Plastic – That Nemesis of the Environment

Plastic – That Nemesis of the Environment

A Little Plastic History

In the mid-19th century, ivory was becoming increasingly rare.  A New York financial firm offered $10,000 to anyone who could manufacture a substitute.  Thusly motivated, John Wesley Hyatt came up with the first plastic in 1869, which he called celluloid. Celluloid was lauded as the savior of turtles, rhinos and elephants as it could be made to look like tortoiseshell, horn and ivory.1 Plastic – an environmental champion!

In1907, Leo Baekeland hit upon a new product that he called Bakelite.  This completely synthetic plastic could be mass-produced and made into nearly everything – and it was: furniture, billiard balls, telephones, tableware, jewelry, insulators, and more.  Plastic-making surged.  By the 1950’s Bakelite was surpassed by many other types of plastics found in the myriad of things we see today.1

Chemically speaking, plastic is made up of long chains of repeated units called polymers.2 Hyatt had used cellulose, a natural polymer in plants, to make celluloid.  Thanks to the bonding power of carbon, petroleum is now processed to make incredibly long polymers.  Depending on the many ways these polymers can be processed, there is no telling how many specific forms of plastic there are.  Possibly thousands!3

As early as the 1960’s people were finding that this wonder material had its drawbacks. Plastic started showing up in the oceans and murmurings about its disposal surfaced.  The trouble is that because of how it’s made, often involving high temperatures, plastic doesn’t decompose into reusable elements.  Bacteria involved in decomposition haven’t “learned” to break this material down as they haven’t encountered it before. Instead, plastic breaks apart (primarily under UV light exposure) into smaller pieces allowing these microplastics, sometimes too small to see, to enter the food chain.  Plastic can’t be digested, has no food value, and accumulates, causing health issues and even death in wildlife.  Plastic – an environmental headache!

What Can We Do?

Consider the consumer stream in 3 steps:

  • You buy a plastic item
  • You use the plastic item
  • You dispose of the plastic item.

The final step is the kicker.  Somehow, we have to break this linear life cycle.  We can do this by changing the first and third steps.

First Step – Be a careful consumer. At the time of purchase, the best thing you can do is think about what you’ll do with the item and its packaging when its job is complete.  Admittedly, we often don’t have a choice since plastic is so ubiquitous.  It’s in our cars, medical equipment, small appliances, computers, electronics, and many other things doing important jobs. But when you have a choice, alternatives are often already out there.  A few ideas:

Trash bags:  Plant-based and compostable bags are available.

Picnic ware:  There are utensils made from corn starch, a nature-based biodegradable material.  The Naturalists’ Club used it for our 50th-anniversary meal.

Shampoo/conditioner bottles: One look down the hair care aisle, and plastic is all you see.  But there are non-bottle alternatives out there – shampoo bars. Lush and HiBar are two of many brands.

In the grocery store, use cloth grocery bags and reusable produce bags.  I save mesh bags from potatoes and onions for packaging produce rather than use the roll of plastic provided.

 

Middle Step – If you have plastic, make good use of it.  I once heard about a woman who hosted an “eco-friendly” picnic.  When someone came with a salad in a plastic bowl, the hostess was very unhappy.  Unjustly so, I have to say.  Using plastic is not criminal.  Throwing it away is the problem.  I wonder if we will see the day when we pass our plastic mixing bowl set down to our children and grandchildren as we do our fine china.  If you already have it, use it.  After all, it lasts practically forever. When its original function is complete, find a way to repurpose it.  When the time comes, replace it with eco-friendly alternatives.

Third step – Dispose of plastic carefully.  Even I find it challenging to know which types of plastics are recyclable. I recently learned that because black plastic can’t be seen by optical sensors on recycling machinery and can only be recycled into other black plastic, it has to be separated out. Don’t mix it with light-colored plastic (potentially ruining the whole batch) unless your town accepts it.  My town (Russell) does not.  Since it depends on your town’s program, do a little legwork to find out.  Also, that triangle of arrows indicating recyclability may not be reliable. There is a new recycling label system emerging now, implemented by participating manufacturers. Go to https://how2recycle.info/ to see it. This labeling system helps take the guesswork out of recycling.

Another thing I learned is that I’ve been throwing some plastic out that can easily be repurposed. Plastic grocery bags, dry cleaner bags, wrapping from around toilet paper or paper towel purchases, clean and dry zip lock bags, cereal bags, produce bags, newspaper delivery bags, and that sort of plastic should be dropped off at the plastic bag recycling station at your grocery store.  This type of plastic – polyethylene – is used to make recycle bins, pipes, and decking. Whatever you do, don’t put plastic bags in your curbside recycling bin.  It jams sorting machinery.  The container may be tucked out of sight at your store but ask for it.  Let managers know you want to recycle.  Kohls, The Home Depot, Walmart, Price Chopper, Stop & Shop, Big Y, and others participate in the Trex (composite decking) recycling program and should have bins.

I have much more to learn about plastics. I am encouraged that research continues on many fronts: additives to make plastic degrade; plastic substitutes from plants and milk; plastic-eating bacteria; and more.  I’m slowly trying to do my part as a consumer. No matter what we do, however, we humans impact our environment.  Just trying to be gentler, kinder, and more connected to the environment that we depend on will go a long way in living right with our earth.

If you restore balance in your own self, you will be contributing immensely

to the healing of the world.

-Deepak Chopra

 

1Science History Institute. (n.d.). History and Future of Plastics. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/3cO8ozg

2Maryruth Belsey Priebe. (n.d.). Ecolife, A Guide to Green Living/What is Plastic Made of? An Overview of What is In Plastic. Retrieved from  https://bit.ly/3wrb9y6

3 Professor Plastics. (2018). Types of Plastic: How Many Kinds of Plastics are There? Retrieved from https://bit.ly/3rIvR9b