I’m concerned that recent articles appearing in the popular press will turn into an antichemistry movement much as the Luddites attacked mechanization 200 years ago.
For example, the National Geographic Society is running a yearlong series of articles about plastics pollution. The article, “Planet or Plastic?” creates an impression that plastics are indestructible unless they are recycled. A short video shows a manta ray ingesting plastic trash in the gyre near Bali in Indonesia. Its impact is exceptionally strong.
An article by XiaoZhi Lim in The New York Times discusses how plastics perish. In my youth, I never thought about the lifetime of plastic parts and tools, but with age, I came to use “plastic” as a pejorative adjective. Lim’s article describes the slow demise of plastics in layman’s language. He reports that many items that are less than 50 years old, such as Apple I computers and toothbrushes, are losing functionality due to aging. Conservation scientists and museum curators strive to protect their specimens. However, diffusion of plasticizers, release agents, dyes, etc. and other additives in plastics is relentless. Over the years, these additives accumulate at phase boundaries, which weakens the big part. Plus, the polymers slowly search for their lowest energy state, which makes the part less flexible. Ultimately this may include slow degradation and fracturing (crizzle).
The lay press has focused on plastic pollution of our planet. The oceans are an easy target since access is open and the marine ecosystems have popular support. Trash concentrates in gyres.
As chemists, we can expect to be asked about the plastics problem. I think the take-home message for lab staff is: Yes, plastics have an important place in our society and economy. About 40% of plastics are recycled. Unfortunately, this means that the remainder is not. The world needs to do better, much better. Personally, I expect that the growing stream of plastics will turn into a steady stream of construction and packaging materials.
The desire to improve our situation is a human trait. Learning what to do with plastics will take time and ingenuity. The latter is also a human trait. So, in time plastics pollution will become an item classed as an old and solved problem. With our training in chemistry, we have an opportunity to be part of the solution.
Robert L. Stevenson, Ph.D., is Editor Emeritus, American Laboratory/Labcompare; e-mail: [email protected]