Plastic Waste
IELTS Speaking Part 3 – September 2022 Topic
Part 3 Questions:
- Why do people like to use plastic products?
- How can we reduce our use of plastic?
Vocabulary & Sentences
- Dirt cheap
- Of old
- Corrode
- Leech
- Synthetic
- Moulded
- Paradigm shift
- Radical
- Envisage
- Profit-driven
- Two-pronged
Answers
Q: Why do people like to use plastic products?
A: I’d say it’s a combination of cost and convenience. Plastic is dirt cheap to produce and it lasts an eternity, so it makes sense that the use cases of plastic are endless, from the packaging of products to the production of products made of plastic.
In many cases, plastic is the perfect material, like underground water pipes. Unlike the lead water pipes of old, plastic water pipes don’t corrode or leech heavy metals into the drinking water supply. In terms of packaging, plastic is fantastic because it’s synthetic and can be moulded into any shape or form, so it’s easy to wrap your products in a cheap manner that won’t be degraded during shipping.
Q: How can we reduce our use of plastic?
A: In my opinion, a two-pronged solution is needed to drastically reduce the use of plastic. On the consumer’s side, people who care about the environment need to put their money where their mouth is and avoid plastic packets and products by reusing old plastic products and choosing alternatives, like brown paper bags.
On the other end of the product lifecycle, companies need a radical paradigm shift in how they envisage new product designs and the way they are packaged. It is absolutely possible to use alternative materials to plastic, and to stop producing single-use products. Personally, I think we might need government intervention on that last part, however, because companies tend to be profit-driven.
