Well, its Saturday. More time, verbosity at maximum...engage!
OK, my thoughts on this were formed long ago, but it's reached a point where I need to re-express myself.
I'm talking about people who try to live without plastics. Hello people? You cannot live without plastics!
A Chicago Tribune writer wrote about the time her household tried going plastic-free for a week
Reading her article before continuing here will make this argument more linear. This poor misguided person makes so many mistakes in typical fashion.
- To save on a little plastics bag energy, they drive all over town, to the bagel shop, to the bakery, to get products without bags. She made things worse, not better.
- Rubber toy ball to replace a plastic toy ball, end result, no change.
- Metal bottle versus a strong Plastics bottle, I'm sure the energy factor favors plastic.
- She protests about melamine, being found in eggs, infant formula and milk from China. It was put in as POISON, there is no environmental error here, it was a CRIMINAL act by people adding the chemical to falsely get higher protein levels, by using poison. Do we blame rat poison when someone murders with it?
- paper vs plastic diapers, bad choice, more below, not to mention the leaks
- missing meals and drinks to prevent plastics usage...harmful to ones self, silly. Now if you need to lose weight or eat better, do so, but don't blame the plastics, blame yourself.
She says she is addicted to plastics. We are, in the same way we're addicted to oxygen. Does anyone protest oxygen addicts? Minimize waste smartly? Sure! Villianize an entire material without better alternatives? Silly!
I do commend her for:
- Minimizing trash in practical ways, reusable bags, etc
- Protesting BPA in baby bottles, but I like that kind of specific protest
This poor woman feels GUILTY! It is so misplaced to villianize the entire raw material class rather than the specific poor designs, poor material decisions, based on rational and scientific comparisons. She has no need to feel guilty. She needs to get specific.
Plastics are not tied up with Karma, but WASTE might be. Protest WASTE intelligently, not just blindly. Be specific, have alternatives that are BETTER, not WORSE.
Now I do admire the idealism that brings people to this. I understand and appreciate the good intentions. But unless you want to kill off 90% of the population and return to caveman technologies, it simply is SO IMPRACTICAL as to be funny.
Now I'm ALL FOR reducing plastics consumption, plastics waste, using reusable bags at shopping etc. Plastics is ubiquitous in our life, it is now and will ever be so, for our lives at least (Short of that giant meteor crashing).
These folks VILLAINIZE the entire material. It's EVIL, BAD, etc. Ah, give me a break!
A responsible attitude would be to protest and be activist in calling for responsible usage. Responsible packaging, mandatory recycling, responsible designs for reuse, responsible support of recycling campaigns, anti-litter campaigns, etc. There is lots of room for meaningful, practical and responsible activism, rather than waste your time on a FANTASY of 'plastics free'.
That attitude is so misguided, by ultra liberal attitudes that rush to use the EVIL card. And there is so much hype, so much noise that many people who hear this begin to believe it. True or not.
The simple fact is that with the size of our population, massive replacement of plastics is not possible without creating worse consequences.
What are the replacements for plastics? Wood, metal, plants, animals.
Replace plastics with wood and poof, there go your forests, and don't even get me started on the environmental issues of wood production, dioxin, etc. You can easily make a case it is worse than plastics. And the loss of all of that forestation could affect global climate right? This is WORSE, not better for the environment.
Replace plastics with metal? If you do so you will usually see no change in recyclability, more energy required to make and transport goods, designs require more individual parts, more factories, more energy, transporting heavier products, more energy, more factories, more pollution. This is WORSE, not better for the environment.
Replace plastics with plants and animals? Cotton, Hemp, Leather etc. I read a unbiased study of the requirements for the world to replace plastics where possible with plant goods and animal goods, ie. cotton and leather, etc. It was just a simple math exercise. The amount of land required to grow the plants and graze the animals was not sustainable for our population size without RIDICULOUS and ENORMOUS environmental damage that makes the current status look like heaven. It calculated the trillions of animals and acres required, the CO2 effect, the methane effect, the deforestation effect. I wish I had these stats around, but in just one word... SCARY
Which brings me to my annoyance. Ignorant activism without realistic alternatives. Plastics are not EVIL. Granted some plastics packaging is absolutely evil *insert evil grin here*.
My suggestion: find activism with reasonable alternatives, not just blind complaints with worse alternatives that are not well thought out. And where is our industry in publicizing this? Its simple math, we're VASTLY worse off with the alternatives, so rather than DEMONIZE it, educate people and fight for responsible usage of this necessary class of material. I support that all day long.
I worked in recycling for many years, mainly finding ways to add value to industrial scrap, rather than landfill it. I have a chemistry patent involving recycling. I was one of the SPE's Environmental Division original founders. Its a subject I'm knowledgeable about.
Some of the more common misconceptions I read about in these blogs:
Styrofoam bad: When McDonalds changed from Styrofoam food packaging to paper, it was closely studied first. And the facts showed two things; plastics were better in every regard, plastics were perceived as bad by the public. As I recall McDonalds apologized to plastics industry executives and said that despite the superiority of plastic over paper, they had to switch because of public perception.
As I recall, in food tastes people preferred the food taste/warmth when plastic was used. The plastic had an overall smaller 'carbon footprint' than the paper. The paper has its own significant environmental issues.
Paper bags vs Plastic bags
First, I think any reusable bag is clearly better than any disposable bag. But I do not believe paper is the winner when the two go head to head. The energy per bag is much smaller with plastic. Little things add up strongly when you're talking billions or trillions of bags. Oil that the bag is made from, as well as oil used to manufacture is less with plastics than paper. The lighter weight has a significant energy affect when you transport billions of heavier paper bags. More trucking gas, more trucks, more drivers, it goes on and on.
Where is the public outcry to study for which raw material is actually BETTER for minimizing environmental damage and total usage of energy.
I laughed when I saw the article talking about switching to rubber toys instead of plastics. Sigh, there is no difference, the rubber , regardless of if its natural or synthetic, goes through the same process, its as good or bad as the plastic. It is plastic.
Ocean plastics litter!
A good example of the villainy put on plastics. The problem is started with littering floating down river and out to the ocean. What happened to the crying Indian looking at litter I saw as a kid? Bring him back. Protest littering! Protest crummy design choices. Protest crummy plastic material choices. It isn't plastics that are bad. It's specific human behavior and human design that needs vast improvement, not just blind villainy.
Cloth versus Plastic Diapers!
A recent study showed plastic diapers have a smaller environmental footprint, barely, when compared to rewashing over and over and the energy involved. But what liberal will ever believe this? Where are the well publicized, unbiased studies? This is what kids should be doing their master's thesis on.
Long term effect, landfills and incineration
When I worked in recycling I met many incineration officials and they all agreed on one strong point. High incineration temperatures produced cleaner incineration and reductions in the plastics component of the waste stream made it much more difficult to attain the higher, cleaner burn temperatures. The engineers said that plastic wasn't just desired in the feed, it was needed for optimum operation.
Don't get me started on landfills where people say the plastic will last forever. So won't the paper and almost everything else. Landfills are a non-oxygen environment that vastly stalls degradation of anything. Dig up a hundred year old landfill and you can read the newspaper!
Also, I'm a firm believer that landfills are a fine temporary solution and that in a hundred years or so, all of the landfills will be being dug up, mined essentially, for the raw materials to be found there.
So. in conclusion, I advise all anti-plastics activists to get real, get specific, get better alternatives and protest specifically against plastics usage than can be improved by a better alternate choice, an alternate design, an alternate material choice, specific legislation based on specific BETTER alternatives.
To blindly protest plastics, you might as well go out there and protest the ocean itself, or dirt. Plastic is ubiquitous and it will necessarily remain so. Protest to improve, not to just hear your own voice.
Some More Alternative Voices
Life Less Plastics
The Great Plastic Challenge
Fake Plastic Fish