Peak Plastic: The Rise or Fall of Our Synthetic World

160 Pages·2018·12.67 MB·English

by  Jack Buffington

Peak Plastic

Peak Plastic
The Rise or Fall of Our Synthetic World
Jack Buffington
Copyright © 2019 by Jack Buffington
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a
review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Buffington, Jack, author.
Title: Peak plastic : the rise or fall of our synthetic world / Jack
Buffington.
Description: Santa Barbara, California : Praeger, an Imprint of ABC-CLIO,
LLC, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018028192 (print) | LCCN 2018032207 (ebook) | ISBN
9781440864179 (eBook) | ISBN 9781440864162 (print : acid-free paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Plastic scrap—Environmental aspects.
Classification: LCC TD798 (ebook) | LCC TD798 .B84 2018 (print) | DDC
363.738—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018028192
ISBN: 978-1-4408-6416-2 (print)
978-1-4408-6417-9 (ebook)
23 22 21 20 19 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available as an eBook.
Praeger
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC
ABC-CLIO, LLC
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911
www.abc-clio.com
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents
Chapter 1 What Is Peak Plastic? 1
Chapter 2 The Good, Bad, and Unknown of Plastic 15
Chapter 3 The Waste-Driven Supply Chain 41
Chapter 4 2030: A Plastic Tipping Point (Peak Plastic) 57
Chapter 5 The Alternative to Peak Plastic:
Exponential Thinking 75
Chapter 6 Solution 1: Stop the Bleeding 87
Chapter 7 Solution 2: Open-Source/Access Plastic
(Open-Source Capitalism) 99
Chapter 8 Solution 3: Sustainable Polymerization 111
Chapter 9 Solution 4: A Closed-Loop System for Plastic 121
Chapter 10 Solution 5: Fixing the Invisibility Problem 135
Chapter 11 Summary: Make It Happen! 141
Index 151

CHAPTER ONE
What Is Peak Plastic?
Truth or Consequences?
Science fiction stories always seem to have a purpose. Godzilla, the prehistoric
sea monster who was awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation, was a
metaphor of the impact of nuclear weapons on the Japanese nation, a subject
that was still on the minds of its people. Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley
in 1831, tells the tale of a creator who has the ability but not the wisdom to
re-create life as a lesson for how science during her day was a burgeoning
practice of great promise and peril at the same time. Today, I feel as if I must
be a science fiction writer telling the story of how the entire planet is being
plastic wrapped into submission by the enormous amount of this material
that exists on the planet.1 Is this a metaphor? Hardly so. The story of plastic
and its great use in our lives, so seemingly harmless but omnipresent, is a
matter few are talking about, yet it is one of the greatest paradoxes we are
facing in the 21st century. If you think I’m exaggerating, consider that there
is no part of the world that is free of plastic waste—not the deepest part of
the ocean, the highest peaks, the most remote areas of the vast blue seas, or
the farthest point north at the Arctic Circle. And it is in plain sight of where
you are sitting right now, blending into your environment with or without
notice, sometimes beyond your vision in particles so small your eyes cannot
see. You may not think about it much, but the moment you wake up, your
day begins with plastic: as soon as you hit the snooze button on your plastic
alarm clock, when your feet slip into your plastic slippers and bathrobe
(sometimes cotton, sometimes synthetic, often both), when you pop off the
plastic cap of your plastic toothpaste holder (and sometimes putting plastic
in your mouth in the form of plastic beads in your toothpaste), wash your
face with plastic microbeads in your exfoliate wash from its plastic jar, and
then slide over the plastic shower curtain before you pick up the plastic
2 Peak Plastic
shampoo and body wash containers, and turn on the water that likely con-
sists of undetected plastic nanoparticles unfiltered from the municipal water
system. What makes this all possible, intentionally and unintentionally, is a
superefficient supply chain system for plastic that serves us as consumers,
but also is responsible for this material being recycled only 7 percent of the
time. Seventy percent of all plastic ever put into use is now lying in waste in
a most unnatural manner somewhere on earth. You will learn from this book
that I am a full advocate in the use and growth of plastic in our lives, such as
its importance in the health care field, protecting our foods, and nearly
uncountable other ways. In a surreal sort of way, plastic is our modern-day
superhero, able to defy the laws of nature through being 50 percent lighter
than steel at the same strength, leading to half of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner
being made from plastic. Also, consider plastic can reside in your body inten-
tionally, such as stents to open blocked arteries, or unintentionally through
exposures that are not yet well detected or understood. Maybe even more
important is its growing use as a catalysis for good in the developing world,
and as a result, plastic use will only continue to grow in use and waste, mak-
ing it a greater problem in the future than today.
Prior to World War II, the world was a much different place. Since then,
annual plastic use has grown from 2 million tons to 380 million tons today,
with a worldwide production and use that is hurtling to reach 1 billion tons
before the end of the 21st century.2 No other material, natural or manmade,
has ever followed such a trajectory, transforming itself from a mere material
into a cultural icon that defines our lives as anything and everything that is
easily disposable and replaceable. How can a simple plastic bottle be so use-
ful yet disposable to consumers, irreplaceable as a public service medium to
provide fresh water to areas of drought and periled water systems, and yet so
nefarious it becomes a market device, allowing companies to charge one to
two dollars a bottle for something that can be obtained for pennies from a
filtered faucet, and lead to waste? In nature, this seemingly disposable con-
tainer is anything but so, estimated to persist evilly in decomposition over a
period of 500 to 1,000 years in the most unnatural slime path through our
ecosystems that nobody really understands. The single bottle in your hand is
insignificant until it calculates to billions of them thrown into our environ-
ment every year, compounding and decomposing into trillions of pieces of
discarded synthetics parsed across the planet in a manner more terrifying
than any science fiction novel due to its subtlety. A material validated through
science to be so innocuous it can be used in some of our most intimate inter-
actions and yet so destructive in tiny increments of trillions that it could
become the most unheralded but greatest destructive threat to our environ-
ment just in the period of our lifetime. It’s difficult to understand how this is
possible, and this book is a journey through the impossible and then the
possible. This book is not from my imagination as a science fiction writer,
What Is Peak Plastic? 3
although at times it may seem to be, but rather it is based on data and analy-
sis providing yet another validation to the saying that “truth is often stranger
than fiction.” I do not believe this is a story of science fiction or conspiracy,
but it is true that despite much of the controversy surrounding it, only the
plastic resin manufacturers truly understand the bill of materials in its ingre-
dients. A product manufacturer of a cheap plastic toy likely has not much
more visibility to the ingredients in its product than does a concerned mother
of a toddler who unknowingly chews on it. Likewise, a polymer scientist
may understand the differences between polyethylene and polypropylene
but only in its base polymer structure and not to its specific formula that can
include toxic chemicals either in its design or in its manufacturing. Surpris-
ingly and not surprisingly, there is so little public knowledge about this
indispensable material, which is irreplaceable, disposable, and consequential
all at the same time.
Maybe the great difficulty in understanding plastic is due to it being con-
sidered from the same rules as any other material, such as wood and steel,
which are easier to define and describe more discretely. As a matter of fact,
wood and steel are easier to be defined as nouns, as things, yet plastic is
jumbled in a confusing and complex concept in being a noun, verb, and
adjective at the same time. “Plastic” the noun can show up as a material that
is nearly invisible and assumed to vanish into thin air (when it does not) like
glitter and as a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe that can last for a 100 years or
longer. The disposable Styrofoam cooler that crunches when it breaks is plas-
tic, as is also the stretchy polyester shirt you wear; the list of its variations
can go on and on. Plastic is not even plastic. That is, how we define plastic as
its base polymers are often modified through the use of additives, further
complicating the material, its supply chain, and its ethos. Its mystique has
even led it to gaining a cultural status of being synonymous with the term
“fake” and able to be used to depict our 21st century society as shallow, life-
less, disposable, and cluttered. Plastic’s very name originated from the Greek
word plastikos, meaning “to mold” or “form,” further defining it better as a
verb than a noun as a result of its special quality in being able to become
anything we want it to be. It has become a replacement for nature itself; it
can be a fake plastic tree in your office or replace the grass field you played
on that your kid now plays on as synthetic grass. Our society is being defined
with plastic, both literally and figuratively, and as a result, nature is being
filled with it as well, leading to unintended consequences.
Because so few of us are talking about this problem is more reason why
some will believe this is a story of science fiction rather than fact, a great
threat that has gone unnoticed right before our eyes. Some may contend this
as a great conspiracy lodged against citizens by Big Business, or others may
consider it is as one great fraud exaggerated by environmentalists being no
threat other than a few misplaced pieces of trash on their favorite beach.