History of
Plastic Pollustion

Plastic is in almost every aspect of modern lives today, in both the most frivolous things like packaging and toys, to components of our key technologies that most of us take for granted; automobiles, computers, cameras etc. This overabundance that came into being in the second half of the 20th century has resulted in the predictable – another contribution to human pollution, comparable to the much major pollutants; greenhouse gases and nitrogen fertilizers, it is also linked heavily to these other pollutants in the manufacturing process, a secondary pollutant effect so to speak.

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Plastic first came into being in the mid 19th century by the efforts of several people including one John Wesley Hyatt, as a response to the demand for a replacement for natural ivory and keratin based consumer items of the time – billiard balls, combs, piano keys, etc. their efforts yielded several organic-based synthetics – man-made plastic, such as the unimaginatively named celluloid, after the plant material it came from, cellulose. Another breakthrough came in 1907, when Belgian chemist Leo Hendrik Baekland’s research on phenolic resins created the first, fully synthetic plastic named after himself, Bakelite (Friedel 1984). These chemistry developments swiftly progressed; expanding the reach of plastic innovation further and further; by the 1930s dozens of various plastics existed. But outside of limited commercial use they did not dominate the market in materials used for most commodities.

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Then World War II erupted and all that innovation became of prime use to the military to replace and permit reallocation of critical materials to other uses such as rubber. From the fuses of shells to standard issue G.I. combs, plastic of all types became an asset for war production. Teflon, the famous non-stick coating, became a key component in the developing the Manhattan project A-Bomb holding corrosive gases in containers. To meet the demand production increased from 213 million pounds to 818 million pounds between 1939 and 1945 (Freinkel 2011). The war would not last forever, and as far back as 1943, civilian mass production was scrutinized by corporations as the future outpour of this massively increased capacity.

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By the 1980s plastic was king, its nigh universal application became a key component for every sphere of modern life as it is today, because of its numerously useful properties.

“These new versatile materials, with their higher durability, electrical resistance, plasticity, malleability, and especially their low-cost production, have become crucial and sometimes almost irreplaceable in our daily lives. They can be used for several purposes as packages, components and artefacts, in several types of manufacturing industry, including food transformation and food safety, telecommunications, automotive, medical devices and sterilization consumables, moulds and textiles among others. In the primary sector as for example in the agriculture, they provide a competitive advantage by allowing several annual harvests, the conservation of soil moisture, improved irrigation and weed suppression” (Mare Plasticum Pg188)

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But this rapid immense growth, cheapness and widespread availability also meant problems were ignored and the long-lasting material became an environmental hazard, the Plastic Age had revealed its ugly side. Plastic pollution is not just littering of objects; its lasting nature means that it takes centuries to properly degrade, and in the mean time it leaks chemicals such as xeno-estrogens into the environments, natural and man-made (Yang 2011). Microplastics are in the soil, air and water and get absorbed into organisms, and through biomagnification and bioaccumulation becomes a massive health hazard comparable to heavy metals (Kroon 2020). As of 2017 roughly 9% plastic is recycled, 12% gets burnt up in incinerators, and the remaining 79% is offloaded into landfills that mostly get mismanaged (Geyer 2017).