Plastic is everywhere around us from jewellery to computer keyboards to vinyl wrap. Derived from the Greek word Plastikos, plastic is produced from natural, organic materials such as cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt, and crude oil.
Plastic has a history of about 100 years. What we today call celluloid was invented by Alexander Parkes from England in 1855. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was first produced between 1838 and 1872. A key breakthrough came in 1907 when Leo Baekeland created the first real synthetic plastic called Bakelite, by the condensation reaction of phenol with formaldehyde.
Polymerization and polycondensation are two main processes involved in manufacturing plastic in presence of chemicals. In the reactor, the organic chemical ethylene and propylene are blended to form long polymer chains. Plastic is categorized into two main polymer families: thermoplastics which soften on heating and then harden again on cooling, and thermosets which never soften once they have been moulded, hence cannot be recycled.
Plastic cannot biodegrade easily, so plastic garbage is stockpiling the world over. Its breakdown in the environment takes hundreds to thousands of years, though we may never know its actual degradation time. From the 1950s up to 2018, an estimated 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic were discarded worldwide, of which an estimated 21% has been recycled and incinerated. The plastic pollution is categorized into micro-, meso-, or macro debris, of which the microplastics have pervaded the air, bodies of water, and food sources. The average human ingests about 70,000 microplastics annually!
Globally, more than 1 trillion single-use plastic bags are discarded each year, and less than 5% get recycled. The vast majority of these bags end up in landfills or contaminates environments, causing pollution. Plastic pollution impacts tourism, recreation, business, the health of humans, animals, fish, and birds. The financial damage continuously being inflicted is inestimable. Plastic pollution has been estimated to cause more than US$13 billion in economic damage to marine ecosystems each year, and the problem is only getting worse with marine plastic pollution estimated to outweigh fish by 2050.
Is plastic toxic? Plastic is known to release a variety of chemicals during degradation, which harms organisms and ecosystems. Chemicals used to polymerize plastic which gives them their rigidity or flexibility (bisphenols, phthalates, and other harmful chemicals) are oily poisons that repel water and stick to petroleum-based objects like plastic debris. Cases of plastics contaminating food have been reported with most plastic types, including Styrene from polystyrene, plasticizers from PVC, antioxidants from polyethylene, and Acetaldehyde from polyester called PET.
This is a serious concern with increasing amounts of plastic debris accumulating in the aquatic environment. According to research published in Journal Science, 24-34 million MT of plastic emissions debris currently enter aquatic ecosystems every year. Food wrapping, fishing gear, and plastic waste continue to reach Antarctica. According to Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, the plastic debris accounted for 84% of waste collected from the beaches in South Georgia and Signy Island South Orkneys, with an increasing accumulation trend during 1989-2019.
We are living on a plastic planet, so how plastic can affect our health? Drinking from a plastic bottle ingests microplastic particles, some of it may end up lodged in the gut or traveling through the lymphatic system. Researchers from Saudi Arabia found a higher concentration of endocrine disruptor Bisphenol-A (7.5 ng/L) in plastic water bottles exposed to higher temperature conditions. Scores of tap water samples from more than a dozen nations were analyzed by scientists for the investigation which revealed that 83% of the samples were contaminated with plastic fibers.
In our plastic-filled planet, avoiding plastic can be pretty challenging. But finding alternatives to common items like plastic bottles and plastic packaging is becoming increasingly easier. Scientists have been racing to find an alternative to single-use plastic water bottles and have come up with some prototypes derived from plants that supposedly degrade in natural environments.
Single-use plastic straws have become a public enemy in the global fight against plastic. Bamboo straws, in particular, have become popular in the US. Many multinational clothing brands have responded to the growing epidemic of plastic waste by incorporating recovered plastic into their clothing lines. It sounds like a foolish idea ” taking the plastic debris that’s contaminating the environment and turning it into asphalt to make plastic roads! This technology has found application in the far-flung state of Meghalaya, where 430 kg of plastic waste was used to build a kilometer-long road in 2018. So think twice before you ask for a plastic bag at the grocery shop or straw at the restaurant. During our short stay, we are choking our Earth with plastics.
