Plastic World
Ministry of Health, Portugal: Campaign Against Cholesterol, Lego. Image Courtesy of http://adsoftheworld.com/
About Plastic
Plastic is wonderful. It percolates the very fabric of our complex society. It is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. It has defied nature. We have created a material that is, for all intensive purposes, immortal. Imagine that you are a time-traveller. You travel back to Britain a millenium ago and you bury a plastic bag deep underground on British soil during the reign of William I (1066). After the reigns of fifty monarchs had passed, you return to that spot and dig. That plastic bag will not have fully decomposed.
The word plastic is derived from the Greek πλαστικός (plastikos) meaning capable of being shaped or molded, from πλαστός (plastos) meaning molded. According to Wikipedia Plastic is:
any material of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymer of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs. Monomers of plastic are either natural or synthetic organic compounds.
Plastic Day
I jotted this down last year, as I was making my first haltering steps toward a more sustainable lifestyle:
Plastic seems to be everywhere I look. To begin with, there’s an Evian bottle on my desk I purchased at Tesco’s earlier. Cue, the first pang of guilt. I better re-fill it from the tap. Scattered around my desk are plastic rulers and pens, USB’s and harddrives. My Blackberry, with its plastic casing blinks red, and an almost-empty plastic Head & Shoulders shampoo-conditioner combo. Beside the desk – are a few plastic bags stashed inside several re-useable bags I’ve bought for my scheduled shops. I forgot to bring them last time. Damn! Around the room are plastic plugs, plastic lamps, plastic folders and files, plastic computers, plastic picture frames. On the shelves, plastic camera casings and equipment, several hundred plastic DVD cases and a few plastic toys from a plastic-filled childhood.
Walk into the the kitchen-living room. Plastic. A cheap plastic kettle, a cheaper plastic toaster. Plastic in almost every utensil, on almost every surface. In the compartment under the sink is a stash of maybe 50 plastic bags that have been collected over the months. A guilty hoard. Temporarily saved from an almost certain oceanic fate. Use them carefully, while they last… Ouch! I stub my toe on a set of plastic dumbbells.
By the wall, three large plastic containers filled to their brims with so much junk. One contains plastic milk cartons and empty yoghurt pots. Another is packed with cardboard boxes and cartons folded along their seams. The third with glass containers and bottles of all sizes. This is our in-house recycling system. We take these out each week ensuring that the majority of our home’s waste goes directly into the recycling bins across the road. After which it’s no longer in our hands. How convenient.
Of course, today on my way to a meeting in central, I stopped at a newsagent to pick up the new “Wired“. I was thirsty and felt the strong urge for some wine-gums. “Do you have any water that doesn’t come in plastic bottles?” I asked over the counter, as I passed the man my magazine and sweets? The kind man looked at me as though I was slightly mad and shrugged. “Sorry”, he said, “just plastic.” I looked at my watch. “Fine, this too, please.” I sheepishly handed him over a bottle of Evian. “Would you like a bag, sir”, he asked, holding up a fluorescent blue plastic bag. “No thank you I beamed. I’ll use my own.”
Try Gerolsteiner water in glass bottles from Germany. Every step we take towards sustainability is the right choice. The biggest issue with plastic is your point on how we have not dealt with it properly. Letting it pile up in the oceans is neglect, while posions emits in air and water. The alcohol used to clean plastic bottles has a chemical reaction when the bottles set in hot trucks during transport. Drinking from glass bottles or stainless steel reuseable bottles solves two issues in one. We are at the most significant turning point. Great post!
great article thanks
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