Most Plastics come from crude oil. Chemical companies are responsible for turning this resource into plastic in a multitude of forms. These are all made into compounds that have great difficulty for our environment: they will not biodegrade. There are 20 major companies in the world which are concerned with this process ~ they are estimated to be responsible for 55% of the production of single-use plastics.
"In the next five years, global capacity to produce virgin polymers for single-use plastics could grow by over 30 percent — and by as much as 400 percent for individual companies. An environmental catastrophe beckons: much of the resulting single-use plastic waste will end up as pollution in developing countries with poor waste management systems." (Australia's Minderoo Foundation May 2021)
There is an inescapable fact that the plastics that are being poured into our world are a disaster. When I read “currently not recyclable” there is a feeling that I have that this gets the producers out of the responsibility for finding a product that IS recyclable. Has there been any development here?
The recent pandemic has shown us how much can be achieved in one year when industry, science and politicians work together to solve an urgent problem, such as developing, testing and rolling out Covid-19 vaccinations. This gives me hope that with the same sense of urgency we can find a solution to an equally critical challenge. Where there is a will there is a way.
We need to ditch fossil raw materials and switch to biomass as the raw material. Estimates of such raw material have shown that in 2019, the global production capacities of bioplastics amounted to 2.11 million tonnes, which required approximately 0.79 million hectares of land to grow the renewable feedstock. The surface required to grow sufficient feedstock for today’s bioplastics production is around 0.02 percent of the global agricultural area of a total of 4.8 billion hectares. Metaphorically speaking, this ratio correlates to the size of an average cherry tomato compared to the Eiffel Tower. (European Bioplastics [EUBP] Facts and Figures) In other words, biomass can provide the world with sufficient food for our food needs and would also easily provide the raw material for all of our plastics needs too. There is nothing that bioplastics cannot do: today, there is a bioplastic alternative for almost every conventional plastic material and corresponding application. Currently, less than 1% of global plastics are bioplastics, so we would just about break into single figures for available land use if 100% of our plastics were made from bioplastics. Here is the link to this PDF document:
EUBP Facts and Figures - European Bioplastics e.V.
Chemists and biotechnologists have developed this science so that they can produce the same formulae as from fossil raw materials. There will no longer be any need to depend on fossil raw materials in most cases.
How to achieve this change? Governments will have to play a major part in helping companies to achieve this massive paradigm change, most likely through legislation. “Bioplastics offer a broad range of functionalities optimised for each type of application. They can be processed into a vast array of products using conventional plastics processing technologies. In most cases, the process parameters of the processing equipment simply have to be adjusted to the individual specification of each polymer.” (EUBP “Facts and Figures 2017”). Here is a link to a recent report from the Centre for Process Innovation: https://www.uk-cpi.com/blog/5-reasons-why-we-need-sustainable-packaging
A quote from this article, written by Dan Noakes ~ Grand Challenge Lead ~ is salient:
“Switching to biodegradable packaging solutions — that are designed to last just longer than the product it contains — would enable packaging to breakdown naturally, therefore reducing environmental pollution and releasing carbon dioxide that is part of the natural carbon cycle if composted or incinerated.”
The systems are available. What is needed now is government legislation.
Lobbying is a powerful tool to gain momentum for bringing about this change. Please lobby your local councillor, your Member of Parliament, your Mayor, your Chamber of Commerce, your own group of friends or other groups you are part of as well as plastic producing companies. Apparently just 3.4% of any population can bring about change ~ for the better!
The frustration for individuals is in the fact that plastics producers are most likely fully aware of how to produce materials that can be biodegradable. If they knew that the plastics they were creating as early as in the '70s were impossible to decompose, then they would also have known about the potential for other more eco-friendly plastics. That is what this campaign is aiming to challenge.
There must be legislation for the producers to replace plastics made from fossil sourced raw materials for plastics made from biomass. The best way is for groups such as schools and other groups to lobby key representatives. Publicity will spread this campaign and an incremental development will be a turning point. Here is an encouraging development which puts this strategy into context:
“The last week of May was quickly branded a ‘week of reckoning’ for the fossil fuel sector. After a groundbreaking ruling from the Hague District Court, in which Royal Dutch Shell was ordered to raise its climate targets, shareholder votes saw two climate activists added to ExxonMobil’s board and urged Chevron to update its strategy in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change.
These votes related to just two of dozens of motions to have been filed at high-emitting corporates for the 2021 AGM season. Firms including CAT, Monster Beverage, Twitter, DTE Energy and General Electric – the latter of which saw 98% of the vote going in favour of greater climate disclosures in line with a ‘net-zero indicator’ – have all made headlines this quarter.” (Edie news bulletin 22/6/21)
Please refer to the Petition and personalise it for your own locality. The intention is for this campaign to become global. After all, this issue affects our whole Planet.
Oliver Sterno 11 11 21
Community Leader ~ Plastic Free Eastbourne
Coordinator ~ Refill Eastbourne
Endorsements:
16/11/21~ Josh Babarinde “Your revisions make total sense and I respect them hugely. Very happy to support”
23/11/21 ~ Karl Hopper-Young “It is a very interesting piece of work and hopefully it will develop legs and become very important in the near future”
Bioplastics are not just one single material. They comprise of a whole family of materials with different properties and applications. According to European Bioplastics, a plastic material is defined as a bioplastic if it is either bio-based, biodegradable, or features both properties. There are three groups of bioplastics, each with their own characteristics: • Bio-based (or partly bio-based), non-biodegradable plastics, such as bio-based polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) (so-called drop-in solutions), bio-based technical performance polymers, such as numerous polyamides (PA) or polytrimethylene terephthalate (PTT); • Bio-based and biodegradable plastics, such as polylactic acid (PLA), polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), polybutylene succinate (PBS), and starch blends; • Plastics that are based on fossil resources and biodegradable, such as polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT), but that may well be produced at least partly bio-based in the future. Bioplastics offer a broad range of functionalities optimised for each type of application. They can be processed into a vast array of products using conventional plastics processing technologies. In most cases, the process parameters of the processing equipment simply have to be adjusted to the individual specification of each polymer.
