Our addiction to PLASTICS

by Dharmesh Shah

as Published in The Ritz, Chennai

It is hard to imagine life without plastics. It is fascinating how a material once unknown to man has over a century become the most ubiquitous. Plastics are now known to exist in all corners of the world. In the ocean discarded plastics have found their way into the ocean and formed an island known as the Great Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean. The patch is the size of Texas and is known to contain nearly 3.5 million tons of plastics trash. Beaches around the world are littered with plastic debris even the uninhabited ones discovered recently by explorers. Once in the ocean it can kill or injure animals though entanglement or ingestion.

All technologies currently available to dispose plastics are known to cause irreparable long term damage to the environment. Incineration causes toxic emissions like dioxins and furans which cause cancer and hormonal imbalance among children. Burying also known as landfilling prolongs the impacts and shifts the burden on future generations.

Yet this is not enough to wean us off our addiction. Plastics have made life extremely convenient and it is just asking for too much to give them up. But the impacts are clear – from depleting crude resources to the toxins in the environment to our unmanageable garbage heaps.

There are several facts and myths that influence the way we use and dispose plastics. To address our plastic woes we need to understand plastics, its life and certain misconceptions around it.

What are Plastics?

Plastics are made from crude oil with the help of certain chemical that give them the solid form. There are two basic types of plastic: thermosetting and thermoplastics. Thermosetting plastics are set to a permanent shape and cannot be softened. These plastics are used primarily for multiple use items, such as dishes and furniture. Thermoplastics are soft when exposed to heat and pressure and harden when cooled. Thermoplastics are the most common type of plastic and are used to make a variety of products like water bottles, tubs, buckets etc.

Where does it go?

Plastics do not degrade readily because their content is not digestible by microorganisms. If they are not picked up for disposal in landfills then they travel through air and water and accumulate in low areas and water bodies. Even in landfills where they are rightfully destined to go, plastics remain unchanged for hundreds of years causing environmental hazards for the future generations.

I recycle!

Plastics are only down-cyclable, which means that they can only be processed into things of lesser quality, degrading with each cycle to be eventually dumped into the environment when of no further use. Unfortunately, recycling has been used as a vehicle by the industry to defeat the beating virgin plastic industry has taken as a result of the environmental impacts of excessive plastic use. This does not mean that we stop recycling as it still supports a huge informal work force and it does help the environment in some way. But recycling is not enough, it can never be enough. Even with a fairly robust recycling system in place the US recycles only 5% of its total plastic waste.

The plastic menace is a product of our linear market system that follows the pattern of extraction, manufacture, use and disposal with no emphasis on putting things back into the system or efforts to review lifestyles.

The way out of our plastic woes are several but it calls for a little unlearning of the ways in which we have learned to live with plastics.

1. Reduce the use - Source reduction Retailers and consumers can select products that use little or no packaging. Select packaging materials that are recycled into new packaging - such as glass and paper. If people refuse plastic as a packaging material, the industry will decrease production for that purpose, and the associated problems such as energy use, pollution, and adverse health effects will diminish. 2. Reuse containers - Since refillable plastic containers can be reused about 25 times, container reuse can lead to a substantial reduction in the demand for disposable plastic, and reduced use of materials and energy, with the consequent reduced environmental impacts. Container designers will take into account the fate of the container beyond the point of sale and consider the service the container provides. "Design for service" differs sharply from "design for disposal". 3. Require producers to take back resins - Get plastic manufacturers directly involved with plastic disposal and closing the material loop, which can stimulate them to consider the product’s life cycle from cradle to grave. Make reprocessing easier by limiting the number of container types and shapes, using only one type of resin in each container, making collapsible containers, eliminating pigments, using water-dispersible adhesives for labels, and phasing out associated metals such as aluminum seals. Container and resin makers can help develop the reprocessing infrastructure by taking back plastic from consumers. 4. Legislatively require recycled content - Requiring that all containers be composed of a percentage of post-consumer material reduces the amount of virgin material consumed. 5. Standardize labeling and inform the public - The chasing arrows symbol on plastics is an example of an ambiguous and misleading label. Significantly different standardized labels for "recycled," "recyclable," and "made of plastic type X" must be developed. Source: International Plastics Task Force