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The story of Mutant 59 is Marinella Levi’s fav to quote to plastic haters, a cohort that – as the Materials Science and Technology professor and Director of the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta” at the Politecnico di Milano says – “is larger than ever, sadly blinding the public at large in front of the real issue when it comes to plastic and sustainability”.
And the issue is: we should use plastic with respect, dispose of it properly, clean it up where the damage is already done, and design things differently.
Can we live without plastic?
“No, we cannot”, says Professor Levi. “Without plastic and rubber, we would go back a century. We wouldn’t be able to land planes, drive cars, run hospitals, have computers or smartphone (since chips are placed on printed circuit boards). This is a material that also recently – think masks during the Covid outbreak – saved lives”.
Yet plastic is the enemy number one when people talk about sustainability.
According to Levi, this is a global scam. A distraction from the key issue: we are the bad guys, not plastic.
She claims this numbers at hand. “Plastic is highly necessary to do almost everything that’s why it’s everywhere. Yet its production accounts for only 5% of all oil used world-wide. The global crusade against plastic is not due to the fact that it uses a lot of oil, or it pollutes by emitting CO2 during manufacture (transportation + heating and cooling have a far higher impact). It’s related to the fact that plastic is visible, abandoned on beaches, sucked in by oceans, cluttering cities, spoiling landscapes. But who brought it there?”.
Surely some of you will now be turning up their noses. Plastic is a super controversial issue especially in the design world.
“The issue is us and how we use plastic (for instance for mono-use items, also when other options are available) and leave it around. We should reduce the amount of new plastic we make, yes, when possible: as we should do with all materials. We should conceive and design materials and products to really enter circular economy processes that guarantee environmental sustainability.
We should be serious when we select recycled or bioplastic materials: and serious means
choosing, for example, what allows us to consume less energy than we would using virgin materials and with costs acceptable to the market.
And we should start a global campaign to teach people to see plastic as a resource, stop wasting it and chucking it around, learn to recycle it and reuse it properly”.
If you ask most people, though, especially Gen Z, they are convinced that we should get rid of all plastic and replace it with bioplastic options.
“Most people don’t know how bioplastics are manufactured, nor understand that their mechanical qualities are not always comparable to those of traditional plastic.
Furthermore, the suffix bio is very alluring and confusing, especially when coupled with adjectives such as degradable, biodegradable and compostable.
It makes people think that they are more natural than plastic and that they dissolve”, explains Levi.
So let’s clarify it all.
Marinella Levi:
“They are just as normal plastic is. Both are created using natural resources (biomasses and microorganisms or fossils, hence mineral waste) but both require an equally complex chemical process (hence energy) to come to life.
Marinella Levi:
“It depends on many factors and on which bioplastic we are talking about. So first we need to explain the meaning of the adjectives biodegradable, compostable and degradable, that are different characteristics of materials.
In general, compostable materials are also biodegradable, but not all biodegradable materials are compostable. For example, a biodegradable material can be decomposed in water or air but is not necessarily capable of being transformed into humus which can subsequently be used as a fertilizer.
These types of materials can cause environmental problems if not handled properly and can be considered persistent waste.
However, these materials can, indeed, must be recycled, undergoing processes that transform them into secondary materials that can still be used over and over again.
When it comes to the biodegradability or compostability of bioplastic, it’s useful to refer to the definitions of the European Environmental Agency,
So coming back to your question, does bioplastic dissolve?, the answer is: only compostable bioplastic does, and only in certain conditions. The human factor, how we get rid of plastic (also bioplastic) is key avoiding pollution.
Marinella Levi:
“Bioplastics are first and foremost plastics, but in this case they are obtained from renewable biomass or microorganisms instead of fossil raw materials (such as oil).
The process to make bioplastic is as follows:
Marinella Levi:
“Bioplastics are appreciated because they reduce the amount of oil used, the can have a smaller carbon footprint and decompose faster. On paper, it all looks really good.
But saying what is sustainable requires a high intellectual honesty and a great environmental culture in the people who make decisions: the use of shared indicators that are often very complex.
A very rigorous methodology to obtain some of these shared indicators is the Life Cycle Assessment, an engineering and data-based process that measures the environmental impact of the whole life cycle of a product (or even a business) against different impact categories such as: climate change, ozone depletion, eutrophication, acidification, human toxicity (cancer and non-cancer related) respiratory inorganics, ionizing radiation, ecotoxicity, photochemical ozone formation, land use, and resource depletion.
Research has shown that the use of fertilizers and pesticides in crop production and the chemical processes required to turn them into plastic generated a greater number of pollutants and damaged the ozone layer more than traditional plastic, while also requiring extensive land use (land that could be used for producing food for people).
Another big issue has – again – nothing to do with the material but with us being unable to recycle properly.
Even if bioplastics typically made from starch, cellulose, and lactic acid are biodegradable, the way the biodegrade, as we said earlier, depends on their specific composition and production process.
Besides that, in order to break down properly (hence leaving no toxic waste), they require, for example, composting facilities and most cities in the world are not equipped with one.
So waste management is the biggest issue with bioplastic as it is with traditional plastic. In some ways, it could be worse.
If bioplastic ends in the landfill (it may happen) and it is not kept in the right environment to biodegrade (i.e. 50°C+ and humidity) when deprived of oxygen, it degrades under other trash and releases methane. This is 23 times worse as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
If bioplastic is discarded with normal plastic, its not fossil nature contaminates the rest of the plastic which cannot undergo the normal recycling process. The result is that the yield of the recycling process can be greatly worsened.
Marinella Levi:
“Bioplastic should replace traditional plastic in single-use items. In some types of packaging, for instance. For shopping when (hopefully rarely) we do not have our own reusable bag), for party glasses, plates, cutlery. But consumers should be properly informed about how to recycle them: they have to be recycled in wet waste to avoid a sort of cross contamination between plastics and bioplastics.
What we should keep in mind is that
there is no black or white solution: a variety of different options, when it comes to plastic, will have to coexist to tackle the environmental issue.
Marinella Levi:
“When we consider the types of bioplastic we have at present, there is no point in using them for long lasting items. In those cases, it’s much better to opt for traditional plastic or, even better, recycled plastic which, at the end of its life span, can be easily recycled again and again.
One has to bear in mind that recycled plastic can have worse properties compared to virgin plastic, and cannot be recycled ad infinitum, but, for sure, at the end of its life cycle, it can be incinerated and the energy contained therein can be recovered.
In the last few years, a lot of designers (and even companies) have been experimenting with bioplastics and used them to produce items that are supposed to be durable: furniture, sneakers, fashion garments, home decorations… This truly doesn’t make sense. Quite the opposite, it sends the wrong message:
it taps into the idea that we can buy things at no impact and throw them out quickly.
When this is truly not the case. Thankfully, it seems that this trend is slightly slowing now”.
Marinella Levi:
“Yes. Getting to know all materials that are available, and figuring out their qualities, is important to understand when it’s good to use them and when it is just a PR exercise. But a much more positive impact would be achieved if designers focused on something else”.
Marinella Levi:
“Focus on making design circular, applying the Rs of the circular economy. These Rs are not mutually exclusive, they are interconnected and implementing them will create a circular economy where resources are kept in use for as long as possible, and waste is minimized.
The Rs of circular design are:
[ Read also An industrial designer’s unexpected view on plastics ]
There is a lot designers can do to make the Rs actionable. For instance:
* Design to reduce the amount of materials (not just plastic, obviously), opting for recycled ones whereas durability is not impacted, preferring single materials rather than mixed ones to facilitate recycling
* Apply design for disassembly techniques so that objects can be easily dismantled and repaired (by anyone) and parts eventually recycled
* Educate people to respect plastic and see it as a resource (to properly dispose of) rather than a cheap throw away thing. Designers are great at communicating complex concepts and should be involved by governments and institutions in changing people’s mentality on these issues
* Tackle the microplastics issue. Microplastics comes from a variety of sources:
_ Personal care products: Microbeads, plastic beads found in some toothpastes, body washes, and other personal care products
_ Industrial abrasives, such as those used in blasting, polishing, and cleaning
_ Plastic packaging such as plastic bags, bottles, and packaging (that are broken down by physical processes such as UV light, wave action, or mechanical abrasion, and chemical processes such as photo-degradation).
_ Clothing: Microfibers from synthetic clothing released when washed and entering the water system
_ Vehicle tires: When the tires are worn down, tiny fibers can be released
_ Paints, Marine coatings, Agrochemicals
Lots of work should go into figuring out ways to stop this invisible pollution.
* Promote new food habits: if we buy fruit and vegetables in supermarkets, where logistic chains are long, plastic must be used to lengthen the life of products. Locally grown and sold fresh foods are the way to go and educational campaigns can help
* Experiment with bioplastics: bearing in mind when and how they should be used, as we saw above.
LIFE IN PLASTIC BY DAVID GILLIVER is a project that the Scottish artist started in 2018 to bring to the world’s attention the big issue of plastic littering. In the shots, he placed his signature “little people” in natural settings furnished with discarded plastic found on the beaches and in the lochs of the West Coast of Scotland. We thank David to grant us the use of his beautiful and meaningful images. To know more visit David Gilliver Photography on Facebook or Instagram
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