The story of plastics
Littered beaches and throwing soft plastic in the landfill bin leaves most of us feeling a little depressed, wondering how on earth we’re going to be able to do something about the plastic crisis.
We’ve seen the devastating impacts of single use plastics, we’ve bought our keep cups and we opt for the unpackaged fruit and vegetables at the supermarket.
We make these small changes, but in the face of climate change, it doesn’t feel like enough. Before we get into that, we’d like to quickly take you through the history of plastics.
Plastic was originally intended to be more sustainable than natural resources
Before plastic, we relied solely on natural resources to make everything: wood, metal, bone and tusk. In the second half of the 19th century, a love of billiards led to the consumption of at least one million pounds of ivory per year.
The first industrial plastic known as celluloid would become the sustainable alternative to the slaughter of elephants.
“As petroleum came to the relief of the whale, so has celluloid given the elephant, the tortoise and the coral insect a respite in their native haunts; and it will no longer be necessary to ransack the earth in pursuit of substances which are constantly growing scarcer.”
However, widespread use of plastic wouldn’t become commonplace until the 1960s in Australia just after this image from Life magazine would portray the joy of single use plastics.
In a world still recovering from World War 2, throwaway items of convenience were a breath of fresh air in comparison to the extreme hardship and scarce resources everyday people had struggled with.
But there was, for a very long time, a world without plastic.
What was life like before plastic?
The Piggly Wiggly was the first self service grocery store in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1916. Before that, shoppers would call with their grocers list of what they needed, then stores would bag them up in paper for pickup or delivery. Sounds familiar, right?
Dressing up in your finest garb and being seen at the supermarket became a social occasion. Advertising began to take over these supermarket aisles with bright colors and big wording. Nationwide supermarkets became interested in supplying food to as many people as possible at the lowest cost.
In the mid 50’s, pre-packaged plastic meat and produce became commonplace. While the prepackaged meat assists in keeping contaminants out, the latter may have just been to extend the shelf life. Locally sourced, seasonal produce became increasingly sparse and supermarkets morphed into what we know them as today.
The positive here is that in many ways, the world has changed for the better since that 1955 photograph in Life magazine. In Australia, seatbelts have become compulsory, smoking has been proven to be unhealthy and single use plastics are being phased out.
What can we do now?
As consumers, we have an immense power over what we choose to buy. The reason why big companies are making efforts in the sustainability space is because we care.
We care about the environment, we care about the future. Supermarkets like Coles and Woolworths are making changes because we want them to.
UK Supermarket Waitrose has introduced their ‘Unpacked’ initiative which includes concepts like:
Unpackaged produce
Pick and mix frozen fruits
Refillable detergent and dishwashing liquids
Plastic removed from flowers and plants
Refillable beer, wine and coffee
Refillable dry foods like pasta, rice and grains
These concepts already exist in bulk food stores, check out our blog post about stores in Sydney and Adelaide.
As a consumer, you can reduce your plastic consumption by:
Buying unpackaged and refillable products
Supporting small and local businesses like fruit and veg markets
Buying products made from recycled materials to close the loop
“More than seventy percent of environmental impacts are locked in at the design stage, before a consumer ever purchases a product, and well before we even consider its disposal or reuse.”
Mars Wrigley has vowed for all chocolate bars to be recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025. We suspect in the coming years that more corporations will be making similar changes.
We need to keep corporations accountable for their actions. If you’d like to sign a petition to hold Coles and Woolworths responsible for their packaging, click here.
Cleanaway and Qenos have been working on a plan to collect about 100,000 tonnes of soft plastics each year in Australia via existing household garbage collections, which is more than ten times what had been collected previously.
Using new technology, they plan on recycling the soft plastic back into soft plastic again, effectively closing the loop. The aim to have this in action by 2030.
The Circular Economy model is still in its infancy in Australia. Although we may be disappointed with the current state of the sustainability sector, we are also on the frontier of an unprecedented period of growth.
Technology is rapidly improving, we have the ability to communicate like never before and the world is full of people who are endeavoring to leave the world better than they found it.
Small changes for a big picture
While things seem slow moving now, we can also look back on the last 70 years and see how far we have come. Like this image of an ant’s face, the big picture can be very, very different.
The quickest solution is to make small changes as an individual. These efforts add up, especially if a large portion of society are doing the same. Those small efforts really do contribute to the movement of the whole.
“Don’t waste, don’t waste anything. Don’t waste electricity, don’t waste food…treat the natural world as though it is precious, which it is, and don’t squander those bits of it that we have control of.”
Bibliography:
History of Plastic - shilohplastics.com.au
Plastic was invented to save the environment - greenallianceblog.org.uk
Celebrating Throwaway Living - researchgate.net
It’s about time people were rewarded for recycling properly - greenallianceblog.org.uk
How grocery stores have changed over the years - goodhousekeeping.com
Mars bars, Snickers gets a paper makeover - smh.com.au
Qenos and Cleanaway Plastic to Plastic - cleanaway.com.au
