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A substance of utility is with us forever
KEEBLE McFARLANE
Saturday, May 31, 2008
There was a time when to refer to something as "plastic" meant that it was a cheap imitation of the real thing, and of low quality. To a large extent that was true, because the scientists who were creating the new materials were still learning how to make them. But now we can't even conceive of a world without what are, indeed, wonder materials. Plastics can be made to fit almost any demand - soft, pliable, resistant to water and chemicals, tough, able to take abuse and above all, economical to produce.
KEEBLE McFARLANE
I remember the first plastic I ever encountered - one Christmas in the 1940s, I received a bright red toy aeroplane for Christmas. It was cast in one piece, with four little yellow propellers, and had a distinctive, quite pleasant, smell. Eventually, it was discarded along with other household objects, but I bet if we knew where it was buried and dug up the site, it would still exist, untouched after all these years.
One of the strong points of plastic is just that - it doesn't rust like iron or steel, can withstand whatever nature throws at it, and lasts forever.
Plastics are all around us in durable goods - in television sets, computers, vacuum cleaners, printers, telephones and the countless other workhorses and leisure items that fill our houses. Every year more and more plastics are used in cars - from the dashboard padding and door linings, the lenses over the external lights to the bumpers at either end - even the wheels on which the vehicle rolls.
Plastics are widely used in the home as well - if your floor isn't wood, concrete or ceramic tile, it's most likely vinyl or laminate. The kitchen counter and table top are plastic laminate. The clothes you wear are almost certainly made of plastic - polyester is one of the most common, favoured for its ability to resist wrinkling and to dry quickly. Spandex allows us to move freely even as the garment clings closely to our curves. Most of the shoes we wear are made entirely, or partly, of some kind of plastic. Even airliners are now being made of the stuff. The biggest manufacturers - Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier and Embraer - are making the airframes out of plastic. Composites, as they are called, don't corrode and weigh much less than metal, an important consideration in these days of sky-high fuel prices.
But plastic's durability and longevity is also its chief drawback, and even worse in our modern, throw-away society. We stop by the roadside to buy a soft drink in a durable container and toss it by the wayside after swigging the contents. We blithely rip thin plastic bags from the roll at the supermarket to wrap the fruits, vegetables or roots and then toss them in the trash can after putting away the shopping.
Plastic goes quite a ways back - we have to thank a Scottish chemist, Charles MacIntosh, who figured there must be some use for the by-products from gasworks, which used coal to make household gas. After much trial and error, he found a way to make cloth waterproof, which led to the raincoat which to this day bears his name in the British Isles. His efforts also produced a hard rubber-like material called ebonite in 1851. The pace of discovery grew rapidly, and we have now reached the point where we can engage in an entire day's activities using only plastics.
But most of us are completely unaware of the toll this is taking on the planet. Because plastics don't rot like wood, wool or leather, or corrode like metal, they remain with us long after we have discarded them. Some three decades ago, the famed Norwegian explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, led a team which crossed the Atlantic from Africa to the Caribbean on a reed raft called the Ra II. Team members were appalled at the amount of floating plastic trash they found during the entire trip. A few years ago, environmentalists on beach patrol in Ireland picked up plastic bottles and from the markings on the bottom traced them back to Canada, on the other side of the north Atlantic.
In the Pacific Ocean there are now two huge floating garbage dumps consisting of monster clumps of discarded plastic trapped in slack waters by circulating ocean currents. The smaller one is formed by a counter-clockwise current off the coast of Japan, while the larger one is found north of Hawaii, kept there by a current moving clockwise.
This one, known as the North Pacific Gyre, covers some 26 million square kilometres, about the size of the two largest countries in the world - Canada and Russia - put together. There is very little wind, and the old running shoes, tarpaulins, toys, furniture, dolls and water bottles mat together 10 metres deep, moving slowly round and round.
While plastic doesn't rot, some does break down into smaller and smaller pieces, which animals like jellyfish pick up as they filter litre after litre of water to feed. Seabirds mistake pieces of plastic for food, and marine mammals like whales and dolphins mistake plastic bags for jellyfish. There's the really distressing case of a scientist finding a dead albatross chick with its stomach filled with plastic cigarette lighters. The most telling example is one in which scientists found a piece of plastic in a dead seabird with a serial number on it. They were able to trace the object to an American seaplane which was shot down in 1944.
If we were to stop making plastics right now, the stuff we have already made would still be with our great-grandchildren. Something to think about as you rip the shrink-wrap from that new CD and throw it in the rubbish-bin.
keeble.mack@sympatico.ca
KEEBLE McFARLANE
Saturday, May 31, 2008
There was a time when to refer to something as "plastic" meant that it was a cheap imitation of the real thing, and of low quality. To a large extent that was true, because the scientists who were creating the new materials were still learning how to make them. But now we can't even conceive of a world without what are, indeed, wonder materials. Plastics can be made to fit almost any demand - soft, pliable, resistant to water and chemicals, tough, able to take abuse and above all, economical to produce.
KEEBLE McFARLANE I remember the first plastic I ever encountered - one Christmas in the 1940s, I received a bright red toy aeroplane for Christmas. It was cast in one piece, with four little yellow propellers, and had a distinctive, quite pleasant, smell. Eventually, it was discarded along with other household objects, but I bet if we knew where it was buried and dug up the site, it would still exist, untouched after all these years.
One of the strong points of plastic is just that - it doesn't rust like iron or steel, can withstand whatever nature throws at it, and lasts forever.
Plastics are all around us in durable goods - in television sets, computers, vacuum cleaners, printers, telephones and the countless other workhorses and leisure items that fill our houses. Every year more and more plastics are used in cars - from the dashboard padding and door linings, the lenses over the external lights to the bumpers at either end - even the wheels on which the vehicle rolls.
Plastics are widely used in the home as well - if your floor isn't wood, concrete or ceramic tile, it's most likely vinyl or laminate. The kitchen counter and table top are plastic laminate. The clothes you wear are almost certainly made of plastic - polyester is one of the most common, favoured for its ability to resist wrinkling and to dry quickly. Spandex allows us to move freely even as the garment clings closely to our curves. Most of the shoes we wear are made entirely, or partly, of some kind of plastic. Even airliners are now being made of the stuff. The biggest manufacturers - Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier and Embraer - are making the airframes out of plastic. Composites, as they are called, don't corrode and weigh much less than metal, an important consideration in these days of sky-high fuel prices.
But plastic's durability and longevity is also its chief drawback, and even worse in our modern, throw-away society. We stop by the roadside to buy a soft drink in a durable container and toss it by the wayside after swigging the contents. We blithely rip thin plastic bags from the roll at the supermarket to wrap the fruits, vegetables or roots and then toss them in the trash can after putting away the shopping.
Plastic goes quite a ways back - we have to thank a Scottish chemist, Charles MacIntosh, who figured there must be some use for the by-products from gasworks, which used coal to make household gas. After much trial and error, he found a way to make cloth waterproof, which led to the raincoat which to this day bears his name in the British Isles. His efforts also produced a hard rubber-like material called ebonite in 1851. The pace of discovery grew rapidly, and we have now reached the point where we can engage in an entire day's activities using only plastics.
But most of us are completely unaware of the toll this is taking on the planet. Because plastics don't rot like wood, wool or leather, or corrode like metal, they remain with us long after we have discarded them. Some three decades ago, the famed Norwegian explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, led a team which crossed the Atlantic from Africa to the Caribbean on a reed raft called the Ra II. Team members were appalled at the amount of floating plastic trash they found during the entire trip. A few years ago, environmentalists on beach patrol in Ireland picked up plastic bottles and from the markings on the bottom traced them back to Canada, on the other side of the north Atlantic.
In the Pacific Ocean there are now two huge floating garbage dumps consisting of monster clumps of discarded plastic trapped in slack waters by circulating ocean currents. The smaller one is formed by a counter-clockwise current off the coast of Japan, while the larger one is found north of Hawaii, kept there by a current moving clockwise.
This one, known as the North Pacific Gyre, covers some 26 million square kilometres, about the size of the two largest countries in the world - Canada and Russia - put together. There is very little wind, and the old running shoes, tarpaulins, toys, furniture, dolls and water bottles mat together 10 metres deep, moving slowly round and round.
While plastic doesn't rot, some does break down into smaller and smaller pieces, which animals like jellyfish pick up as they filter litre after litre of water to feed. Seabirds mistake pieces of plastic for food, and marine mammals like whales and dolphins mistake plastic bags for jellyfish. There's the really distressing case of a scientist finding a dead albatross chick with its stomach filled with plastic cigarette lighters. The most telling example is one in which scientists found a piece of plastic in a dead seabird with a serial number on it. They were able to trace the object to an American seaplane which was shot down in 1944.
If we were to stop making plastics right now, the stuff we have already made would still be with our great-grandchildren. Something to think about as you rip the shrink-wrap from that new CD and throw it in the rubbish-bin.
keeble.mack@sympatico.ca