Plastic – The Eco-Friendly Option

Seems Ironic, the topic of this fortnight’s discussion. Let us start by defining the term ‘Eco-Friendly’ – To begin with there is no specific definition, if you look it up online, “Any goods or services that have a low or negligible impact on the ecosystem or environment”.

Most companies today use this term ambiguously (cannot point fingers) to market their products or services. We need to agree upon a statement before we move forward. Let us say that any product of the same performance/usage, that has a lower impact on the environment than its predecessor. We will not use the term ‘eco-friendly’ henceforth, but discuss the overall environmental impact of any product made of different materials and see where, plastics that are the ‘evil’ of today’s society stand.

Let us begin by focusing on one product that has seen a shift in material usage due to its environmental impact – Plates and Straws.

Since the past few decades, the go to option to eat and drink on the go was plastic straws, plastic cups, plastic plates. Now, these have killed fishes, livestock, have entered our bodies as micro-plastics, and have leached into the ground water and destroyed soil and many more things. To save the environment, we are switching to paper straws, paper plates, paper cups.

Of course, the paper alternatives are much more expensive than their plastic counterparts but, that is just economies of scale at play for the most part and should be ignored. Performance of the paper counter-part are not at par with plastic. They cannot hold liquids for a long time, the straws need to be much thicker, making it uncomfortable to use, oil leaks through from paper plates, they are weaker structurally.

Paper Plates vs Plastic plates

1. Weight and its impact: Paper Plates need to be thicker for the same performance than plastic plates. Since our entire logistics is based upon Fossil Fuels (even Electric Vehicles burn coal or solar panels and very energy intensive to manufacture – we will not go there, it a whole different discussion) – the environmental impact of transporting paper plates for the same distance in much higher.
2. Post Processing: Are all Paper Plates made just of wood pulp (paper)? Obviously, NO – Various processes are done to make them white, or durable or whatever, these use chlorine-based agents for bleaching, is this safer than plastic?
3. Trees: We have all read, trees are a carbon sink, but how many trees are being cut down to make paper objects and are they better than plastics?

These are just some of the points we are looking at when we compare paper and plastics.

Most of the above points have been left at a question, this is because the data available is hugely varied and cannot be pinpointed at, also you can think of other points further from the same, eg: Paper plates cannot be washed, hence cannot be recycled, but plastic can be.

Now let us come to the major point of discussion where we can see how plastics might be better than “eco-friendly” materials in aspects where almost all environmentalists shun plastics for. We will also discuss the larger picture, but leave it at a question….

Let’s start with bio-degradable materials, most often then you would imagine, bio-degradable materials are more energy intensive to manufacture. These materials require many processes to get to a stage where they are practically usable. These materials are often fused with other non-biodegradable materials, e.g.: Paper cups are coated with plastic to make them durable, or beached and dyed to make them attractive. The next point is quite interesting – Most of these products anyways end up in landfills, they degrade into methane (causes global warming), and other organic materials, that leech into the soil and ground water, now since these materials have been processed with various chemical, they too leech into the environment. The decaying of these materials creates a whole new eco-system for micro-organisms that may or may not be harmful to the existing flora and fauna. Is it safer than plastic?

Coming to Plastics, the most common plastic used is ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) which is a polymer made from extracted compounds primarily from petroleum and other sources. The first question we need to ask is, is it more energy intensive to make ABS from petroleum or the impact cutting a tree has and then the processes to get paper products. A tree takes years to grow, it requires land, water, soil, air, sunlight, etc. If we consider the energy a tree requires to grow over its lifetime and the energy it requires to cut, transport, and process them, is it less than making ABS? A question no one seems to care about. And let’s not get into “ethical” sourcing of raw materials, most of the trees are illegally cut from rainforests.

Why am I rooting for plastics, they stay in the ecosystem forever. Exactly, they stay forever, that means they are almost infinitely reusable! And obviously melting a chair and making a new one is less energy intensive than any other alternative currently available.

The problem is very simple, its is economics and desire! We expect a range of different designs and colors for any product, chairs are usually made of ABS, but there are white chairs, blue, red, green, blah-blah colors of chairs, some have steel handles, some have gold trims and so many more. This causes the main issue in the plastic ecosystem, if two unidentical plastics and heated together, the resultant product is often less desirable in both physical and chemical properties. The only problem is segregation of materials, this where economics don’t allow it. If tomorrow all chair manufacturers standardize their materials and have only a few designs available, there will be, in a few years enough waste chairs to have an economically viable chair recycling plant and yes, the earth would be better-off.

A great example in this trillion-dollar tech company named after a fruit, who only make and sell 3-4 models of a mobile phones a year, that means their parts, processes and materials are almost same across the line-up and they have setup an initiative to buy back old phones, they have made a robot to disassemble, and segregate all parts of these phone that can be easily recycled and made into new phones. A source (not sure of the reliability) says they have been able to extract the same amount of Gold and Copper from 1Ton of phone that would require 2000Tons of mined earth. That did make a difference, don’t you think…

So, at the end I would like to conclude this rather long article (still missed a few points), by saying, the material is not the problem, it is the recycling of these materials that is the problem. We can argue about the pros and cons of any material out there, be it metal, plastic, paper, sugarcane pulp, or whatever. As long as they end up in a landfill or are incinerated, it makes no sizable difference to the earth, to the ecosystem. What we need is less variety of products and a more standardized construction. I am a mechanical designer myself, and I don’t see why, companies cannot design products that are easily separatable into its components or why can’t certain things be standardized by the governments. If all cars (taking about your average city car), use the same material for the dashboard without “sticking” other non-essential materials on it, it becomes economically viable to recycle them on a large-scale, making plastic “eco-friendly”. But if companies do this then anyone can make after market parts easily and sell it, this will reduce the company’s profits.

If you think about it, any product can be made standard and can be made easy to recycle or be completely eliminated… But profits, economics and politics….

P.S. – I am not rooting for any material, just asking questions…..

Thanks For Reading………

Keeping thinking, keep questioning, Be Curious……………………