A plastic world

So what is plastic anyway you ask? Well you didn’t actually ask but I’m going to tell you anyways 🙂 Plastics, or synthetic polymers as they’re otherwise known in scientific circles, are an incredibly interesting subject. Each and every one of us has a depth of history with these materials. They are in almost everything that we buy these days. It seems as though plastic has been around for an eternity. Naturally occurring materials found in both plants and animals have been utilised for centuries by humans. The synthetic plastics as we know them today only started booming in the early twentieth century [2] and really started getting going after world war 2 [1]. The market potential for plastics was almost endless. Some of the first commercial products that harnessed these cutting-edge materials were in the automotive, clothing, food and telecommunications industries to name a few. Plastics served as a cheap and lightweight alternative to steel and other commonly used materials which resulted in massive savings from both a production and transport standpoint.

Image by Chris LeBoutillier (Photo by Chris LeBoutillier from Pexels)

Plastics have truly changed the world. They offer a huge number of benefits to society as a whole. Unfortunately, as of late, the negatives seem to have begun outweighing the positives. Plastics have an extremely low density (mass to volume ratio) with respect to their strength which lends them to being far more economical to use as a transport vessel compared to heavier alternatives. They are extremely cheap to make and can be shaped with relative ease through a huge number of innovative processes such as injection moulding, blow moulding, 3D printing and extrusion. Some studies have even been shown that PET bottles have a lower carbon footprint and environmental effect in terms of life cycle assessment (LCA) when compared to glass bottles [3]. A life cycle assessment is the sum total of all greenhouse emissions of a product or service across its lifetime from cradle to grave. Although this is a compelling story for plastic as a material, the jury is still very much out on this one. See plastics rely on non-renewable fossil fuels in order to be produced. The life cycle assessment of plastics show that they absolutely have a large net carbon footprint and they are one of the largest causes of pollution on the planet. This research letter concludes that in 2007 the annual demand for bottled water in the US (33 billion litres) was equivalent to between 32 and 54 million barrels of oil and was 2000 times less energy efficient than tap water [4]. Plastics are often designed to be for single use such as a mailed parcel cover, a plastic bag, product wrapping, a coffee cup (cardboard lined with plastic) or a set of plastic plates and cutlery. This has led to hugely profitable industries and, as a consequence, a very wasteful consumer society.

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We have, as a society, become disturbingly dependent on plastics. We treat them as discardable and regard them as serving only a particular purpose before it is fit for the landfill. The annual worldwide plastic waste is in the sum of hundreds of millions of tonnes per year!! According to a study featured in this national geographic article 6.3 billion metric tonnes of the 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic ever made has ended up in the landfill [5]. This study also found that half of all steel that is produced is used in construction and have a useful lifespan of around a decade. On the other hand, half of all plastic produced has a lifespan of less than a year and is then regarded as trash. We have all heard of the 3 R’s. Reduce>Reuse>Recycle. This was introduced as a government led initiative to cut down on the the quantity of plastic being consumed. It has failed miserably. Another R was subsequently added to the start of the list, which was “Refuse”. This unsurprisingly has yielded disappointing results.

Image by Stijn Dijkstra (Photo by Stijn Dijkstra from Pexels)

We have only gotten more reckless with our use of plastic and have resorted to focusing more on recycling than on our personal consumption of it. I strongly feel that it is of the upmost importance for people to understand the real truth behind recycling. What really happens when those green bins are emptied on our roadsides and those impressive looking trucks rumble off into the distance. The sad thing is that it is very much possible to recycle most types of plastic. But the fact of the matter remains that this just does not happen. Only a small percentage of plastics that are put in our kerbside recycling bins are recycled due to complications such as contamination, recycling infrastructure and market economics. In the interest of keeping this article relatively brief I will write a follow up piece on the most commonly used consumer plastic, examples of where they are used and a discussion on their recyclability and potential alternatives. We must all do our part to help maintain our home for future generations. My goal is to spread factual information on current environmental topics in the hope of providing additional education to those who I care about most and similarly those who are willing to listen. Thanks for reading.

References:

[1] Thompson RC, Swan SH, Moore CJ, vom Saal FS (July 2009). “Our plastic age”. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 364 (1526): 1973–76. doi:10.1098/rstb.2009.0054. PMC 2874019. PMID 19528049.

[2] https://www.plasticseurope.org/en/about-plastics/what-are-plastics/history

[3] Pasqualino J., Meneses M., Castells F. (2011), The Carbon Footprint and Energy Consumption of Beverage Packaging Selection and Disposal,Journal of Food Engineering, vol 103 pp:357-365.

[4] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/4/1/014009/fulltext/

[5] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment