Environmental Issues
Budget
Diminishing plastic pollution will necessitate a significant amount of money. Although the first step towards ending plastic pollution across the world is by banning the production and use of these bags across every sector of the economy, cleaning up the already existing plastics requires that the government and other stakeholders including companies should work together to raise the amount needed to collect and recycle the plastic bags that have been littered across every region of the world (Baker, 2018). Plastic producing companies should assume the biggest role in eradicating plastic pollution by contributing a significant amount of money towards the collection and recycling of the plastics to prevent them from littering or being fetched down to the ocean to cause increased volumes of ocean plastics.
The cost of cleaning up the existing plastics across the world would require a budget of about 3.5 billion U.S. dollars every year. Every government across the word should contribute a significant sum of money until the budget has been attained. Although the amount could seem as large, the positives associated with the outcome of cleaning up the plastics from the environment are substantial. For instance, Cleaning up plastics from the environment would save consumers close to 7.6 billion U.S. dollars annually. Besides, the process would create more than 30 000 jobs for the people who will be involved in the plastic clean-up process and supervision. Besides, cleaning up the existing plastics in the environment could save more than 25.6 billion U.S. dollars lost annually in the clean-up and environmental damage costs (Baker, 2018). Besides, there will be no jobs lost in the process since plastic producing companies will be urged to change their production lines and begin recycling the plastics to produce other forms of plastics that cannot be littered.
Timeline
The clean-up process will take at least three years to ensure that all plastics have been collected. During the first year, plastic producing companies will be urged to stop producing more plastics. Such a step will prevent more plastics from being littered into the environment as others are being collected. The companies will be given a period of three months to stop their plastic manufacturing process. During this period, the companies will be told to change their production lines and start producing other forms of plastics that cannot be easily disposed into the environment (Kirby, 2014). The following 9 months will include recruiting people who would take part in the plastic clean-up process. This is the time when various groups across the world will be given instructions on what they should do to ensure that all plastics have been collected from the environment.
During the next one and a half years, the lean-up process will be conducted by the various groups chosen from different parts of the world. The clean-ups will happen simultaneously across the different sections of the world to ensure that the process does not consume a lot of time. The next two months will then include the supervision of the work conducted to see if the selected teams have collected all plastics and that no region has been left unattended (Kirby, 2014). The remaining four months will be used to carry out follow-up activities to ensure that no company continuous to produce plastics and that no individual or company gets involved in plastic littering again.