The Problem with Plastics (ESOL)

How does plastic tremendously affect people's lives?

Plastic tremendously affects people’s lives in different ways. Plastic impacted the world dramatically. It improved our lives in different ways; it also did damage and some issues.

It can improve people’s lives in different ways. An example of it is when we buy stuff at shops or supermarkets. It helps us by making it easier to carry the stuff we bought. Significantly, we Filipinos use our creativity and imagination to make something from plastics. We make lanterns - we call it ‘parol’ - made out of used plastics. Remarkably, plastic is accessible everywhere, it only costs 75 to 95 cents a pound which is extremely cheap.

Using plastic does have benefits and positive effects, however, there is also a hideous side about using plastics. Plastic caused so many catastrophic problems on our planet. It causes pollution, flooding and other types of natural phenomenon.

Using plastic as packaging is also a bad habit that we do. Plastic has chemicals on it that could be poisonous on our health. Indeed, it takes more than one plastic to cause issues on our health but it could be worse if we keep doing it. Plastic is affordable and cheap which is why its everywhere. However, it does still depend on how you use it and if you're responsible enough. Us humans use plastic on everything, but using plastic on food can have bad side effects on our body. Using plastic as a wrapper on food is a bad habit us humans do. We can stop using plastic for wrapping our food and instead use paper bags. Paper bags are safe for the environment and do take less time to rot out instead of plastics.

In conclusion, plastic both effects us in positive and negative ways. It does still depend on us and how we use it. It will take us determination and effort to stop plastic, however, if we use plastic on important occasions only, we could stop or use less plastic.

Social Studies- Tribe Studies

In Social studies, we began studying about a tribe called the Matses. They are an indigenous tribe that lives in the Amazon Rainforest. We are supposed to write a paragraph about them.


Who are the Matsès? Interestingly, Mastsès - or as we call ‘ Jaguar People’- are an indigenous tribe that lives in the remote areas of the Amazon Rainforest, specifically, in the Javari River.

They use a method called ‘ Slash and Burn ‘ to create small-scaled farms. Planting crops is a great benefit for them because they don’t have any contacts with outsiders. Their primary food source is fishing but they also hunt and plant crops. Example of these foods is sweet plantains, maniocs, and roots such as beetroots, and carrots. They also hunt wild animals like wild boars. These things are basically the way they survive.

So how did their life on the land change? Their lives dramatically change when they began having an interaction with the outsiders. They began trading goods like clothing, food, and materials. These improved the lives of the Matsès. They began living in larger, fixed, super-nucleated and permanent villages. They stopped traveling into different parts of the forest and decided to stay in one specific area and continue living. They also stop creating farms all over the place causing to cut trees. Importantly, the lifestyle of the Matsès changed and improved. Committed to change, the tribe agreed to improve the way of their living and began contacting with outsiders which really had a strong impact on their community.

Some of them even chose to go out and face the real world and began living in rural cities or places, but some still chose to stay in the forest and continue living the way their ancestors or their parents lived.