In the current day and age, one of the most imperative issues targeting the human race is climate change. It is constantly brought up amongst presidential candidates in debates as possibly our number one priority as humans. For generations and generations, carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, the use of greenhouse gases, and plastic disposal into the ocean and other bodies of water have been some of the main actions leading to this problem. Plastic is probably the most visible one out of the three, since we use it and depend on it for our daily lives. Reducing plastic usage and disposal is possible, however, many struggle in doing so due to its practicality as a material. Professor Chris Alabi from the Department of Chemical Engineering mentioned how his team of professors and researchers all across the country have teamed up to work on the production of reusable polymers as a sustainable solution. As a STEM student at Cornell, I was aware of several research labs across campus that worked with the development of polymers, but I never knew that there were efforts to develop sustainable plastic solutions. These investigations could completely shift our lifestyles and reduce the incredible damage that simple objects such as a plastic water bottle could do to the Earth. This type of research, however, is so complex that could take several years to obtain feasible and usable results. For this reason, it is extremely imperative that people continue to reduce their plastic usage as much as possible and attempt to implement more recycling techniques from their homes.
Category Archives: Rose Cafe: Chris Alabi: Polymers, Plastics, and Sustainability 2/12/2020
The Key to Sustainability
During this Rose Cafe, we met with Professor Chris Alabi to discuss how we can make plastics more sustainable. Plastics in themselves are different types of polymers that tend to be unsustainable unless they are recycled. However, even recycling of plastics is difficult due to the fact that one cannot simply lump them all into a single “plastics” category to recycle. Instead, each type of plastic can only be recycled with its own. In order to solve this problem, each and every one of us must step up. We must be willing to make occasional sacrifices to reduce our use of plastic, even by a small amount. Whether its buying glass bottles of milk instead of plastic jugs, or buying snacks in bulk rather than individual packages, we need to take action if we want to reduce our ecological footprint and make the world a cleaner place.
Plastic Problems
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.
Are we really recycling?
After attending the Rose Cafe on Wednesday, I became more knowledgable on the subject of plastic and recycling. To the general public, recycling is always considered a good thing. I was guilty of thinking that recycling was tremendously better than landfills. However, most of our plastics don’t get recycled. This may be because it’s simply too hard to or that the item contains many different types of plastics. The conversation was also interesting because I realized how good of an item plastic is because of its economic effects. Plastic is very cheap, easy to produce, and provides great value to its products. It’s very hard to beat plastic. Now, I believe that maybe it’s not about finding an alternative to plastic immediately but as a population we should make small but effective decisions to reduce the use of plastic. For instance, not buying plastic water bottles and using a Brita filter. The combined effect of this small action can have a drastic impact.
Living in a Sustainable World
I believe that while maintaining a sustainable mindset is incredibly important, the speaker’s suggestions were rather unrealistic. Personally, if I lived in New York city and a glass gallon of milk was $3 while a plastic carton was $7, I still may purchase the plastic carton because of convenience. Establishing better recycling programs seem more realistic as of now.
The Idea of a Subscriptive World
When listening to the talk today, I thought it extremely interesting describing the idea of revamping the entire idea of how we perceive common goods. When thinking about the example of how house lighting being a subscription rather than a product would incentivize companies to be more environmentally conscious, it got me thinking about how good of an idea that is in reducing waste. Yet, in my life, I always understood and respected the idea of property. This concept of creating borrowed resources, including housing, is completely foreign to how I grew up. My parents were true baby boomers, buying their cars and other household amenities without credit or debt. I suppose this all ties back to the idea of the new millennial world, marked by a lack of long-term commitment and sacrifice. I only wish that this is not how I have to live my life down the road.
While it may not support this new, extremely ingenious idea on how to be environmentally conscious, I appreciate the autonomy and baby boomer mentality of hard work, determination, loyalty and ownership (not just of items but actions). Therefore, when I get a stable job and have a family, I hope to have my own property.
Being a devoted student of history, it is astonishing to me that such a low percentage of eligible people own property in the modern era. Despite my reservations, I do hope this philosophy helps propagate a cleaner, safer and less doomed world for our children, grandchildren and many more descendants to come.