Plastic. Incredibly useful and widespread, but also relatively terrible for the environment. In this discussion, we talked about plastic and why it’s so problematic.

Something I never realized before this talk is that recycling plastic is a much more difficult process than simply melting it and reusing it. Different kinds of plastic are used for different parts of goods, and if one were to simply melt all of these plastics together then the product would end of being weak and of poor quality. Separation of different kinds of plastic is possible, but that in itself is a difficult task. Because recycling plastic is so problematic, a good portion of it either ends of in landfills or being incinerated. Thus, the problem is larger than people not recycling plastic goods; people using plastic goods in the first place bodes poorly for the environment.

Of course, one could look to other materials to fill plastic’s role. Carbon fiber is promising, but still too expensive to be proliferated outside of fancy cars and specialty goods. Glass is probably the best alternative, but, of course, it comes with its own drawbacks. Aside from the tendency of glass goods to shatter into millions of little pieces when dropped, glass is heavy. Thus, transporting it becomes costly, especially when the alternative, plastic, is relatively light. In addition, plastic is cheaper to produce and work with than glass, and, unless given external incentives, switching to glass from plastic is an unlikely business choice. Thus, for glass to catch on, either individuals would have to take it upon themselves to diminish their plastic usage, or the government would have to incentivize businesses monetarily to ditch plastic.

While we’ve collectively made at least some progress towards diminishing our plastic usage, we have a long way to go.