Plastic has saturated our environment. It has invaded the animals we eat and now it's finding its way into our bodies. For most of our history humans used stuff we found in nature to build the things we needed. But the invention of plastic roughly 100 years ago completely changed our world.
We can't live without them. Can we live with them ?
Bakelite, the first fully-synthetic man-made plastic. It doesn't just look good. It's super light, super strong, heat resistant and doesn't conduct electricity. So a great insulator that can be moulded into just about anything. During the first half of the 20th century, most radios, telephones, household gadgets, plates, and saucers, even textiles, all contain Bakelite. It really is a game changer.
It's all thanks to the American inventor Leo Baekeland. He came up with the word "plastics," from a Greek word, "PlastiÏŒs," meaning "to mould or shape."
In 1907, he mixes the chemical Phenol (C6H5OH), from petroleum, with formaldehyde (CH2O), an alcohol. He adds some fillers, heats it up, and big breakthrough with plastics, Bakelite. A weird word. But way easier to say than the scientific name, POLYOXY BENZYLMETHYLEN GLYCOLAN HYDRIDE. An easy mistake to make. Baekland had been inspired by the plastics that occur in nature, such as amber.
So what is plastic, exactly ?
All plastics are made of molecules called "monomers" containing carbon. Using chemical reactions or additives, the monomers are linked together, a bit like a bike chain, and they become polymers, different plastics. There's two types:
- THERMOPLASTICS : Which soften when heated and can be recycled, like carpets, clothes, and furniture etc.
- THERMOSETS: Which, ones moulded and rigid, stay that way, like electrical fittings, work surfaces, or car bodies.
As plastic technology evolves in the early 1900s, new industries like car manufacturers make the most of this new material. They use it everywhere, as insulation for electric wires, spark plug caps, and light fittings, all of which make the cars much safer. Plastic becomes so important in cars, Pioneer Henry Ford even comes up with a new way of making the stuff. He turns to natural oil from soybeans and corn. In 1941, he shows off a new prototype car made mostly of soybean-based plastic. Twenty-five percent lighter than metal, it's stunningly fuel efficient. But Ford can't pursue the project, because history steps in.
The world faces more pressing priorities. World War II speeds up the progress of plastic. The Allies need it to make fighting machines more efficient. Metal, steel, copper, aluminium, and zinc are all in short supply. There's not much natural rubber, either. Southeast Asia is occupied by the Japanese. So plastic become a substitute for traditional manufacturing materials. To cope with the demands of wartime, petrochemical companies build massive new plants, turning crude oil into plastic. It's used in planes and tanks to make gearwheels, synthetic rubber tires, parachutes, and ropes, all made from nylon. Plastic plays a huge part in helping the Allies win the war.
With the Nazis beaten, the United States is now in a great position (In 1945) to take the lead in plastics production. It owns two-thirds of the world's manufacturing capacity. The plastics industry comes of age, turning from war to peace, from fighting to fun. Plastics are about to conquer the world. It's the dawn of a consumer explosion.
In 1945, most people had never heard of a television. But, by 1949, as plastic makes TVs cheaper, Americans buy 100,000 a week. Between 1955 and 1965, 42% of Americans rely on condoms for birth control. And in 1965, the symbol of everything plastic also arrives: the plastic bag. Today, the world uses about 500 billion plastic bags a year, a million every minutes.
Through the '40s, '50s, and '60s, the plastic revolution begins. These postwar decades are when plastic becomes a lifestyle. By the end of the '60s, plastic even makes it off-planet. That flag Neil Armstrong plants on the moon, nylon. Here's where plastic really goes through the roof.
In 1950, the world produces 1.5 millionths of plastic, about 60 oil tankers. By the middle of the 1960s, production has rocketed to about 25 million tons, around 1,000 oil tankers. In the 1970s, it doubles, reaching about 50 million tons, nearly 2,000 oil tankers. Roughly the same weight as the Empire State Building 140 times over.
In 1975, when Coke and Pepsi decide it's time to replace their famous glass bottles with something a little cheaper. Chemists come up with the answer, the PET soda bottle. PET is short for POLYETHYLENE TEREPHTHALATE (C10H8O4)n. It's strong enough to hold pressurized drinks. But more importantly, it can be recycled, used again and again to make bottles cheaply. It swiftly becomes the most popular form of packaging.
It isn't until the start of the 1980s, that the world wakes up to the big problem with plastics. Our addiction to the stuff has created an environmental catastrophe.
How do we get rid of something that's virtually indestructible and yet so cheap we just throw it away ?
Scientists estimate it takes around 450 years for one plastic bottle to break down naturally. But that's only a guess. We don't actually know. Plastic doesn't degrade like other materials, because it man-made. It comes from monomers of PROPYLENE, linked together by extremely strong carbon-carbon bonds. There is nothing like that in nature, so nature has no idea of how to break it down. As a result, plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental threats we face.
To confirm the growing problem, toward the end of the 1980s, recycling begins to take off, as manufacturers come up with better ways to dispose of the stuff. Those three recycling plastic arrows first appear in 1988. And recycling changes how we look at plastic. Just one plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for three hours. Nineteen PET plastic bottles saves enough finer to make one big T-shirt. Recycling one ton of plastic saves over 1,000 gallons of gas. And it creates jobs. In the US, over 700,000 people work in the recycling business. But one of the biggest benefits of recycling: It takes 88% less energy to make plastics this way than using raw materials. But the truth is, recycling is a long way from working. Globally, only 19.9% of all plastic thrown away is recycled. Still, plastic is an addiction we just cannot kick.
As we enter the 1990s, our whole lives are shaped by plastic. Your home only exists thanks to plastic. The plumbing, the furniture, the lighting system, all plastic. It's the same for your TV, sound system, and kitchen gadgets. Your health also depends on plastic. Surgeons in modern operating theatres perform more effectively thanks to plastic. Plastic artificial joints, pioneered in the 1960s, get even better in the 1990s as tougher polymers become available (By replacing that damaged articular cartilage with artificial materials, such as metal or plastic, reduces the pain). Most medical research, whether creating life or defeating disease, couldn't happen without plastic. It literally saves our lives.
Every year, 600,000 people live longer thanks to pacemakers insulated with plastic. Car seat belts with plastic webbing cut the risk of being killed by 45%. Each year, defibrillators, delivering high-energy electric shocks to the heart, save 30,000 lives in the UK alone. Globally, more than 10 million people benefit from 3D-printed plastic hearing aids. And worldwide, around 35 million diabetics are kept alive thanks to disposable plastic syringes.
Plastic also protect our heroes. Since the 1980s, Nomex and Kevlar-treated clothing help firefighters and search and rescue teams save lives and stay alive themselves. And since 1987, body armour made from Kevlar, one of the toughest plastic ever made, has saved the lives of 3,100 police officers. It helps our sports heroes perform better.
Plastic has an impact on everything we do, making our lives much better. But our failure to dispose of used plastic is killing the planet.
So how do we solve this dilemma ?
We're not just burying plastics in landfills, which is bad enough. We're swamping our oceans with it. Between 8 to 12 million tons of plastic are dumped into the sea each year, roughly a garbage truck every minute. There are five massive areas in the oceans where tides and currents have created giant, floating plastic garbage dumps. The largest, called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is around 13,91,324 km2. There might be 80,000 to 100,000 tons of plastic in this area alone.
And it's not just ugly. It's deadly. Every year, plastic kills over 100,000 marine animals and a million sea birds. Some see the plastic as food and eat it. They're poisoned as toxins build up in their bodies. But there's so much plastic in the sea, they can't escape it. At the rate we're going, by 2050, there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish.
In an ominous development, even we are becoming plastic. Research in 2018 shows micro plastics have been found in human waste. How it gets there is unclear. It might be from packaging, clothes, furniture, or carpets. Whether it's medically dangerous, it's too soon to say. But plastic pollution is so widespread, we might all be ingesting a credit card worth of plastic a week. Solutions are needed, and they're starting to come. Giant companies like Adidas are moving towards using 100% recyclable plastic in their sneakers. A host of smaller firms are making handbags and clothes out of recycled plastics. Even more radical solutions are in the pipeline.
What about chemicals or enzymes that could actually eat plastic ?
Discovery of the enzyme is amazing. Something that can eat plastic, that normally takes 400 years to degrade, the bacteria are starting to eat this in a matter of days.
Today, most plastic are still based on petroleum, which is why they're not biodegradable. So they don't break down in the Earth. But perhaps there are different, friendlier ways plastics can be made. As Henry Ford first tried to show us in 1941, you can make plastics out of natural plant oils, and those plastics do decay back into the Earth. Recently, scientists have begun working along similar lines, experimenting with algae to develop a new type of biodegradable plastic. These microorganism create a bioplastics polymer that's much less toxic and that degrades more quickly than synthetic plastics. They're also looking at plants, like switchgrass, oilseed, and sugarcane, to produce natural polymers. These could all be part of future solutions.
The miracle of plastic comes at a high price. Our lives depend on it. But how we dispose of it threatens the planet. If we can wean ourselves off plastic that is not essential and use biodegradable versions where we can, we might just find a way to have the best of all worlds, or at least save this one.
FROM NOW ON IT'S OUR RESPONSIBILITIES HOW WE USE PLASTICS. REMEMBER ONE THING A SMALL STEP MAKES OUR NEAR FUTURE. SO ITS UP TO US WHETHER WE MAKE IT MIRACLE OR CATASTROPHE. THANK YOU.
FROM NOW ON IT'S OUR RESPONSIBILITIES HOW WE USE PLASTICS. REMEMBER ONE THING A SMALL STEP MAKES OUR NEAR FUTURE. SO ITS UP TO US WHETHER WE MAKE IT MIRACLE OR CATASTROPHE. THANK YOU.
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