Everybody is moved by the plastic pandemic, but whenever I bring up the possibility of using something else, a chorus of manufacturers and retailers tells me I must not demonize this “miracle material”. After all, it has been included in heart valves, the cockpits of Second World War allied bomber aircraft and bulletproof vests — and it has enabled space travel. It is heroic by implication. To which I can only reply: “Yes, but what about the spork, a sort of spoon, fork and knife combo?” As I watched said sporks roll off the extruding machines at a Northampton factory, I was struck by the enthusiasm of the factory boss. He talked of the lightning speed of production (although he did not mention the lightning speed of disposal) and cutting-edge R&D. It was as if we were about to witness the next generation of the Apple Watch rather than a disposable, cutlery hybrid for the “lunchables” market.
It’s pretty clear that plastic is a stupid material to pick for everyday use. First, it doesn’t go anywhere. Since plastic was commercialized and brought to market in the 1950s, 8.3 billion tons have been created. That’s the weight of one billion elephants. According to a groundbreaking study published last year, led by Professor Roland Geyer, just 9 per cent has been recycled, 12 per cent incinerated and 79 per cent has accumulated in landfills or the wider environment. So that’s the “worthy” argument, if you like. But perhaps we should concentrate more on our lack of technological ambition. Is plastic really the best we can do?
Once, perhaps. The great-grandfathers of plastic — Alexander Parkes, John Wesley Hyatt and Leo Baekeland — undertook thousands of dangerous experiments with combustible ingredients. This was breakthrough chemistry. They moved away from the confines of classic organic chemistry.
For the first time, limits weren’t set by using wood from trees or ore dug up from the ground, where the behaviour, amount and structure of the material was already dictated. Instead, chemists were able to alter the molecular chain of plastics, giving the material different properties. It could bend, stretch or become translucent or incredibly durable. It put the chemists in control.
This must have really had the wow factor at the time, but now? Is this the extent of our ambition? Why aren’t we focused on the material that will define us, in a new, post-plastics era?
This complacency is matched by a curious tolerance for really terrible design. We all have multiple examples. My biggest this year was a BA short-haul flight to Zurich (yes, I know, carbon emissions). The coffee was poured in a giant sippy cup, made from multiple polymers and using a “patent-pending” mesh spout. It was so counterintuitive and so filled with possibilities for causing injury that each passenger had to be shown how to use it by the aircrew. We landed before my instruction was complete. But my true nemesis is the shrink-wrapped coconut. Today, you’ll find a nextgeneration version in almost every supermarket in Britain. Not only are they shrink-wrapped, but they are fitted with a plastic ring pull.
There is plenty to worry about. In the UK, we’re world leaders in consumption of wet wipes (10.8 billion of these plastic-based products are used every year) and plastic-stemmed cotton buds (13.2 billion). This all adds up to a giant plastic footprint. That means we each use about 140 kilograms of plastic a year, three times as much as in the 1980s. Much of it can be seen as unnecessary; some will end up in the marine environment (about 50 items a year). Just a tiny proportion will be recycled.
The injustice is not only to the planet. Ninety per cent of the cost of disposal of plastic is borne by consumers and just ten per cent by the manufacturers and retailers that force it on us in the first place. And let’s face it, overengineered coffee cups and coconuts are not where human ingenuity should be utilized. We can do better.
Time to act
We must do it quickly. Recently, I spoke to activist Emily Penn. Leading a voyage with an all-female crew, she was calling from the North Pacific gyre, one of the five gyres where ocean plastic collects. She might have been on a crackly satellite phone, but the downcast tone of her voice was unmistakable. “In ten years, I have never seen the plastic pollution this bad,” she told me.
We have to act now. “Plastic is a design failure,” says Cyrill Gutsch, founder of Parley for the Oceans, who created the Adidas shoe made of ocean plastic waste. To get stuck with plastic for any longer will be a failure of the imagination.