health since our body absorb the plastics through food packaging. As examples, BPA plastics can act as endocrine disruptors. (Fortuna, 2019)

Next, it threatens the wildlife. Animals did ate the plastics by mistakes as they thought it was food. Sea turtles are one of the species that affect the most from plastics pollutions. They thought that the plastics is a jellyfish and fishing net is a seaweed. They can choke, sustain inner damage and die. This could be the reason of extinction of the sea turtles since there are at least 1000 of sea turtles die each year because of plastics.

Sources: Google Image

With that, there are a few solutions that can be done to overcome this matter. The first one is to get to the sources. By this, it means that the government should take action towards the factory that produce plastics. This could help to stop the use of plastics in Malaysia and reduce the environment problems.

Besides, the government or NGOs should run a campaign about the bad of using plastics. This could help Malaysians change their mindset and be more aware of their environment. Campaign can be an eye-opener towards the people of Malaysia as it emphasizes the negatives effects of plastics usage.

Overall, plastics pollution is indeed a major problem that should be taken seriously by each Malaysians. It is our responsibility to take a good care of our country and our planet. I hope that this issue will slowly diminish within the upcoming year and abolish in the future. 

“BE PART OF THE SOLUTION, NOT THE POLLUTION”

REFERENCES 

Balasegaram, M. (2019, January 27). Human Writes: Malaysia rated one of the world's worst for plastic

pollution. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/living/2019/01/27/plastic-waste-

malaysia.

Bernama. (2019, June 9). Bans alone won't reduce plastic usage. Retrieved from https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2019/06/494894/bans-alone-wont-reduce-plastic-usage.

Fortuna, A. (2019, May 3). How Plastic Pollution Affects Human Health in Unseen Ways. Retrieved from https://repurpose.global/5-ways-that-plastic-pollution-affects-human-health/.

Goyal, N., & ,Manisha2. (2016, April). Constructing structures using eco-bricks. Retrieved from https://www.ijrter.com/papers/volume-2/issue-4/constructing-structures-using-eco-bricks.pdf.

Hamid, Z. A. (2018, May 1). The problem with plastic. Retrieved from https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2018/05/364366/problem-plastic.

Hwest, & Hwest. (2016, December 24). 8 Things That Are Made from Recycled Plastic. Retrieved from http://hwestequipment.com/8-things-made-recycled-plastic/.

LeBlanc, R. (2019, October 22). How Long Will It Take That Bag of Trash to Decompose in a Landfill? Retrieved from https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-long-does-it-take-garbage-to-decompose-2878033.

Malaysia targets nationwide ban on plastic bags within a year: Minister. (2018, May 28). Retrieved from https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/malaysia-targets-nationwide-ban-on-plastic-bags-within-a-year-10283100.

MINISTRY OF ENERGY, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATE CHANGE (MESTECC), MALAYSIA. (2018). ROADMAP TOWARDS ZERO SINGLE-USE PLASTICS. Retrieved from https://www.mestecc.gov.my/web/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Malaysia-Roadmap-Towards-Zero-Single-Use-Plastics-2018-20302.pdf.

Plastic pollution is killing sea turtles: Here's how. (2018, October 9). Retrieved from https://www.wwf.org.au/news/blogs/plastic-pollution-is-killing-sea-turtles-heres-how#gs.n2rsxy.

Rajendra, E. (2019, April 6). Making eco-bricks from rubbish. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com.my/metro/metro-news/2019/04/06/making-ecobricks-from-rubbish.

Reuters. (2019, May 21). Malaysia, flooded with plastic waste, to send back some scrap to source. Retrieved from https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2019/05/490387/malaysia-flooded-plastic-waste-send-back-some-scrap-source.

The Star Online. (2019, June 10). Malaysia has become the world's plastic dumpster: NEWSFLASH by R.AGE. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2019/06/10/malaysia-has-become-the-worlds-plastic-dumpster--newsflash-by-rage.

What is Plastic Pollution? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/What-is-Plastic-Pollution.