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Plastics are greener than they seem
Even if the world needs to become much better at managing their waste.
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Possible health risks have generated a renewed focus on where much of the world’s plastic waste ends up.
PHOTO: AFP
The Economist
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Michael Phelan, a famous billiards player and supplier, lamented in 1858 that the growing popularity of the game had made the ivory needed for the balls scarce and costly. “If any inventive genius would discover a substitute”, he wrote, “he would make a handsome fortune for himself, and earn our sincerest gratitude.” Five years later, Phelan’s company offered a reward of US$10,000 (about US$250,000 today) for anyone who could do just that. The result, after some tinkering, was celluloid – the world’s first major synthetic plastic.
Though he never claimed the prize, John Hyatt, the inventor, was indeed richly rewarded. Ever since, the world has had an almost insatiable hunger for plastics. This is because plastics’ structure – made up of repeating molecular units called monomers, which can be combined and arranged in an enormous variety of ways to form polymers – meant that they could be used to replicate the properties of almost any other material. They could also improve on it: becoming lighter, more durable, cheaper or easier to manufacture.
