Plastic pollution is not a recent concern for activists or governments, yet the few solutions implemented have not fixed the problem, and pollution only continues to grow. Knowing how plastic use has changed through time can be helpful to understand why plastic pollution is such an issue today.
Photo by Lennard Kollossa on Unsplash shows a plastic water bottle floating in a lake.
British inventor Alexander Parkes created one of the first plastics and patented it in 1862, however it wasn’t until 1907, after Leo Baekeland created a fully synthetic plastic, that plastic became more widespread. This started the production of more forms of plastic, particularly by oil and gas industries as they could create plastic from their waste material.
Plastics were widely used by the military in World War 2, for planes and parachute strings, but at the end of the war the industry had to adapt. The properties of plastic, their affordability and low weight, meant that they could be used for transport and insulation. However, this is still a relatively small use of plastic, mostly for industry and production. Plastic has only been common in homes for the past three generations.
One of the most recognizable ways in which plastic entered the home in the 1950s USA was through ‘Tupperware parties’. American women didn’t want to use plastics, believing that they were cheap or oily, but the Tupperware company began to advertise their products through at-home demonstrations. Women were able to earn money by hosting the parties and selling the products. They were so successful that Tupperware parties still happen today. It didn’t take long for plastics to be seen in a different way. An attraction at Disneyland, called “The Monsanto House of the Future” was a model home made completely out of plastic. This video shows the home which could be visited from 1957 to 1967, with shelving, dishes, and textiles all made from polymers.
Photo courtesy Orange County Archives. Depicts the Monsanto House of the Future attraction.
Problems of excess plastic waste in the United States didn’t take long to surface. The US held the First National Conference of Packaging Wastes in 1969, where a Dr. George F. Stewart explained the need for such a conference to address the increase in difficult to destroy packaging waste from, “a wide variety of ‘convenience’ consumer packages and similar professional and industrial ‘disposable’ packages”. As we know, the conference was not able to create effective solutions, and plastic waste is still polluting the Earth.
Today, plastic waste is still being created, and a large amount of pollution is unseen. Abandoned fishing gear, called ‘ghost gear’ was found to make up 46% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area in the North Pacific in which huge amounts of plastic have accumulated. Ghost gear, although discarded, can continue to harm marine life. Microplastics are even more imperceptible, yet also harm animal life. Microplastics are released into the environment through washing certain fabrics such as polyester.
The ubiquitous and cheap nature of plastic means that reducing our use seems almost impossible. Plastic bags, samples, and straws are often given for free and without asking. Incentives to reduce plastic, outside of a desire to be a conscious consumer, rarely exist and often focus on the most visible plastics. But despite the plastic bag bans in many European countries, almost 40% of plastics in Europe in 2019 were created for use as packaging.
There are no incentives for plastic producers to reduce their plastic production, but strong financial incentives to grow. To do this they create wide demand for products that were not seen as necessary before and, as consumers are becoming increasingly environmentally conscious, plastic producers and retailors are adapting. They have been more than effective at creating or selling new plastics with other uses or larger environmental assertions.
In the future, new forms of plastic, such as bioplastics, and an increased interest in recycled plastics, may help the industry to change its image. Unfortunately, the term can mislead consumers who may assume that bioplastics are created from non-fossil fuel sources, and are biodegradable. In fact, “Bioplastics” can also refer to plastics that are only partially derived from non-fossil fuel sources, but still require fossil fuels to create (and may not bio-degrade), as well as plastics that are created solely from fossil-fuels but can bio-degrade. Indeed, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry recommended against the term, stating that the term “Bioplastic is misleading because it suggests that any polymer derived from the biomass is environmentally friendly”. “Biodegradable” is also a term that can be subject to confusion, as it does not often mean that it can be decomposed at home. In many cases the material must be sent to a facility to be treated or the material may be compostable only in an industrial center.
Inventors are working on futuristic sounding alternatives, such as fungi, but these alternatives are currently difficult or expensive to create. Fortunately, pressure to reduce plastic pollution could lead to change and innovation. In order to do this, consumers must stay informed about new types of plastic, and the confusing phrasing used, because action to reduce plastic pollution begins from activists.