Plastic is such a big part of our daily lives. It’s all around us and we use single-use plastic (plastic bags, bottles, containers, straws) every day. There’s good reason for this. Plastic is an incredibly versatile product. It’s also relatively cheap and it’s durable.
But durability is a double-edged sword, at least when it comes to plastic. You’ve probably heard that plastic can stay in the environment for centuries. This is not hyperbole. Plastic is not biodegradable at all.
Fortunately there is increasing awareness, especially among Millennials, that plastic is doing great harm to the environment. That’s why today you see many young people refusing to take straws when they order their drinks or plastic bags when they buy something from the store.
The ubiquity of plastic
The existence of plastic dates more than a century. Its genesis can be traced back to 1907 when Bakelite, an electrical insulator, was invented. It was the first fully synthetic plastic, meaning it contained no molecules found in nature. It was completely man-made.
A hundred years later, plastic has now fully invaded our lives. According to an Ellen MacArthur Foundation report launched at the World Economic Forum in 2016, new plastics will consume 20 per cent of all oil production within 35 years (up from an estimated 5 per cent today).
Global production had surged from 15 million metric tonnes in 1964 to 311 million metric tonnes by 2014. The report says if things don’t change, this number is projected to double to more than 600 million metric tonnes in the next 20 years and will quadruple by 2050.
According to the report, every year at least eight million tonnes of plastics find its way into the ocean. This is equivalent to dumping the contents of one garbage truck into the ocean every minute!
You might have heard of the phrase “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”.
That’s not an imaginary thing in a children’s book. It refers to floating bits of plastic that have converged together and at present, it covers an area larger than Greenland. This sea of plastic garbage is threatening the eco-system there, especially marine life and sea birds, as these pieces of plastic can end up being digested and subsequently stay stuck in their guts.
Reduce, re-use, recycle
So what can be done about this? One way is to modify our behaviour when it comes to our use of plastic.
Firstly, reduce the use of plastic like rejecting plastic bags and straws. It’s not difficult to bring our own bags when shopping but many people neglect to do this. Straws are a bit more of a hassle to do without. Those who are really concerned with the environment would actually bring their own bamboo, glass or metal straws when they go to a cafe. But because you have to carry these with you and bring them back and wash them each time, it’s quite a chore. So, many just end up using plastic straws.
People are used to the versatility and usability of plastic and won’t adjust their lifestyle all that much, especially if it causes inconvenience. The Millennials and those who are very concerned about the environment may do it but to effectively rid society of plastic would entail changing human behaviour and that’s incredibly hard. That’s why there must be other prongs to this strategy.
Re-using plastic is more common especially when it comes to plastic bags and containers. Many of us use plastic bags to line our garbage bins and containers to store leftover food. It’s a bit harder to re-use straws though. These are typically thrown away after a single use. Re-using plastic will certainly help but at the end of the day, these plastic items will end up in the landfills too and some will end up in the ocean as well.
Recycling might seem to be the best solution but currently only about 9 per cent of plastic is recycled as there are many challenges to recycling. Plastic is a big umbrella term and there are many different types of plastic. Some are more recyclable than others. As such, pre-sorting the plastics is necessary and that is a time-intensive, manual process. In many cases plastic containers have to be washed because they contain bits of food. The process of recycling plastic itself is costly as it requires the use of large amounts of energy and the resulting polymers are not of very high quality. The plastic recycling technology needs a lot of improvement for it to be viable.
Green plastic
So, “reduce, re-use and recycle” all help but more needs to be done if we are to stem the flow of plastic into the environment. The answer might be biodegradable plastic made from organic rather than synthetic material.
Actually plastic in its early days had a strong bioplastic champion in the form of Henry Ford, the famous car mogul. He had asked his engineers to find industrial uses for crop surpluses such as soyabean and by the 1930s had incorporated soya-based plastic into his Ford cars. In fact, he had hoped to further expand the use of soy-plastic in cars and had a prototype made with a soy-plastic frame which weighed much lighter than its steel counterpart. A lighter car would mean less fuel consumption.
Unfortunately, the low oil prices at the time meant that plastic would continue to be made from petroleum, which is still how plastics are made today.
However, there are now renewed efforts to make bio-plastic derived from plant-based products. The most promising one is Polylactide (PLA) which is made from the lactic acid in corn. PLA is biodegradable although it should be mentioned that the process is slow under normal conditions. Still it’s better than petro-chemical-based plastics which never break down (or takes centuries to do so).
In Malaysia, we already see many grocery stores adopting biodegradable plastics. As companies become more environmentally conscious, we might see manufacturers start to use biodegradable plastics too. It’s already happening in the West. Coca-Cola for instance has products sold in what it calls “PlantBottles” made out of plastic derived from plants.
No doubt, “green plastic” is a sector poised for growth (about 10 per cent a year) although it must be said that it’s starting from a very low base. Biodegradable plastic currently only makes up 1 per cent of total global plastic production, probably because it’s more expensive to produce.
However, given the growing awareness about the dangers of plastic to the environment — and ultimately to our wellbeing — one day biodegradable plastic may be the only form of plastic in use.