Environmental Question #2 [Predictions]

Courtesy of Reddit user u/Trensocialist

Q: What are your hopes in the next decade or two on overcoming our reliance on plastics?

A: That is a very good and very complicated question. The short answer is that I have total confidence that our reliance on plastics can be overcome, but it comes down mostly to a matter of how fast and how much of a shock to people's current habits they're willing to tolerate.

I'll give one simple example to illustrate my point. Nontoxic biodegradable bioplastics have come a long way toward safely and reliably replacing conventional plastics, but one property that will be difficult if not impossible to replicate is transparency. Some good advancements have been made in this sphere, but given the current state of polymer science it appears unlikely that we can make something that is biodegradable, transparent, durable, and impermeable to air and water. You pretty much have to pick two of those four properties. This is a problem, because over the past few decades consumers have grown very accustomed getting to see the product they're about to buy before buying it, and if we want to stop relying on conventional plastic then there will be some luxuries in that vein that consumers will need to get comfortable with living without.

Extending this example, it's certainly a solvable problem. Pictures of the product can be printed on the cardboard box that holds it, some things could be packaged in glass instead, meat and produce could be selected at a green grocer or butcher and packaged in paper like back in the old days. All of these solutions are possible, but I'm sure you can imagine how people might not like these kinds of changes.

One of the truths the sustainability crisis has highlighted to scientists and societies alike is that no technology exists without drawbacks, and it might just be impossible to get everything you want out of a given product. The clear plastic example extends to a whole host of other little inconveniences people would have to live with in a reduced or zero plastic world. Science can't necessarily invent a convenient and efficient solution for every problem like 60s sci-fi imagined, sometimes the only way for a solution to be sustainable is for it to be less than optimally convenient and efficient.

So to take it home, outside of extreme specialty applications like some medical and electronics fabrication settings, we already have all the solutions we need to cease our reliance on plastics, whether we adopt them is really just a matter of how willing average people are to do things a little differently. That's part of why raising awareness for climate change and pollution are so important, because then instead of resisting sustainable change people might instead say, "Dang this is kind of annoying, but it's worth it to help clean up the planet."

 Donations