People in modern society have been accustomed to the throw-away life for a long time. A disposable product is a product designed for cheapness and short-term use. It includes paper products, shopping bags, water bottles, food packaging and plastic cutlery. Annually, about 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks are produced in China, consuming 25 million of trees and bamboo plants; meanwhile, as world’s highest forest coverage nation, Japan imports 25 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks from China every year. (Q, Y, YU, 1999) Disposable products are brought by commercial benefits and expend their effects all over the world. This essay analyzes the reason why disposable products have been used in large amount and their connection to …show more content…

Firstly, throw-away society needs much more resources than before such as wood, water, steel, electric power to generate sufficient products to match our requirement. In this process, a large amount of resources has been wasted. Let us take disposable chopsticks for instance. In China, people use 4.5 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks every year, which means 25 million trees are cut down. Moreover, a 20-year-old tree can only make 3000-4000 pairs of chopsticks and the rate of efficient use is only 60 per cent.(Charity-oganization,2010) The cover rate of forest decrease year by year, which leads to the increasing in carbon dioxide. On the other hand, disposable chopsticks also damage to people’s health. In the process of making disposable chopsticks, sulfur is widely used. And there is sulfur dioxide remained in these chopsticks, which hurts your breath system. Oxyful is also widely used to rinse disposable chopsticks, and it damages your digestion. (Snopes, 2005)This is only the chopsticks, and other products do more than that.
Although a small proportion of disposable products can be recycled, most have to be buried under the ground; even some of garbage is in landfills. If this garbage catches the rain, bacteria, heavy metals and ammonia will flow into the groundwater. Chemical reaction can release methane and carbon dioxide（Hays,2008）. This will pollute our water resource and squash our