I
must touch it to write these lines. The bottle I drink water from is made of
it. The device you are staring into has it in various parts and components.
Don’t look away, for you just can’t escape its overbearing presence in our
lives.
I’m
reminded of plastic this World Environment Day. While a lot of attention,
particularly in India, has been given to air pollution and energy conservation
(which are, of course, very, very important), the country seems to have given
its “plastics problem” short shrift. Not just India, the world at large is
still caught up in a bind over plastics.
Is
plastic an essential evil? How did we get to the situation we are in? What is
the extent of damage it is causing? How can the impact be minimized? Such
questions invade my mind just as a sea of plastic stuff attacks our senses from
all sides.
Being
a word-oriented guy, I first looked up what plastic means and who coined it.
While
the honor of coining the term “plastics” goes to Leo Baekeland (who
developed—what else!— Bakelite in 1907), according to Wikipedia, the patent for
the first man-made plastic was acquired for Parkesine by a gentleman called
Alexander Parkes as early as 1862. The roots of the word “plastic” itself go
back to the Greek “plastikos,” which means something that can be shaped or
molded.
I
also came across a fascinating book on the subject, curiously titled Plastic:
A Toxic Love Story. The author Susan Freinkel explains the toxic part in an interview on
Amazon.com:
“In researching the history of
plastic, I was struck by how our relationship with it resembled a love affair
gone bad. People initially were infatuated with these new materials, eager to
use them in every possible way. In the ’40s, pollsters found that “cellophane”
was considered one of the most beautiful words in the English language, after “mother”
and “memory.” By the 1970s, when I was a teenager, plastic had acquired a much
worse reputation; it was the stuff of pink flamingos, shiny suits, tacky
furniture. It was synonymous with shoddy and fake. Today we’re discovering
truly serious problems because of our reliance on plastic—health hazards,
wasting of resources, pollution. And yet every year, the amount of plastic
produced and consumed goes up. We’re trapped in an unhealthy dependence, the
hallmark of a toxic relationship.”
That
almost echoes my thoughts—except that some of the plastic furniture we now see
has come a long way from being tacky to classy or elegant. Still, plastic has
ballooned into a much bigger hazard as well as a greater dependency for those
who work in the plastics industry.
According to PlasticsEurope, a European
industry association, worldwide plastics production boomed from a tiny 1.7
million tons in 1950 to about 300 million tons in 2013—the top three producers
being China, North America and Europe. It further estimates that the industry
gives direct employment to 1.4 million people in Europe. The employment figures
hover around 900,000 for the US, as per the Plastics Industry Trade Association
(SPI).
In
India, a total of 4 million people are believed to be employed in the plastic
conversion sector.
The
multiplier effect of this mammoth industry, which consumes around 8% of
petrochemicals for its production, are much wider and deeper in human society
when one thinks of all the economic activity plastic generates.
There
are hundreds of types of plastics that go into thousands or perhaps tens of
thousands of products. The use of plastics is now so entrenched in human life
that it just isn’t possible to yank it away in one go—and return to the use of
metal, glass, paper and other materials that plastics have replaced or
supplemented.
The
problem with plastic, I think, arises because of its easy, cheap production and
the habit of people throwing away a lot of plastic stuff after use. The
Americans are notoriously good at it: according to a report on EcoWatch.com,
they throw away 35 BILLION plastic water bottles EACH YEAR. Just think of how
much plastic this hyper-consuming species of only 300 million would have thrown
away in the several decades that plastic bottles, bags and other things have
been available to them for throwing.
And
here comes the even sadder part: the Americans seem to have successfully
globalized their “use-and-throw disease.” In India, China, Brazil, Russia,
Indonesia, South Africa and scores of other heavily populated countries,
convenience-prone consumers are adopting this so-called modern habit. They are
amply aided in this by corrupt or inept governments and over-indulgent
businesses that thrive on all things plastic.
The
latest eruption of the consumerist epidemic now has a well-known and dreaded
moniker: e-waste.
Not
all plastic use is detrimental: it would be hard to argue against the use of
plastic in surgical devices, limbs or implants, for instance. But the
environmental hazards become as colossal as the piles of rubbish in landfills
all over the world when you factor in plastic’s growing use in packaging,
disposable goods, etc. Combine that with the triple whammy of convenience,
laziness and consumerism—and Houston, we have a Huuuge problem!
I
would like to end this post by an earnest call to arms for each one of us to
counter the problem of plastics (and environment in general) with the
proverbial 3 Rs (reuse, recycle, reduce) and do everything we can to ease—if
not end—this toxic love affair with plastic.
And
as you recycle my words in your mind, here are some startling stats you can use/reuse:
- There are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean out of which 269,000 tons float on the surface; four billion plastic microfibers per square kilometer litter the deep sea. [source: National Geographic]
- A report on CNN.com (and it’s an old report) quotes Greenpeace as having estimated that more than 1 million birds and 100,000 marine mammals perish each year by either eating or becoming trapped in plastic waste.
- If you think that Americans make up for their throwaway habits with a lot of recycling, think again: In the US, ONLY 9% of plastic (2.8 million tons) was recycled in 2012, according to the US Environment Protection Agency; the rest was discarded. Americans depend mostly on China and Hong Kong to absorb their plastic waste, and some is sent to Canada and Mexico as well (Aren’t neighbors supposed to help?!)
- The total natural capital cost of plastic used in the consumer goods industry is estimated to be more than $75 billion per year. The cost comes from a range of environmental impacts including those on oceans and the loss of valuable resources when plastic waste is sent to landfill rather than being recycled. [source: UNEP]
- No “statistics” are available on this, but it is a well-observed fact that millions of cows and other animals get sick or die of chewing or ingesting polythene bags along with rotten food lying in garbage mounds all over India. So much for the noise on taking care of cows or the Clean India campaign, where the government has recently sunk in stinking amounts of money on advertising.
Appeal: Don’t
stand still on plastics, pollution and the environment—do something about it.
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